Recycling God's love

In 2012, a simple act of compassion marked the beginning of a ministry that would touch hundreds of lives. Following a Bible study, Jamie Sanchez and his wife, Carolyn, felt the Lord calling them to reach out to the homeless in downtown Denver, Colorado.

“Even though, at that point, we could barely pay our bills,” Sanchez recounted, “we thought: God loves us so much! We need to go show this love to other people.”

They prepared 20 sandwiches and distributed them among Denver’s homeless. Sanchez had no idea what the future had in store. That small beginning was the first page in a long story of faith and transformation.

Today, Sanchez operates Recycle God’s Love (recyclegodslove.com), a ministry that provides basic necessities to the needy. With the support of donors and volunteers, the ministry serves around 300 people at each outreach event, providing hot meals, clothing, hygiene products, winter supplies, and most importantly, the love of Jesus Christ.

Now, Sanchez’s powerful story is being shared with a wider audience as the fourth episode of The Impact Series from American Family Studios. This series shares the stories of Christian men and women who are being used by God in various ways to impact the world around them. The newest episode, titled The Jamie Sanchez Story, chronicles Sanchez’s path to the founding of Recycle God’s Love, which led to Project Revive and eventually the opening of The Drip Café.

But the transition from handing out those first few sandwiches … to leading a ministry to the needy – that was a journey that tested Sanchez’s faith and drove him to fully depend on God.

Rebellion to real change

Growing up as a young man in Denver, Sanchez was disinterested in God, despite having a mother who raised him in a Christian home.

“I really didn’t want anything to do with Jesus at that point in my life,” he recalled. “I just wanted to do my own thing, and I rebelled quite a bit.”

His rebellion intensified as he entered high school. He became involved with drugs and crimes, such as breaking into cars. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Carolyn.

“We immediately fell in love. After we got out of high school, we got married but had no interest in living for God,” Sanchez reflected. “Then we had our first daughter when I was 21, and that’s when God started to hone in on my life.”

He began feeling the weight of responsibility to provide for his family. He tried to obtain a license to sell life insurance, hoping to earn a living.

“They did a background check on me, and they saw that I had a criminal history,” he said. “I was not allowed to get my license. I had already burned all my bridges from the previous work I’d had. And so, I was without a job instantly.”

Desperate to pay their rent, he and his wife scrounged for loose change around their apartment. To their amazement, they found the exact amount they needed. In that moment, Sanchez felt the Lord pulling on his heart for the first time.

“God spoke to me and put it on my heart: You need to stop seeking after these things of the world and set your mind on things above, and I’ll always take care of what you need. I was seeking only things that I wanted, not things that I needed. But God showed me that if I seek Him, He will take care of me and my family. And so, a real change started happening in my life at that time.”

A call to serve

This experience led Sanchez and his wife to seek the Lord. While still hesitant to attend church, they began to read the Bible and eventually started a Sunday Bible study in their home.

It was one evening around this time when Sanchez and his family felt the Lord calling them to put what they had been reading and studying into action by providing sandwiches to the homeless. That experience opened his eyes to a mission field in his own backyard, which blossomed into a larger effort they named Recycle God’s Love.

“God loved us, and so we love others,” Sanchez explained. “That’s why we call it Recycle God’s Love.”

The Refiner’s fire

Sanchez recounted in The Impact Series episode that he and his family faced their most difficult challenge yet when his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 – a trial that tested the very foundation of his faith. Despite ongoing treatments, the cancer worsened, and Carolyn suffered a stroke due to a tumor in her brain. She died in 2018 shortly after entering hospice.

“Those three months were very dark for me,” said Sanchez, describing the period following Carolyn’s death. “I was very confused, very angry. I would be alone in my room screaming and crying and not knowing what I was even on the earth for.”

Then one morning, he experienced a turning point. He felt God prompting him to move forward and take up his responsibilities, showing him that drowning in sorrow and darkness was detrimental to his children and those he was called to serve.

Sanchez shared that he called his sister and told her he was ready to serve again. They went out with some food to give to the needy. Many people, with whom he and Carolyn had built relationships, mourned with him over her death.

“I thought I was there to help them, [but] they’re out there blessing me,” he said. “I knew after the first time going back that I could never stop coming again.”

And when he didn’t stop, God expanded his ministry in unexpected ways.

A different approach

Sanchez recognized that addressing the root causes of homelessness required a different approach. This led to the creation of Project Revive (recyclegodslove.com/project-revive), an outreach designed to find long-term solutions for homelessness in Denver.

Project Revive creates a pathway from street life to stability, focusing on four key pillars: sobriety support, housing assistance, employment opportunities, and community connection.

In 2023, Sanchez opened The Drip Café (dripcoffee.cafe) in Denver’s Santa Fe Art District. This coffee shop provides jobs for Project Revive partcipants who are transitioning out of homelessness into a more stable life.

The café’s opening immediately faced extraordinary challenges, which is the focus of The Impact Series episode. Before Sanchez welcomed the first customer, he began receiving hostile messages claiming that the café was unwelcome in the area due to the statement of beliefs concerning biblical sexuality, which was posted on the parent ministry’s website. Protests, fake negative reviews, and harassment ensued, but Sanchez held strong. By early 2024, the café hired its first participant from Project Revive, fulfilling the original vision.

“Satan doesn’t want homeless people to get out of homelessness,” Sanchez stated. “He wants them stuck, hopeless, and addicted. That’s why God has carried this ministry through the hardships, because He wants people’s lives to be revived.”

WATCH THE JAMIE SANCHEZ STORY

See how faith, heartbreak, and compassion gave rise to a ministry that continues to transform lives.

Watch The Jamie Sanchez Story, the fourth episode in The Impact Series, at stream.afa.net. The episode is also available on DVD from the AFA Resource Center (resources.afa.net) .