Logan Pickens and Pastor Ruth Marsh inside Trinity United Methodist Church. Listen to the podcast in the video player above or download it below. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com

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IDAHO FALLS – When 27-year-old Logan Pickens first walked into Trinity United Methodist Church in Idaho Falls a year ago, he was at rock bottom.

He was nearly homeless and battling a drug addiction. One of his coworkers had introduced him to weed several years prior. He then became hooked on other drugs, including meth. He quit for a brief period of time but later started using again after several failed relationships, including a divorce from his wife after just six months of marriage.

He was now facing eviction from his apartment. Though he had a job as a chef at Cardamom Indian Restaurant in downtown, he was becoming dysfunctional because of his addiction. For him, life was spiraling out of control.

Walking into a church was the last thing on his mind at that time, but a trip to the laundromat one day changed all that.

“I used to live by the YMCA and I would go down the street and there was a laundromat there (where I would do my laundry). A friend said, ‘Hey, come over to the church, and you can do your laundry for free,'” Pickens tells EastIdahoNews.com. “So I walked a few extra blocks and got my free laundry here.”

The church has a day shelter that provides showers, food and laundry services for those in need.

Prior to living in Idaho Falls, Pickens had grown up in Missouri where he learned to play the piano, the clarinet and even sing.

As a member of a marching band, music had been a big part of his life back home. It had now been more than two years since Pickens had sung or played a single note, but Pastor Ruth Marsh caught wind of Pickens’ musical ability and offered him a job playing piano at worship services and other church events.

“Part of it was desperation because I needed a piano player,” Marsh says. “I had been praying (to reach) Logan’s demographic for years, and it just happened that Logan was the prototype that walked through the door.”

As a pastor, Marsh says God has often allowed her to see someone the way he does and she noticed something in Logan she wanted to foster.

“I grew up in a household with a mentally ill father, who Logan reminds me of,” says Marsh. “Lots of drug addiction presents itself in the same way.”

With no money to his name and nowhere to go, Pickens found temporary refuge living at the church before Marsh eventually took him in.

“The day the stay-home order went into effect, Logan had brought a few things from the apartment over to the church for safekeeping because he was about to be (evicted) and was going to stay with a friend of his who was on the other side of town,” Marsh says. “I realized … if the stay-home order is so strict that Logan can’t come to the church to play the piano, I’m up the creek without a paddle. So I figured out a way to get a little corner down in the basement where he could at least sleep.”

A year later, Pickens’s life looks a whole lot different. His drug addiction is under control and he now works full-time playing piano, operating sound and video equipment and managing the church’s social media pages.

He’s had many conversations with Pastor Marsh about God and Marsh says it’s helped Logan find his own faith.

“He needed to be able to find out that God was bigger than what he had learned as a young person,” she says.

A journey that began in childhood

Getting to this point has been a journey that began long before he ever set foot in Trinity United. It started when Pickens was just a kid growing up in Missouri.

“I grew up (in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and I was a very active member then. I got to go to the dedication of the Nauvoo temple (in 2002), so