David Jarmuzek married Patricia for the second time on March 22 in the gym at Duluth Teen Challenge — the first wedding ever held in a Teen Challenge facility.

Flowers bedecked the wedding arbor in the Duluth Teen Challenge gym.

Nona Harkness was softly playing music on the piano as more than 60 friends and family members gathered. Wedding attendants wore shades of lavender.

The bride, Patricia Jarmuzek, 39, wore a white, formal wedding gown and the groom, David Jarmuzek, 48, wore a black suit with a black shirt and white tie. The couple’s two daughters, Cassandra, 8, and SaVanna, 6, were flowers girls dressed in white.

As the bride and groom stood under the arbor, Dennis Bradshaw, dean of men at Duluth Teen Challenge and officiating pastor at the wedding, asked, “Who gives this man to this woman to be married?” About 40 of David Jarmuzek’s fellow students at Teen Challenge gave a resounding, “We do!”

In his remarks to the bride and groom, who had been divorced for five years due to alcoholism and drug use, Bradshaw said, “Remove divorce from your vocabulary and remove separation from your vocabulary. You have Jesus at the core to make it through.”

In a March 17 interview at the Duluth Teen Challenge facility, David said a verse that means a lot to him is Joel 2:25: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. …” Five years ago he and “Tricia” were divorced, and he lost his family. With this marriage, God has restored that which was taken from him.

David’s father was a career Navy man who was absent much of the time. As the middle boy of seven children, David felt he was an afterthought to his worn-out mother. He was told that he would never amount to anything. By 13 he tried marijuana; by 16 he was going into bars. David’s first marriage and second marriages ended because of alcoholism and drug addiction.

Cleaning up, he met Tricia at a support group for alcohol and drug addicts. They married and found a measure of happiness. David owned a high-rise window cleaning business in the Twin Cities.

But he said he was reintroduced to methamphetamine and “being an addictive person, I took to it real good.” He couldn’t stop using, and he was afraid that his drug use would destroy Tricia and the kids, so he chose to leave. He and Tricia divorced and for the next five years he was on meth (IV) and cocaine.

“I was always told that I was a loser. I had three failed marriages and had lost my seven kids. And I had failed at sobriety,” David said. “I stayed in my office and built a wall of drug users around me. It was a good hideout. I pretty much let the business go because I couldn’t work and do the drugs. Drugs were more important.”

David’s encounter with God began in January 2008 when he gave a “drug family” a ride up to northern Minnesota because their grandmother had died. David said he got drunk, smoked a little meth and then gave three girls a ride in a car one of the girls had stolen.

He was put into the Crow Wing County Jail for first-degree burglary.

David said he was tired and that was the first time he didn’t say, “God, if You get me out of this I won’t do it again.

“I knew I would be lying and God knew I would be lying,” David said.

“I got on my knees and I prayed, ‘God, if You are the God You say You are, You make the choices. I’ll do whatever You say.’ From that day everything changed.”

David was released without bail, but wasn’t sentenced yet. He called the pastor who he’d met in jail and that pastor brought him to Teen Challenge in Duluth. After being at Teen Challenge for 60 days, David came back to Crow Wing County for sentencing. His charge was changed to receiving stolen property and he was sentenced to 0-5 year’s probation with a stay of imposition, which David said means once the probation is over his record is wiped clean.

“At the sentencing,” David said, “the judge told me, ‘Mr. Jarmuszek, Teen Challenge must be doing something to you because you are a completely different man than when you first walked into my courtroom.’”

David officially entered the Duluth Teen Challenge program on April 1, 2008. Minnesota Teen Challenge is one of the largest residential drug and alcohol programs in the state of Minnesota. He graduated on April 15, 2009, and had started in the Teen Challenge Ministry Program in Minneapolis on March 30.

David said he knew Teen Challenge was a Christian program and what he got was a whole lot of Jesus.

“The more I seek Him, the more I learn,” he said. Pointing at a picture of his two daughters, “This is what Teen Challenge did for me — brought my two little girls back.”

Bradshaw said that David was very successful, but that he gave up everything for his addiction, including his family.

“He figured out God and then put Him in front of everything,” he said. “Everything was restored without compromising God. David chose to do it right. He is a talented fellow, and he wants my job at Teen Challenge as dean of men!”

David will graduate from the TC Ministry School in one year and he does want to work in a dean of men’s position or something similar.

“I’m going give back for what God has done for me,” David said. “I was dead. There was no hope. There is a whole bunch of Dave to let loose on the world.”

When David and Tricia divorced five years ago, it was required that for David to see their daughters he needed to go to Teen Challenge.

When he entered Teen Challenge, David called her, and right away she said, “You made it!”

Tricia said that David’s life change was an answer to many years of prayers.

“It was a miracle,” she said. “It is an opportunity for us to have our lives back together, which doesn’t happen very often these days.

It is a victory! We have our family and it is more powerful because Jesus is the center of our lives.”

Due to being in ministry school, David is only home with his family in Moundsville, Minn., on weekends. He and his girls are learning what it is like to have their father at home.

Tricia said Cassandra knows that Christ answered prayers for her Daddy and that having him home is like “Heaven on earth.”

“She has witnessed a miracle,” Tricia said. “She prayed with her teachers for her dad and at home we prayed for him. Both the girls are happy and excited about him being home, but SaVanna is experiencing some discipline testing. We are like military families because I was a single parent for so long and many times just gave in because it was easier. David, on weekends, wants to have fun with the family, but has to do some discipline as well.”

David’s relationships with four of his other children have been restored. They are Jennifer, 26; Amy, 25; Jon, 21; and Daniel, 15.

Jennifer and Jon were able to attend David and Tricia’s wedding in March. He has a 30-year-old son, Christopher, with whom he is not in contact.