(September 2) VICTORVILLE— Ron Wilson, the director of the Victor Valley Rescue Mission since 2007, is leaving that post as of this week.
Wilson, 48, who was also the assistant pastor at the New Life Chapel will be assuming the position of pastor at Grapevine Fellowship, a church in Nevada.
Wilson worked diligently to refurbish the Victor Valley Rescue Mission from shortly after he arrived in Victorville seven years.
His efforts served as a catalyst for widespread volunteerism that effectuated change in the mission that was teetering on the brink of collapse, just as the Crash of 2007 was hitting the High Desert with full force.
Wilson brought other churches, businesses and private donors together to beef up the mission’s programs of reclaiming individuals and families in need and crisis. In addition to providing 80,000 meals to the homeless yearly and obtaining for them clothing, it offers the destitute and drug addicted a nine-month recovery program, operates a 14,000 square foot charity thrift shop, provides  2,000 Christmas gifts to children of the impoverished during the Holiday Season and sponsors a Thanksgiving banquet and turkey basket giveaway.
Wilson’s departure leaves unfulfilled his vision of seeing to fruition the Victor Valley Rescue Mission’s Bridge To Hope Center, which Wilson said would be built on 16.2 acres off Stoddard Wells Road near Highway 18, and would include living quarters for families, women and children, a large kitchen, classrooms, a gym, sports fields, and a conference room.
Wilson and his wife, Cari, and their children Justus, 14, and Ashalyn, 10, will move to southern Nevada, roughly five miles north of Nellis Air Force Base, where he will become the pastor of the congregation at Grapevine Fellowship.