Our Founder
Meet Jaime
Jaime founded the ministry in the Spring of 2015 and serves as the Executive Director for RTCM. He’s served in other addiction ministries such as Teen Challenge and Revelations of Freedom Ministries for the past 17 years. He obtained a master’s degree in Licensed Professional Counseling from Liberty University in May of 2018. He is an ordained pastor in the Assemblies of God church. Jaime lives with his wife Pam and youngest daughter in Lancaster County, PA not far from their married son, his wife, and two grandchildren, and two other daughters live out of state. He enjoys biking, swimming, fishing, and quality time with his family.
Jaime’s testimony
Hello, my name is Pastor J. Jaime Santiago, and I am 54 years old and currently residing in Gap, PA. I suffered from twelve years of chemical addiction between the ages of eight and twenty years old. I was born and raised in Long Branch, NJ in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and mentally challenged illiterate mother. The imprinting on me growing up in this home was negative. It resulted in abandonment, neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in my life. The trauma filled my mind with attitudes of anger, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, inferiority complex, distrust, and thoughts of suicide. The negative thoughts resulted in wrong feelings (e.g. feelings like I do not have to respect authority, I can do anything I want, and nobody cares about or loves me). These wrong feelings affected my behavioral decisions, which resulted in my medicating with illegal substances and alcohol daily.
It was not long before the abuse of the chemicals encouraged me to behave criminally. I began to rob houses, steal out of automobiles, and eventually rob convenience stores. This criminal behavior resulted in me spending over seven years of my life incarcerated between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two years old.
On February 27, 1988, I was incarcerated in Lancaster County Prison where for the first time in my life I heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, accepting him as my Lord and Savior. It was in the spring of 1990 (after I was released from SCI Retreat) that I heard about the program of Harrisburg Teen Challenge. I contacted the staff at the program about coming to the program for help with my chemical addiction. It was during my waiting to get into to Teen Challenge that I met my now wife, Pam. In September 1990, I entered the Teen Challenge Induction Center in Harrisburg, PA. In May of 1991, while a student at Teen Challenge Training Center, I officially started dating my wife Pam. I graduated from Teen Challenge Training Center located in Rehrersburg, PA on October 25th, 1991.
After graduating from Teen Challenge, I moved in with my spiritual Christian Mennonite parents Henry and Grace Horst and lived with them for three years. Henry helped me get a job at Good’s Store in East Earl, PA, which I still had when I married Pam on February 19, 1994. Today I am an ordained minister of the Assembly of God Fellowship and no longer at Good’s Store. I’m married to my wife Pam for 28 years and we have four beautiful children, ages 21 to 28, who are all believers. Our son Caesar is married with two children, our daughter Cassie resides in NC working for another ministry, our daughter Kenisha resides in NY and is pursuing medical school, and our daughter Querida lives at home with us while finishing her studies at Lancaster Bible College. I am a graduate of Southeastern University located in Lakeland, FL with a BS double major in Church and Business Leadership. I completed my master’s degree at Liberty University with a major in Counseling in May of 2018.
I worked with Teen Challenge in Florida and Pennsylvania for five years and founded a ministry called Revelations of Freedom Ministries located in Lancaster County, PA. Revelations is a nine-months residential men’s discipleship and servant-leadership training ministry helping those who suffer from chemical, behavioral, and relational dependencies. That ministry is still going today. Currently, I am the Executive Director/Founder of a new ministry called Restart Training Center Ministry Inc., also located in Lancaster County, PA. It is a minimum of six months long, and we help men with chemical addictions, gambling, pornography, and behavioral addictions. We are in our sixth year of operation and also do ministry to those residing in Lancaster County Prison.
A book that God used to touch my life is TELLING YOURSELF THE TRUTH by William Backus and Marie Chapian. Today I thank God and the mentors He provided me to create a safe place for me to change, heal, and grow spiritually and emotionally healthy through my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is what the ministry of Restart Training Center Ministry provides to those who come to us for help. We are about comforting others with the same comfort God has comforted us with. 2 Corinthians 1:3 says, “Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (NIV).