July 16, 2026: It took nine drunk driving convictions and three stretches in prison for George Carter to seek help from God.
Carter said he felt a hole in his life, in his soul, that he tried to fill with alcohol.
Today, he fills it with the Holy Spirit and helps others rebuild their lives through a sober living program.
He founded and runs Camp Recovery, a sober living facility for men, on his property near Weatherford, Texas.
Carter, 70, last went to prison in 2009.
Growing up, his mother sometimes prayed, but he wasn’t raised to be religious.
But that last time in prison, Carter finally realized that the lack of spirituality could have been a cause for his ruin.
“I knew I didn’t know God like I should know him,” Carter told the Weatherford Democrat. “And once I started doing that, everything started changing.”
While in prison, he earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity, a master’s in counseling, and a Ph.D in Christian education.
He had no intention of it becoming a calling; he was simply seeking God.
And then he was befriended by Kenneth Bottoms, a former Marine captain and a volunteer minister to veterans in Texas prisons.
“He impressed me as a man with deep religious beliefs, and I must have judged him accurately,” Bottoms said in a story recounted by yahoo!life news. “I hit a home run with Chaplain Carter.”
Bottoms identified that Carter was ready for change, ready to accept and connect with God.
Bottoms, an electrical engineer by trade, said Carter had been ready for the change faith offered. He’s keen to spot that readiness in the inmates he counsels.
That’s a marker of inmates who can turn their lives around.
“They have to accept that they had a problem that caused them to go to prison in the first place,” he said. “Then they’ve got to to turn their life around and decide they’re gonna be a better person. and the ones who are successful develop a close relationship with God.”
Bottoms eventually made Carter his chaplain.
“I said, ‘I don’t know anything about being a chaplain,’” Carter recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, you’re gonna be my chaplain.’ and that was the beginning of my whole life changing.”
Carter, a Vietnam vet among 238 fellow veterans in the prison where he lived, petitioned the warden to allow him to offer a program to treat vets with PTSD.
The warden eventually agreed, cautioning: “If you mess this thing up, you’ll never see the sunshine again.”
It was successful, and Carter walked out of prison in 2020 with the blessing of the Veterans Administration and, according to Carter, of God.
Sober Living as a Spiritual Foundation
He fixed up a 5-bedroom home on his property, where he lives in an RV nearby.
He then founded it as Camp Recovery, a faith-based sober living home for men.
“It’s not rehab,” Carter said of the home where he houses recovering alcoholics. “(It’s) sober living. I’m their chaplain, I’m not their buddy. Just like in the military, when you get up in in the morning, you police your room. ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m coming by to check it.’”
God, Carter believes, was also at work when the state allowed him, a convict on lifelong parole, to house fellow parolees.
“I think it’s amazing,” Bottoms said of Camp Recovery. “When he first told me he was gonna do that, I thought, ‘Boy, do you know what you’re getting yourself into?’”
Carter did.
Carter believes the structure and spiritual foundation of sober living gives residents a chance to build a different future.
“The guys that are coming here are looking for something different; if they are not, they are not gonna be here long,” Carter said. “It’s an opportunity. If they want it, they can do something with this.”
Carter said he’s finally found his purpose.
“For the first time in my life, I’m doing what I want to do,” Carter said.
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