Journeyof Hope & Love

could be someone who inspires people and shows others the light of Jesus Christ… Perhaps Mother
Theresa or Billy Graham? Why do we even consider this? I believe it is because we want to make a difference. We want to somehow make the world a better place. We want to improve the lives of someone. The dying question of one of my fictional heroes was: “Did we make a difference?” When he heard an affirmative response, among his last words were, “Least I could do…”
I don’t think I’ll ever be a superhero, nor will most of us, but together, we can support a superhero. I
refer of course to Dr. Bella. Everyone of you reading this newsletter has a chance to be a part of
something greater than yourself. Dr. Bella was selected by Jesus to “proclaim the good news,” and that is what she has been doing. But she needs your help to continue to do it. I urge each of you to commit to a monthly gift. It doesn’t need to be a huge gift. Many of us buy coffee at a drive-through a few times a week. Consider reallocating a portion of these funds to do the work of Jesus Christ. Almost every week in my pastoral prayer, I ask God to bring light, love, and understanding into places that are ruled by darkness, hate, and evil. Dr. Bella IS PART OF THE ANSWER to that prayer. Your support is the rest of the answer.
In my youth, I dated someone whose mother had died when she was four years old. She had very few memories of her mother, other than the funeral. Her father and other family
members raised her. I remember there was always an emptiness of never really knowing her mother. Many of the girls that Dr. Bella works with have no idea who their mother is or even where they were born. Some were kidnapped into slavery and human trafficking at a very young age. The “lucky” ones were brought to the safe house by the police after their parents were killed. These girls have nothing—except for the light the Dr. Bella brings.
If you don’t know, Dr. Bella spends much of her time at a “safehouse” for girls. For a while, the girls are safe from evil people who would treat them as nothing more than a commodity to be sold, or perhaps more appropriately “rented.” It is not a picturesque view of the world. While the girls are safe for a time, at age 18, they need to leave the safe house. Traffickers are waiting outside the
safehouse ready to intimidate the girls (now young women) back into the life they had been saved from. The sad truth is, in a lot of cases, these young women have few skills, and no choice but to back to the life of sexual slavery. Again, not a picturesque view of the situation.
But Jesus is HOPE, and Dr. Bella is HOPE. Her vision is to bring more missionaries to this place.
The vision includes providing some type of vocational training to the girls at the safe house so that when they finally leave, they can be employed and forever be free of being a commodity in an evil world.
There is no doubt in my mind that GOD HAS A PLAN, and Dr. Bella is PART OF THAT PLAN. Each of you is the OTHER PART OF THE PLAN. I hope we all agree that human trafficking is a terrible evil thing. But we can do something besides shake our heads and think how awful that is. I encourage and challenge you to support the mission of Dr. Bella. Together, we can make a real difference in the lives of God’s most precious children.
Pastor Phil, Long Plain United Methodist Church (Dr. Bella's sending church)