“
God loves you and so do I,
and if there’s anything I can do to help you
“
I will.
“My gift is to speak life into dead places. I give hope to the hopeless and I believe in my heart that if you have God in your life you can do the impossible, reach the unreachable and bear the unbearable, and that is what has happened to me,” she explains. Debra doesn’t have any doubts about her mission and neither does the Pittsburgh community. She has received numerous accolades and honors for her work, including the 2013 Sally Hillman Award, the H. John Heinz Award for Community Service and the 2012 Volunteer of the Year Award by Governor Tom Corbett and Secretary of the Department of Corrections John Wetzel, to name a few. Aside from being named one of Pittsburgh’s “People Changing Lives,” she has been nationally recognized as an “Ordinary Hero” by Today’s Christian magazine. She also found the time to become an ordained minister earlier this year. It’s a lot to manage, but Debra credits Geneva’s Master of Science in Organizational Leadership program for helping her realize the breadth of her capacity. “It stretched me beyond places I didn’t know that I could stretch, but it developed a sense of excellence in me that I wouldn’t settle, that I would always do everything within my capability with a spirit of excellence and I knew that with anything, any paper I wrote, any project, I did it with everything I had,” she says. While she’s certainly grateful for the praise, Debra insists she’s just a tool for God’s work. She doesn’t even make a penny from it. Besides, she measures her success a bit differently. She sees it on the faces of countless young men who often approach her with a smile. They’d heard her speak once and decided to change their lives for the better. Instead of working the streets, they’re working behind deli counters or trying to go back to school, all because somebody thought they deserved a chance for a new life. Debra even hopes to speak to the man who allegedly murdered her son. He’s serving time in prison for a separate crime but has never confessed to killing Ray. “That’s the type of work that God has me doing, really helping the least of these. The people that nobody wants to be bothered with are the people that have given up on themselves, and I just
want to let them know that ‘God loves you and so do I, and if there’s anything I can do to help you I will,’” Debra explains. But there are still all those others who weren’t ready to listen, and she fears they might not get another chance. With DIM’s funding completely slashed, her mission is functioning on crumbs and is nowhere near the one-stop shop for transformational resources she hopes to achieve. But if Debra has proved anything, it’s that she has learned to step out in the face of fear and rely on God’s promises. In fact, she belts out an enthusiastic “Woo-hoo!” as she explains that God is only closing single doors so He can open double doors. Just as He opened a door into Geneva’s Master of Science in Organizational Leadership program, which transformed Debra’s life and ripples outward from her to transform so many others. “My prayer is that someone would start investing in human lives as opposed to just profiting for their own selves. I’m committed. What time I’ve got left in this life, I’m going to spend it restoring the lives of others. I refuse to spend what time I’ve got left on this earth doing something that doesn’t matter to God. I’m going to do whatever I can with whatever’s in me to help others.” G Information about Divine Intervention Ministries can be found at www.divineinterventionministries.org.
Divine Intervention Ministries’ Services q q q q
Mentoring Program IMPACT (Interceding Making Positive Actions Come Together) Program Speaking Engagements Spiritual Support/Prayer Partners 19