Val Jeal has been awarded an MBE, an honorary doctorate and the Freedom of the City of Bristol in recognition of her work with the homeless and sex workers. She’s also the author of Broken by Love, which describes 30 years of seeing God encounter people with broken lives and bringing healing through her ministry.
You were leading a very conventional life when God stepped in and changed everything. Tell us about that. vj I reached 40 and realised that there had to be more to life. I started going to different churches, I even looked at Buddhism. Then I went to the Salvation Army, and I could see that those people had something I wanted. Four weeks later, I invited Jesus into my life, and it was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. I felt as though the whole room must be able to see that something had happened to me. Six years later, I was sitting in the Salvation Army evening meeting and the Captain, Chick Yuill, was preaching on Isaiah 6. ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?’ And in my seat, I said, ‘I will go, send me.’ I didn’t actually know what I was signing up to, but God soon made that apparent. I felt God calling me to leave my safe and reliable job, working as a university library secretary, to go and work with the homeless. And of course, I had no experience, so we had a day of prayer and fasting in the fellowship. I was 50 then. It was pretty scary.
After five years of working with the homeless, you suffered burnout, took a sabbatical and helped at a house for sex workers in Chicago, where you had two very powerful encounters with God. Could you describe those encounters? vj When I went to Chicago, I was physically, mentally and spiritually exhausted. Where was God in all the suffering I was seeing every day on the street?
