A very special, joyful, blessed Mother’s Day to you who are a mother or like a mother to those who need you. Really, all of you who help Good Counsel are very much like a mother to our women with children.

Having a mother who was always there for me, it is hard for me to understand even now after 35 years of helping women and children at Good Counsel how a mother could turn her child away in time of need – especially if that child were a daughter who is pregnant.  

My mother, Louise Rozzo Bell, was 88 when she went to the Lord in 2013. I still can feel her closeness and support.

My wife’s mother, Elizabeth Early Andrews, was just 4 months shy of her 102 anniversary of birth when she went to the Lord on this past Easter Monday. What a Resurrection Season for her to meet her long-sought Lord. She, too, was a mother who was there for her children. She was a cradle Catholic who fervently followed the faith as a daughter, sister, army nurse, wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother totaling all direct relatives surpass fourscore.

Our Good Counsel mission means being Mother: Mother in the sense of caring, protecting, providing, nurturing, encouraging, directing.

When a mom calls or emails and is not able to turn to her own mother, our response is always the same: “You can come into our home.”

The Lord expects this of us. The Lord spoke through the prophet, “Can a mother forget her baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget you, I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15)

When a pregnant woman enters a Good Counsel home, often with little more than a few clothes, Good Counsel provides her with all toiletries, including shampoos, toothpaste and brushes. She’ll be given food and taught how to cook and clean. Under the current Covid-19 pandemic, we’re keeping especially clean and antiseptic. She’ll certainly learn to clean well.

Good Counsel’s case manager will guide her through our online tests for educational and vocational skills. Half of our moms have not finished high school, and so we push toward that goal. Many train as a home health aide and quickly find work – all done with a lot of love!

That’s “mothering” at Good Counsel.

You who help us at Good Counsel become “mother” for those who have none other. You become the Lord’s hands and heart to reach a young woman with a child who has no one else willing to help. Thank you for your support.

God bless you and love you, as well as all whom you know, with health in body and soul.  
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Peace,

Christopher Bell
President & Co-founder