HOPE Response
Healing the Home, Heart, Human Experience and Gatherings by His Word!
ABOUT
HOPE Response, Inc. is a non-profit organization with a local and global reach that trains any individual as a "HOPE Responder"! We reach out with a compassionate response to the whole person. A HOPE Responder seeks to help heal the heart, home, human experience and gatherings of those suffering!
Loss, pain and grief can come from trauma and tragedies but also wrongs done by others or even from choices we wish we had not made. Our "response" to these matters! It can lead to either further hopelessness or life-giving hope!
We believe that every soul was created to be in relationship with God in order to be fulfilled! That connection with God was broken by sin and paradise was lost. Ever since then the soul's search has tried to fill that "God-shaped" hole with that which does not satisfy.
God made a way for us to be restored to life! Through Jesus Christ, God's own son, who became flesh and lived this life without doing anything wrong. He was the promised one ever since that first connection was broken! He had to become broken for us. Life is given when we tell him all our brokenness and trust Him to take it and make us new. It is when His life is in us that we become whole and fulfilled wherever we are at! These are three areas in which we offer hope.
HOPE Response to Family Love
HOPE Response to Faith
HOPE Response to Loss, Pain and Grief
Scope of Influence
LATINO IMMIGRANTS Since 1994, the HOPE Response teachings have been shared far and wide. It all began in South Scottsdale of Arizona with "Buenas Nuevas Ministries" among Latino immigrants. A local church had a desire to reach out to the community which had changed over the years from when it was founded. They found themselves among a large community of immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru and many other Spanish-speaking countries. Tutoring in English began at the community center, job fairs with immigration specialists, food boxes and a Good News club for children led by the Piantedosi's. Parents brought their children but would not leave them alone so stood at the back of the class hearing the same stories as their youth. It was not long before whole families were connecting with Jesus Christ, the Word! Home meetings were held to help them grow stronger in their connection to Him through His word written. A church was birthed and a pastor called to help them be a "one another" gathering!
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS The transition was then to Phoenix Seminary for further training. Nick Piantedosi went full time as a Master's degree student while also working full time. His job at that time intersected often with the surrounding Native American tribes. While at the same time Leslie had transitioned from a 20 year career in mental health to now working with highschool International Exchange Students. The desire was to welcome them in the hopes of building bridges of peace and understanding while witnessing lives connected to Him, the living Word! Over the next 12 years she was able to enjoy personal relationships with youth from all over the world, more than 40 countries, and found them other "welcoming" families to do the same as they did within their own family. Many of these experiencing faith in Christ for the first time in a safe place to explore and engage. Invitations have been more and more received for them to come and share this faith with others in their country.
NATIVE AMERICANS After three years of seminary training, an internship was the final stepping stone before graduation. Nick's heart began to be moved by the urgings of Native Americans that he met through his job and his intercultural studies professor, Malcolm Hartnell, recommended he consider CHIEF, Inc. for his internship with Tom and Huron Claus. He made the suggestion known to them and was welcomed to serve. The internship grew into a calling that Nick and Leslie Piantedosi responded to. Leslie had grown up in Gallup, NM so had experienced many tribes, especially the Navajo with her travelling veterinarian father. She knew it had to be God's call for doors to open among native peoples because of the historical trauma that inclined them to view the "white man" with caution. Yet because of God, they were warmly and eagerly received by many Native American tribes. The ministry straddled two worlds, that of the urban Indian and that of those living on remote and distant tribal lands. A special request came through CHIEF, Inc. from the Hopi who had 7 churches without pastors and needed help. So the Piantedosi's went to help preach, teach and reach out to the Hopi while developing Native leaders to do the same. Other pastors and tribes were asking for help in the growing concern of suicide, drugs, and domestic violence. This is when the years of their own personal stories and ministry to loss, pain and grief were compiled together in 2011 in an interactive book to be used in teaching native people's the "HOPE Response" way!
IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES Unique opportunities have begun to surface over the years with refugees. Exchange students that Leslie helped find homes for the school year that were here for a year came on a special visa that was part of our countries diplomacy initiative. These programs are the Congress-Bundestaag (after World War II), the FLEX (after the Cold War with former Soviet Union), and the YES Scholarship (after the 9/11 Terrorist Attack) award programs which were specifically designed to build bridges of peace and understanding from within these countries at every socioeconomic level. Brave families on both sides wanted a different future so either received a student in their very homes or sent as an exchange student their very own child! The goal was to be placed in a home that was very different from their own so that there would be a safe opportunity for both the family and student to explore differences, thoughts and beliefs. One man from Africa that was visiting our church was surprised to the point of shock that we personally had opened up our home as Christians to invite Muslim youth to live with us for the school year. He said "we need you to come and speak to us of your experience for we must learn this kind of love and bravery!" This very student recently contacted us to share "please pray for us here for it is election time and so many of my people are being killed by corrupt leaders and I kept thinking of your teaching on the HOPE Response to Loss, pain and grief that I heard while with you." These students from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, India, Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan, Moldova and more connected with those here already that have fled such beliefs, been victims to such terror and introduced us as friends. These have become the "open doors" to many that are willing to hear what is our motivation for giving such HOPE!