Debbie McGoldrick gave a big smile and waved to her friend Jan Schuler through a tiny window in the intensive-care unit. Jan's little girl, Caroline, had just been born with Kniest syndrome--a disease that retarded bone growth and caused her tiny ribs to crowd the lungs. Doctors said Caroline would never breathe on her own.

Debbie committed to spend every Thursday in the hospital with Jan. She passed the time writing cards, reading, or preparing a Bible study until she and Jan could go to lunch. Though their time together each week was brief, Debbie encouraged Jan to focus on God's faithfulness. "Gaze at God and glance at your circumstances," she'd tell Jan earnestly. Then she'd spend the afternoon alone in the hospital waiting room until it was time to pick up her children from school.

"It was tedious for her day after day," says Jan, "but that's a picture of Debbie. She's really poured her love and life into mine, and that was just an expression of her compassion and giving."

Jan, who'd been attending a neighborhood Bible study led by Debbie, was overwhelmed at how God met practical as well as spiritual needs through the group. As she saw God's love shining through Debbie McGoldrick, Jan, like so many other women, grabbed onto Debbie's vision for loving one's neighbors with the love of Jesus Christ and seeing God transform their lives.

Debbie, though highly focused in her mission to love her neighbors and reach them for Christ, never makes a person feel like they're part of a program. It's the notes and cards she leaves in mailboxes, the baked goods and crafts she makes, and lunches together that spell love with no strings attached. Women cannot long be a part of this golden-haired, blue-eyed woman's life without gaining a love of their own for other people.

Ten years ago, when a small Bible study Debbie was attending in the Spring Ridge subdivision in north Atlanta needed a leader, Debbie stepped in, even though her children were toddlers. Today two dozen-plus neighbor ladies crowd into a basement to participate, and the toddlers are almost teens.

	To minister to the spouses, Debbie and her husband, Mark, lead a HomeBuilders study for couples.

One ingredient guiding this growth--aside from the life-changing Word of God that Debbie teaches each Friday morning--is the deep sense of community felt by those who attend. Debbie and her friends have often walked through their neighborhoods to pray for different families.

"We prayed that the families would have a hunger for the things of God," says Laurie Bengochea, who started a Bible study in her new neighborhood two miles from Debbie. "We prayed that their hearts would be prepared for the invitation to come to the study. Every time we passed a house for sale [in my subdivision] we prayed that God would bring a family who needed to hear [about God]. Out of 18 gals in my study, two of them moved into houses we prayed for."

As leader of the study, Debbie prays throughout the week that God would give her opportunities to live out what she teaches. "I don't want to teach from my head or from books," she says, "but from my heart and fresh life experiences." And she has a deep well of life experience to draw from.

After seven years of dealing with infertility problems, for example, Debbie and her husband, Mark, adopted Melissa, now 13 years old. Two years later they adopted Matthew, now 11. They tried to adopt another little girl as well, but after five months the baby was taken away and returned to the birth father.

Recently the McGoldricks were visiting friends when Matthew touched a miniature cannon. It fired as he touched it, blowing off two fingers and part of his hand. As Debbie applied her own advice to "gaze at God and glance at circumstances," she found God faithful. "When you're totally dependent on everybody else to minister to you," she says today, "and walk through that vulnerably, it deepens and widens your ministry. People get to see God's Word lived out in a traumatic situation."

Debbie herself has benefited from seeing others live out God's Word. As a child, she watched her parents model outreach. Her father led a neighborhood Bible study for more than 20 years. "Dad always had a burden for the lost," Debbie says thoughtfully. "That's why I do it naturally. Our home was always open to friends. I never felt pushed aside for them to minister to other people." She remembers her mother reading a Bible story at lunch every day, even when children who weren't believers sat around the table.

After giving her life to Christ around age 8, Debbie helped lead several friends at school to faith in Christ. Upon graduation from Bible college in 1976, she joined Student Venture, Campus Crusade's ministry to high-school students.

While Debbie is not working directly with high-school students today, she feels she's continuing to reach youth by ministering to families in the neighborhood. In order to give first priority to Mark (also a Student Venture staff member) and their children, most of her ministry is done between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Sacrifices have been made, she admits. Her children, for example, are involved in few extracurricular activities.

"I learned from Ecclesiastes 11:4 that if you wait for perfect conditions," Debbie says, "you'll never do anything." She believes that a key factor in helping neighbors is simply allowing time in your day. "It's having the margin in my schedule so I can meet needs."

Debbie's desire to see God transform the lives of her neighbors has come to be shared by those in her study. "I guess you could say that her love for the lost is contagious," says Laurie. "I was one of the lost ones reached by her gentle presentation of God's grace and truth. When God began to move in my heart to begin a study in my new neighborhood, Debbie encouraged me greatly."

The study influences the world far beyond the borders of Debbie's subdivision. Joo Carrier attended the Spring Ridge study for two years before moving to Irvine, CA, where she leads a Bible study of Korean women. Another woman, Jeanet van den Berg, took what she learned and started her own study in the Netherlands.

As the only black woman in the Bible study, LaVonna Floreal found acceptance and love. "I have never in my life felt so much love from a group of white women," LaVonna says. "Immediately they made me feel comfortable, and I think that had to do with the tone that Debbie set as the group leader." LaVonna only attended the study for three or four weeks before moving to Lexington, KY, but says Debbie gave her a framework for reaching out to women in her neighborhood.

And Jan Schuler remembers the day they drove little Caroline home from the hospital. Yellow balloons lined the mailboxes leading to their house. A parade of honking cars greeted them, cars filled with Spring Ridge families and decorated with banners reading "Welcome home, Caroline--God loves you."

Doctors called Caroline's recovery remarkable. Jan believes it a miracle. The welcome party just rejoiced.

Today Caroline is 4 years old. People in the subdivision are moving in and moving out, homes are being remodeled and more children being born. But one thing remains constant in Spring Ridge. Another wife, another mother, another family is being forever changed because of the love and influence of Debbie McGoldrick.

To see materials Debbie has put together on reaching your neighbors for Christ, click here.

Cynthia Jones and her husband, Nate, have two children. They live in Lexington, KY, where they work with Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Kentucky.