Mary Hutchinson

Constanza, 22, spent most of her childhood in an orphanage where the walls where covered in black mold. Though the children slept together in single cots to keep from freezing to death, she was isolated because she had lice in her hair when her mother left her there.

“Every night I went to bed hungry,” she remembers. “Every morning I put on clothes that were too large, shoes that were too small. It was all I had.”

But on Friday, June 24, Stella’s Voice brought her and 14 other former orphans—girls and boys who aged out of the Moldovan state-run orphanages—to minister to the children at Nashua Children’s Home in Nashua, N.H.

Philip Cameron never planned on extending his family, nor had he envisioned creating a refuge for potential sex slaves. Yet his efforts to transform orphans into walking testimonies of God’s love are now transforming a country.

Natalie, a beautiful girl of 16, sat outside the orphanage where she had lived since she was 7 years old, wearing a t-shirt that read: “You Can Own Me For $3,500.”

OK, so she wasn’t actually wearing the shirt—but she might as well have been. In fact, everything about her screamed the message to predators in the area. She had “aged out” of the government-run orphanage in Moldova and had no place to live and no way to make a living. She had no family, no one who would know or care if she vanished from the country known as “the engine of the sex trafficking machine” in all of Europe.

Statistics of abuse and neglect paint a grim picture Around the world, at least one in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her life. The U.N. reported in 2009 that up to 40 percent of women throughout Latin America have been victims of physical violence. Forced prostitution, sex trafficking …

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Publisher’s Note: J. Lee Grady has been part of the Charisma family since 1992. Early this year, after 11 years as editor, his role changed to contributing editor, prompting many readers to ask where he had gone. Lee is still a vital part of Charisma, as you’ll read in this article, but he is also embracing a bold new season of ministry. As he does, please pray for him and consider supporting his incredible vision.

—Steve Strang

J. Lee Grady, the former award-winning editor of Charisma, travels the world today rallying women to bravely serve God. What made this easygoing journalist an advocate for biblical equality? 

Former Charisma editor J. Lee Grady spent the first half of his career sitting behind a desk. Today you are more apt to see him behind a pulpit—challenging the abuse of women in a Third World nation. 

How did this mild-mannered journalist become a passionate crusader for justice? Ironically, Grady says, it all started with letters from readers of Charisma.

“Any time we ran a story on a high-profile teacher like Joyce Meyer or a female pastor of a church, I’d brace myself because I knew what kind of letters we’d get,” says Grady, who began his career at Charisma as news editor in 1992 and served as editor from 1999 to 2010. “Dozens of well-meaning people would write letters, citing Scriptures taken out of context, to attack the notion of women being allowed to minister in church.”

Jan. 30, 2009 -- Vita barked as loudly as he could. He was hungry because all the food in the dog bowl was gone. Two large dogs towered over him, adding their barks to his.

The walls of the small Russian apartment were thin, and the noise was constant. The barking continued unabated for days on end, yet the neighbors ignored it.

Terrible enough to leave dogs alone and pinned up with no food and water, but this was far worse. Living with these two dogs was a toddler.

But Vita, a sweet-faced blond boy, didn't know he wasn't a dog. How he was found and rescued is nothing short of a miracle.

"When Vita was born, his mother had taken him to the hospital for his initial vaccinations but never brought him back to finish his shots," says Lilit Gorelovi, the woman who today is his foster mother. "One of the hospital doctors happened to be looking back through the records and noticed that Vita had never received all his immunizations. This compassionate doctor visited the apartment, which he found locked.