There are 20,800 blocks in Chicago. And the Lord is sovereign over them all. But his grace is perhaps nowhere as evident as the block of 113th Street between Princeton and Wentworth.

That’s the block where Pearl Willis has built a day care center for 64 children, coffee shop, playground, and housing unit for single moms. She’s also torn down seven abandoned houses. 

Thirty years ago, five drug houses dominated this block on Chicago’s South Side. But Pearl isn’t content with the change so far. She still wants to add a thrift and produce store, as Sarah Zylstra reports in this profile.

“Every person on that block knows she loves them,” one of Pearl’s longtime friends told TGC. “She has a passion, a childlike faith, and a tenderness I still see in her from the day she was saved.”

Pearl’s salvation story is even more amazing than her work in the Roseland community. She has endured an almost unbelievable litany of tragedies. As a young teen, she began using drugs after she’d been drugged herself and then gang-raped. She had her first child at age 16. She doesn’t remember being sober for 18 years. Several consecutive boyfriends abused her. 

But God. You’ll have to read the remarkable conversion story for yourself. 

“I’ve always felt like if God saved me,” Pearl said, “he could do anything.”