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Meet Gina La Benz of Anchor Moments in Chandler

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Gina La Benz.

Gina, before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was growing up, my family didn’t go to church. My mom was Methodist, and my dad was raised Catholic but didn’t believe in God… So we didn’t go. The first Sunday after my parents got divorced when I was in high school, my mom woke up my brother and me early. “Gina and Mike, wake up! We are no longer sleeping in on Sundays. We are going to church!”.

That jump started my faith journey. We joined a nearby Methodist church, and I enjoyed singing in the choir. Sometimes while singing, peace would come over me, and tears would fill my eyes as my heart became suddenly overwhelmed with joy. Little did I know at that time, this unexpected experience would be the first of many.

A few years later, I fell in love and married a sweet man who, before we met, attended Mount Angel Seminary for two years to become a Catholic priest. Jeff had an experience with God on the beach in Lincoln City, Oregon, and decided to take a year off from seminary to discern if this was his chosen path. That was at Easter time in 1987. We met a year later and shared our first kiss on the eve of Easter in 1988. I attended classes to become Catholic while we were engaged, and my husband gave me my first Communion while I was wearing a white gown and veil on my wedding day on March 17, 1990… Again, just before Easter.

Though I learned a lot of valuable life lessons from stories in the Bible and sermons presented at both the Methodist and the Catholic churches, for me, something was missing. I yearned to hear personal stories of how people encountered God in their lives. How do they know for sure that God truly exists and loves them as an individual? Where do they see God? How do they have a personal relationship with God? How do they follow God’s lead when looking for direction in their lives? How do they know they are living their purpose?

I surrendered my life totally to God in the fall of 2015 when I was ready for a career change. While I had believed in God for many years before that, I had not surrendered my life until then. In prayer, I asked, “God, please light up my path so that I will be sure to follow your will for my life. I promise to go wherever you lead me. From here on out, I will follow your will versus mine, if you make the signs so BIG that I don’t miss them!” That was a complete game changer for me. God has made it clear what He wants me to do.

God gave me three big signs, presented by three different people a week later at the 2015 YMCA Interfaith Prayer Breakfast which I chaired and for which I was a speaker. Frank Narducci, assistant superintendent at the Chandler Unified School District (where my husband also works), attended the event and gave me one of the big signs. He told my husband later that morning that I missed my calling. “Jeff, I was so inspired by Gina’s speech at the YMCA Prayer Breakfast! Tell Gina that she could pursue a professional speaking and storytelling career!”

When Jeff came home from work and told me what Frank had said, it made my heart smile. I then called the emcee from the Y Prayer Breakfast, Darleen Santore for her advice. Darleen has been a professional speaker and coach for a long time as well as being a friend. She gave me the second BIG sign. I asked her, “How do you become a professional speaker?”

Darleen enthusiastically coached, “Gina, you are a great storyteller. The first thing you need to do is write your stories down!”
Coach Dar, as many of us call Darleen, was such a blessing to me because it was her encouragement that prompted me to start my Anchor Moments blog. God gave me a bunch to write about immediately after that YMCA prayer breakfast and healed my heart of past hurts, too. I wrote about this journey in blog posts as it unfolded, and later, in the spring of 2019, I published this journey and lessons learned in my first book, Anchor Moments: Hope, Healing, and Forgiveness.

The third person who gave me a BIG sign at the 2015 YMCA Prayer Breakfast was Christine Ellis, whom I met for the first time that morning. Christine was in the audience at the Prayer Breakfast. When I exited the stage after giving my speech, she burst into my arms with a big hug, tears streaming down her face. She told me it was the best prayer breakfast she had ever been to! Christine handed me her business card and asked if she could join our planning committee. (I was the chair.) She did, and we have been friends ever since. Without a second thought or even reading it carefully, I put Christine’s business card with some others in my desk at home and wouldn’t run across it for years, not realizing its significance at the time. Her card read: “Christine Ellis, Broadcaster on HSBN.tv – Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network.”

The realization that Christine Ellis’ business card from 2015 was a BIG sign from God didn’t hit me until two weeks after my book came out, in April 2019. With my book finally published, Christine invited me to be on her Christian TV show on Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network. During the taping, I held up my book for the camera. As we stared at the photo on the back cover, we both realized that the first day we met and became friends – almost four years earlier – was on the day of the 2015 YMCA Interfaith Prayer Breakfast, just after I surrendered my life to God and asked him to help me find a new career. The photo on my Anchor Moments book cover was taken just minutes before Christine and I met for the first time!

When Christine and I finished taping that episode of her show, the station owners Andy and Ann Marie Bills told me that they were praying to offer a show to someone Catholic. (They had over 100 broadcasters of various Protestant denominations, but no Catholics.) The Bills were certain that I was to be their first. Two days later, on the Friday before Easter (Good Friday), I signed a one-year contract to produce four Anchor Moments shows a month.

God inspired Christine to give me her Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network business card at the 2015 YMCA Prayer Breakfast as an answer to my prayer to guide me to a new career. An unmistakable sign that God wanted me to accept this offer was, like the other BIGGEST blessings in my life (from sharing my first kiss with Jeff, to my wedding and the birth of both of my children), this opportunity was given to me at Easter.

It has been such a blessing being a part of the Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network and their new station, Christian Women Word Network! My Anchor Moments show fills the void of what was missing in my life. Every single guest on my show shares their personal Anchor Moments where they encountered God in their lives. I know I am fulfilling my life’s purpose to share our encounters with God to help other people develop their own personal relationship with God, too.

I have been blessed to have a waiting list of people to appear on my show! My Anchor Moments guests have included friends, area business owners, faith leaders, and many locally famous people such as Lin Sue Cooney from Hospice of the Valley, News 12 Sports Anchor Bruce Cooper, and the CEO of Girl Scouts Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, Tamara Woodbury. I am also blessed to have time to volunteer for my favorite nonprofits while pursuing my new writing and speaking career. I never would have guessed in 2015 that I would have my own show and would become an author! God is so good!

I think some of us worry that if we surrender our lives to God, we will have less. Really, we have so much more! More joy and more peace knowing that we are not alone. More open doors leading into a fulfilling life of purpose, too.

If you would like to read my book, read my blog, watch my shows, invite me to be a speaker at your event or be a guest on my Anchor Moments show, you can find all that info on my website: www.AnchorMoments.com

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been surprisingly smooth! Once I surrendered my will, doors have been opening up!

Please tell us about your work.
I enjoy making a difference. I have had readers of my book surprise me at events and hug me. When they tell me that my book has helped them to heal relationships in their lives or they have read my book more than once and it gave them hope, my heart is overjoyed! I have also had guests on my Anchor Moments show tell me that their family members cried after watching them on my show (in a good way!) Their hearts were so touched! One businessman guest left a voice mail that I saved on my phone. It was the day after his episode launched. He gleefully told me he had received over ten calls from friends who watched the show and were touched by his story.

I also give one dollar from each Anchor Moments: Hope, Healing, and Forgiveness sold on Amazon to CeCe’s Hope Center. The money has helped but what has helped more is my spreading the word about how CeCe’s Hope Center helps young women ages 18 to 24 who have experienced the trauma of sex trafficking. Many of these young women were foster children and do not have a stable family to help them. When I told my friend, Aaron Suzuki about my book launch and shared with him the struggles of CeCe’s Hope Center trying to find an office space, Aaron was inspired to donate one of his office spaces at his Co-Manity Coworking Space. That is worth thousands of dollars to CeCe’s Hope Center!

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I am currently writing my second Anchor Moments book. I recently launched an Anchor Moments YouTube channel and will have my 27 minute Anchor Moments shows produced by Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network on there as well as some shorter new shows coming soon that I will call Anchor Moment Minutes! I look forward to helping to produce some live CWWN- Christian Women Word Network events in Arizona as well as being a guest speaker at some of their events in California and Canada. I am currently working on creating Anchor Moments workshops that will happen in 2020. I look forward to being invited to speak at churches and conventions. Where ever God leads me!

Pricing:

  • Anchor Moments: Hope, Healing and Forgiveness paperback is available on Amazon for $15 and I donate one dollar to CeCe’s Hope Center
  • Anchor Moments: Hope, Healing and Forgiveness is available as a Kindle eBook for only $5.49 and I donate one dollar from each eBook sold to CeCe’s Hope Center
  • Sponsorship of my Anchor Moments shows produced by Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network is now available! Only $100 for a 30 second or less commercial to be attached to a show and a discount rate of $300 for four shows

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
The picture of my ribbon cutting was taken by the Chandler Chamber of Commerce. They shared it on their social media. They love having their photos shared because it promotes the chamber. The rest of the photos were taken with my camera phone by either me or a friend. The personal photo is of me and my friends, Chantal VanKlompenberg and Nora Leuck at the Stuffed with Love Boutique a couple of years ago. The Stuffed with Love Boutique is happening again this Friday December 13th at ICAN in Chandler from 3 to 6:30 pm, in case you would like to come out and take photos. This event was started twelve years ago in my living room with eight girls in my Girl Scout troop. My troop of girls are all grown up now, but the event lives on with the help of about 100 volunteers each year, many of them Girl Scouts, CGCC and ASU students, Team Silva, and other kind people who like to gift wrap, collect donations of gifts, or help the children at ICAN shop for their families. The Chandler YMCA helps too by being a collection site for the gifts and lets us hold the sorting meetings there for a month before the event. Even Fans Across America has helped out the last couple of years giving us some items to use as gifts. So cool watching so many people and nonprofits working together to make Christmas extra special for the children at ICAN to be empowered to be givers at Christmas! The Stuffed with Love Boutique is my favorite day of the year!

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