Immigrant Hope Santa Barbara Is Doing God’s Work

The idea was already there, but the courage to carry it out came to Diane Martinez in a dream. “It was so vivid,” she said. “Like no other dream I’d had before.”

“I was in this big old mansion,” she remembered, “and in this mansion were all these hallways, and in these hallways were door after door after door. There were people behind every one. Every age and color and race you could think of. And each time I would open a door, I would hear a voice say, ‘God is faithful.’

“Right away when I woke up, this [Bible] verse came to mind,” Martinez went on. “It’s from First Thessalonians: ‘The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.’ That’s the backbone of Immigrant Hope, and that’s what faith is to me ― it’s stepping out and doing what I can do and trusting God to do the rest of it.”