Valerie Giacobbe
"When you go through hell long enough, God allows you to catch fire. Use that fire to set the world ablaze with the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. The greatest love story ever told." -V
Valerie, known as V by most family and friends was born on the south side of Chicago in an Italian American family. She accepted Jesus as her savior at age 7. Shortly after she began praying in the spirit and prophesying. Walking in her anointing as a child was not easy without the proper encouragement and spiritual mentor-ship. Ultimately she felt lost and an outcast to her peers. She struggled with identity and fitting in, which always led to bouts of depression and anxiety. As a teen she asked God to take away her spiritual gifting in fear of the occult (due to misinterpreting scripture). In 2002 the passing of her Grandma lit a fire under her to seek God deeper than ever before and a desire to know her true identity and purpose. She spent the following 16 years studying scripture, ministering and evangelizing. She obtained a license in cosmetology and founded "Hair to Help", a business that provides grooming services to those in difficult circumstances. During that time she also started a written blog that later led into a video blog. The blog was based on sharing real life experiences of trial and error mentor-ship led by the Holy Spirit. The main objective and purpose of her blog "Faith and the City" was to ignite the fire under other believers to take the same approach of taking Faith outside of the 4 walls of typical church settings. Instead of just going to church for 90 mins one day a week, the mission was based on the biblical teaching of becoming the Church, the very body of Christ. In her everyday she ministers as a cosmetologist in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Her vision behind her business VBella is to partner with God to cultivate an inner beauty in everyone she meets. Based off the biblical principals of 1 Peter.
{1 Peter 3:4-6} Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated.
In 2018 she had a Holy Spirit encounter like never before in response to a hellish season of trial . The answer to her cry of desperation to the Father was a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit at a fellowship gathering on the west side of Chicago. That very night, alone in her war room, the prophecy spoken over her life began to manifest and she fully and completely surrendered to God with her life. The revelation of God's RecklessLove and the power of the Holy Spirit caused an uproar within her. If God would go to the ends of the earth to save her from the clutches of the enemy, He would do it again for all his children and she had to let the whole world know.