PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. — On Christmas Eve, Kim Belle thinks about his past.
"We've seen fights in front of our house," he recalled. "I've seen people get stabbed. I've seen dead bodies in the ground."
He spent his early years in the 1960's, living in the Kenilworth area of D.C.
"I grew up in the projects," said Belle.
He moved to Prince George's County as a teen.
"I was 14 years old and I started hanging out with obviously the wrong people, going to wrong places, and started smoking weed and getting high," he said. "I guess by the time I was 16, I was selling drugs."
Belle was still dealing four years later when a chance encounter with a man led to a discussion of faith and God.
"We ended up praying," said Belle. "That day actually changed my life."
At that moment, he felt the beginnings of the call to ministry that would become the driving force of his life.
Filled with newfound purpose, Belle began to think about his future. He stopped selling drugs and went on to travel the world, serving in the Air Force for 20 years.
"I get to my first base and immediately go to the chapel and start working with the young people there," recalled Belle.
He started a family. Belle and his wife, Angela, have now been together for more than 30 years. They have three adult children and a 3-year-old grandson.
After retiring from the Air Force in 2004, that passion for ministry took him back home to Prince George's County, where he is an elder at Victory Christian Ministries International.
Belle calls it "a very blessed life."
A life that was completely transformed by a chance encounter with a man who opened his eyes to his calling back when Belle was just 20 years old.
Now, as the DC region grapples with a wave of youth violence--and youth victims--he's calling for adults to do for them what was once done for him.
"If you're just shown a little bit of your purpose," Belle says, it can make a world of difference.
He is living proof that any life can change, all it takes is a spark.