Bonnie George is a hero in her workplace, in her community and across borders.
George, a customer service representative (CSR) in Alabama Power’s Pell City Office, has worked for the company for 15 years.
“We help our customers, the people that live in the community,” George said. “I like talking to people. I like knowing that I’m helping them. You really have that personal relationship with your customers if you put that effort in to get to know who they are.”
Bonnie George is an Alabama Power unsung hero with a heart of gold from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Pell City CSR Naji Ridley said, “Bonnie is a loving person. She is caring. The way she walks, the way she talks, the way she carries herself and addresses others just shows love.”
Helping others
Since October 2018, George, her husband, Gary, and their six children have delivered 100 meals to the homeless in Linn Park in downtown Birmingham every month.
“We sit and talk and pray with them,” she said. “We let our children talk with them. Our kids bring toys and books and play with them, and it gives them a time of normalcy that is lacking in so many of their days.”
George’s foreign missions journey started eight years ago when she began leading high school students in her church. Partnering with organizations such as King’s Castle, George and her husband organized foreign mission trips for their church youth group.
George said, “We started conversations with our pastors about how we are leading our students into foreign missions, with some of them never knowing what it meant to serve our neighbor.”
On their first mission trip, George and her husband took a group of 20 students to Nicaragua.
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “It was my first time going into a country doing missions and I didn’t know the language, but as soon as we got there, my husband said, ‘I feel like we’ve come home.’”
In 2018, George’s church partnered with Mission of Hope to bring a group of students to Haiti.
“We went and played games, we did a lot of sports, for half a day,” she said. “Then they had a message. … At the end of the program, it was lunchtime, so we got to feed them, and that was incredible.”
The night before they were scheduled to leave Haiti, rioting broke out in Port-au-Prince, 30 minutes from where they were staying. George said, “We were safe, but we couldn’t get to the airport. We ended up having to stay three extra days.
“There are so few opportunities in our life for us to step out in our faith in a way that others truly see. … When we have the chance to put our faith into action, that’s when we’re truly living it,” she said.
