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Gabriel Revilla recalls a “Nike moment” when his college pastor in Miami approached him with a question.

“What do you think about recruiting an actual team of students and allowing them to come to Miami to reach lostness here?” Gus Hernandez, collegiate pastor at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, asked Revilla.

The question was neither small nor random. Hernandez knew Revilla’s heart and potential for leadership in ministry.

Revilla accepted the challenge and decided to, “Just do it.”

Then came Chicago.

More than 180 years ago, anyone living in the Mexican controlled Texas territory had to speak Spanish and could only attend a Roman Catholic Church. As Stephen F. Austin led the effort toward Texas independence, a friend of his, Josiah H. Bell, was equally resolute toward another objective. Bell helped form the first Protestant church in Texas. Bell started a family tradition that today reaches to the Dakotas.   

“I guess it’s in our blood,” said North American Mission Board (NAMB) church planter Jonathan Land. He is Bell’s great, great, great, great grandson, and they share deep Texas roots.  

“I was born in Texas,” Land said. “There’s a reason people don’t like people from Texas. They are just so arrogant about being from Texas. I used to be that guy.”  

Austin Coleman has spent each of the last two summers in New York City looking for intersections. If ever there was a city where success would seem inevitable, America’s largest city would be that place with its blur of 24-hour activity. New York City is a seemingly endless maze of intersections populated by yellow taxicabs, limousines, delivery trucks and personal vehicles. Despite potential risk, Coleman has navigated the city without incident or peril. Now, he has a love for New York City and a desire eventually to return there to live and plant churches.  

Regent Park is a revitalizing area near downtown Toronto, a city of neighborhoods. Today, Regent Park is fast changing as young adults, many of whom are college educated, are choosing to live there. “Toronto is much like New York City,” Yang said. “It’s a thinking city. You engage people’s hearts through their minds.” 

North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary Travis Kerns would encourage you to love the LDS. That’s what he has learned to do. His love for Mormons grew to the point that he now lives 35 miles from downtown Salt Lake City and serves as city missionary for NAMB’s Send North America: Salt Lake City.  

Christ the King, a multi-campus Southern Baptist church plant that started in downtown Cincinnati, is in the middle of its second year of a residency program at the church. The North American Mission Board provides funding for three of the eight residents in the program. One of them is a lead planter and the other two are church planting interns. Most of the current crop of residents came from within the church.