In 2000, my wife and I were sent by First Baptist of Woodstock, Georgia, to plant a church in Las Vegas, Nevada. My first week on the field in Las Vegas, my telephone rang. On the other end of the line was a lady from the Philippines named Letty Peralta. Letty said, “Pastor, can I tell you a story?” And I said, “Letty, I don’t know anybody in Las Vegas. You can tell me any story you want to tell me.” Little did I know that what she was about to tell me was going to forever change my life.
Letty said, “Pastor, I’m originally from the Philippines, but I moved to Hong Kong to make money for my family, who was very poor.” She said, “While living in Hong Kong, I met an American family, and I moved in with them and became the caretaker of their home. Over time, however, I became much more than that. I became a part of their family, and they became my family—to the point that when they relocated from Hong Kong back to the United States of America, I moved with them as a part of their family.”
“We settled in a suburb north of Atlanta called Woodstock. While there, I visited a church called the First Baptist Church of Woodstock.” She continued, “I heard the gospel preached like I’d never heard it before. But then my family got relocated from Woodstock, Georgia, to Las Vegas, Nevada, so we moved again.”
Letty said, “Pastor, I’ve been in Las Vegas for a year and a half, and I’ve prayed every day that the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, would start a church in Las Vegas, Nevada.” There was a pause as she asked me, “Pastor, would you please tell me who sent you here?”
Ten days earlier, my family had loaded everything we owned into a Dodge Caravan in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Woodstock and driven thousands of miles across the country. At the time that we embarked on this journey, none of us even knew Letty Peralta existed. But Letty showed us early on in our church planting process that we didn’t come to start something. We were simply getting in on something that God was doing in Las Vegas long before we ever got here, and that He’s going to continue to do long after we’re gone.
For us, this birthed a rally cry that went like this: “We don’t pray before we work; prayer is the work, and then God works.” And sure enough, we began to pray. We mobilized mission teams to Las Vegas. We prayer walked 50,000 households on the south end of Las Vegas. We prayed through the phone book, over every name, and as we did so, we asked for two things, “God, would you open their hearts to the gospel?” And secondly, “Would you raise up laborers for the harvest?”
It’s amazing to witness the number of churches that have been planted out of our church, the people that have been sent out of our fellowship, the nations that we’re working in all over the world – just all of what has happened, and the Godly magnitude of it. The reality is that one lady from the Philippines asked God to do it, and for two decades since then, Hope Church has been riding a wave of the favor of God’s activity. All glory to Him.
Learn more about the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and the missionaries it supports at anniearmstrong.com.