POWER POINTS: WOMEN LEADER Terrisa’s Story BY LEECY BARNETT “'Jesus, I don’t know anything about anything. I just have to trust you.’ That’s what the hurricanes of life can do to us. They can reduce us to TRUST.”
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hen Terrisa Coleman wrote that statement, she was reflecting on two hurricanes that had destroyed her old life and set her on a brand-new path. The metaphorical hurricane hit when, just three days after giving birth to her third daughter by Cesarean section, Terrisa and her husband, Stan, packed up their comfortable life in the midst of the Bible Belt and moved to Miami, Florida. Stan felt God was calling him to preach the gospel to the unreached in what was, at the time, the drug hub of America. Terrisa often described her experience in Miami as “90 miles from Cuba, 10 minutes from hell.” In spite of the difficulties, Stan’s ministry with the youth of the Miami church was growing. One day while standing at the dishwasher praying, God spoke to Terrisa telling her He wanted to use her and Stan to plant a church in Florida. This calling both excited and terrified her. After she recorded this encounter in her journal, she decided not to say anything about it right away, but asked God to reveal this calling to her husband. Three months later while driving to church, Stan told her about the “vision” he had to start a church one day. They agreed to spend a year praying and learning about what planting a church would involve. By August 1992, they were ready to step out in faith and decided to put their house on the market. On the very day that the real estate agency was scheduled to appraise their home, the second literal hurricane hit. When Terrisa heard that Hurricane Andrew was heading toward South Florida, she was not too worried as they lived 12 miles inland, were not in an evacuation zone, had hurricane supplies, and it had been more than 40 years since a
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