Building Faith Across Ninety Nations

Lester Sumrall's healing as a dying teenager was not the end of his story, it was the starting point of a life spent testing whether the same faith that saved him could also sustain a ministry that would eventually stretch across the globe. He began preaching in small settings, gradually extending his reach as opportunities opened.

Over the following decades, Sumrall carried the Gospel into more than ninety countries, often into regions with little prior Christian presence and considerable resistance to the message. He approached these fields with the same unwavering confidence that had characterized his healing years earlier, refusing to let unfamiliar culture or hostile circumstance shrink his expectation of what God could do.

He went on to found LeSea Broadcasting, using radio and television to extend the reach of the Gospel far beyond what in person crusades alone could achieve, and established Bible colleges to train national leaders who could continue the work long after his own ministry had passed through a region.

Sumrall often taught that faith is not measured only by dramatic, one time miracles, but by a lifetime of consistent obedience built on those foundational encounters with God. The same trust that got him out of a deathbed also got him onto airplanes bound for unfamiliar nations with no guarantee of a warm welcome.

By the end of his life, the small, private faith of a dying teenager in Louisiana had grown into a global network of churches and broadcasts, a testimony that faith exercised consistently over decades multiplies far beyond its original scope.