Three Glowing Crosses ~ How I Started My First Church by Wanda Rust

If you have read the posts on the Office of Evangelist, you know I highlighted Rev. Wanda Rust.  She was moved by the calling of God to start her ministry in 1961.  In her own words, 'God spoke to me to establish the organization of the Independent Pentecostal Church.' Over the years, she built her organization in both America and parts of Mexico. All though, she began as an evangelist in 1963, she did take on the role of an apostle, pastor and teacher establishing her own church where she lived at the time.

This is how Wanda received and answered her call from our Most High God.  It is a story of courage and fortitude with a huge helping of faith to see the kind of miracles that she has seen over her ministry.  I am honored to feature her on this website as one who walks in the fivefold ministry.  Wanda recounts in her own words.

“After I received the Holy Ghost, I spent every chance I had in the Word and a lot of time in praying and fasting. We owned a donut shop and café at the time, we served breakfast and lunches, as well.  I spent two consecutive days a week fasting, while cooking and running the place. Praying while washing dishes.  On my breaks I was in the Word.  Hungry for God.  We never missed church, regardless of how tired we were.

After I left my church, because they did not understand my growth in the Spirit and accused me of not being of God.  I asked for forgiveness for whatever I had done wrong.  They asked me to stay, but I knew if I stayed, I would die spiritually.  They marked me as not being of God.

I had prayer at home, then the youth began to come to my home for prayer. I did not ask anyone to come. They came asking me to let them come, because of the Spirit. They were so hungry for the move of God.  As we began to pray, God would give us instructions on what to do.

God was so real He would come to my husband and me, like a big shining silver ball. One Sunday, we took everyone up to the mountains for a picnic, and when we got home, the Lord had put three crosses on the ceiling of our home that anyone could see, they glowed. I began to have visions from God, about people and He sent us as a group to minister to them in Mexico. The only thing we knew about them was they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. God had people at each place we stopped and ask directions, who would take us to the next place, until we found them.

Later it was from there that we were taken into the hills near Ensenada, Mexico to a church where we saw the lame walked, the deaf heard, and a baby was brought back to life.  Also, there were about five to seven banditos that came and set on the back row with their guns.  They did let me pray for them.  The benches were half logs set on rocks.

To make sure that the youth were not just agreeing to what we said, I put out pencils and paper with instructions that after they prayed, they were to write down what God gave each of them and put it in a pile.  When we checked each one, God had given to each one of them the same thing.

Then the police came to our door and told us we had to stop the church or go to jail.  We told them it was a prayer meeting.  My husband was afraid he would lose his pension, so we moved the group to our business.

Our business was on the corner of the shopping mall, glass on two sides. When we began to have church there, a church organization sent young people to harass us to the point I would have to call the police to disperse the group. Some of them told me they were paid with beer and cigarettes.  Later I found out one of them did not become a priest but received God.

That is when God told me to start my own organization for our church.  He moved upon the lawyer who lived across from us to do the paperwork, very cheap.  Only God’s mercy.

Finally, God told me to start a regular church and led me to Pacific Beach, to an old fashion church that was empty, at the time. We rented for a long time.  It had a bell tower, that the children liked to take turns ringing the bell to start the church.

The power was so strong at times, that people would come tell us we needed to call the fire department, because the top of the church was on fire, but it was the Holy Ghost fire.

It was in this church that I saw, as I was leading worship, the devil hit an older man in the forehead with the palm of his hand and the man died, vomited, turned gray and his eyes rolled up in death. I called my husband and my mother who was vising at the time to help me pray.  We rebuked the death spirit, and he came back to life.  The devil hit him a second time and we prayed; God brought him back from death; told him he was brought back from death to be a witness to his family.  He was in his nineties and was still doing barbershop work.

We had people come and go. There was one family of seven who left and returned three times asking if they could come back, because they could not get what they received at our church anywhere else they tried.  He did not like me preaching so much about the Holy Ghost. About forty-five years later I found out he had received the Holy Ghost, and that was all God would let him talk about.

We were there quite a while, before the company sold the property, to a developer, who tore it down and built apartments in its place.  We were not really accepted in the church circle; they would pass our church by as they rotated to a different church each time.  This because they felt they lost control to the Spirit.  After church was over there would be a line of people waiting outside for us to pray for them. The pastors did not like this.

I took the people who, wanted to stay with us to another church, until God had me open the second church.”

Thank you, Wanda for sharing your incredible journey.