I did not come to this conclusion in any ordinary manner. I wish I could tell you my conclusions came from extensive research on the subject of prayer. In 1987, I wrote a book titled The Prayer Factor, which was translated into nearly twenty languages. That book has been the number-one resource we have used in our international evangelistic ministry. However, recent events in my life have brought me to a new level of understanding of the power of prayer. I have become convinced that prayer is both the great mystery and the mighty weapon of the believing Christian. It not only has the power to shape our lives but the lives of people who we will never meet on this side of heaven.

A few months before embarking upon writing this manuscript, a number of events, which I will describe in the following pages, radically altered my life. Almost everything I believed about myself was shaken to the core. Through a strange set of circumstances, I became aware of my heritage. I learned my roots come from an unknown group of people in the piney woods of Louisiana. One historical researcher has referred to them as "Louisiana's mystery people." They were the people who God chose to launch Protestant Christianity west of the Mississippi River. They were a mixed race of people with a violent history. However, God sent the son of an Indian slave and a handful of people, who were also of this mixed race, as His ambassadors to the land of bayous. They crossed the cultural divide and proclaimed the gospel. Ultimately, these "mystery people," in part, birthed the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

The great-granddaughter of one of those original Christian pioneers into Louisiana died five years before I was born, but she would make an impact on my life that would reverberate around the world and touch millions of lives in more than eighty nations. She learned to seek God for her family in those piney forests. Her godly prayers would pave the way for me to walk into a revolution in Romania, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, and preach the good news of God's love in the middle of wars. I would not have any idea about the impact of her life on mine until sixty-three years after she died. She would not have any idea either - until she reached heaven's gates.