Jasmine Torres grew up near Pelham Parkway in the Bronx.

When her plane landed at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, it was the farthest west she had ever been.

This journey to Oklahoma began three years ago when she met a mission group from First Baptist Church Kingfisher, who invited her to come experience Oklahoma.

Jasmine gave her life to Christ not long after Jordan and Becky Sauceda planted Everlasting Church in New York City.

When mission teams come to help with the newly planted church, she is almost always one of the church members who will help show them around the neighborhood and serve alongside them.

Upon arriving in Oklahoma, Jasmine ate at Taco Bueno and then headed to Falls Creek to spend half of a week with the students that had once traveled to minister in her neighborhood.

She wasn’t sure what to expect from “church camp” much less the largest church camp in the world.

When she walked onto the rec fields to watch kickball, she was greeted with hugs from our students and sponsors as she told us about seeing round hay bales for the first time in her drive from the airport.

She came here to spend time with her brothers and sisters from Oklahoma and saw more of them than she realized would be at Falls Creek.

In February, I had a conversation with Brian Baldwin, the student evangelism and missions specialist for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, about our mission work with Everlasting Church in NYC.

I connected him with Jordan Sauceda, who began telling Brian about the work that began there nearly three years earlier when he and his wife moved to NYC to go and make disciples of “all nations.”

Jordan and Becky both grew up in Tulsa and attended Calvary Baptist Church.

Jordan surrendered to ministry and became a youth pastor in Texas before they moved their family to the Bronx, where their investment with people soon began to pay off as they shared the love of Jesus with people, including Jasmine.

After Jordan and Brian visited about mission opportunities in NYC, Brian asked me about helping to lead a Go Students mission trip to share the gospel in the Bronx.

As we began working on details of this trip that will take place July 2-8, 2020, our mission team from Kingfisher was preparing to spend Spring Break serving alongside Jordan and Jasmine.

While we were there, we invited Jasmine again to come to Oklahoma and this time she said yes.

We discussed times that would be good for us and for her and it seemed to work out for her to come during Falls Creek.

We were excited to get to hang out with her on our turf and thought the culture shock we experienced in traveling to NYC would pale in comparison to what she would experience in coming here.

Her first worship experience in the “Tab” with Mike Romero leading worship and Ed Newton preaching reminded her of Hillsong New York, she said.

She thinks the Oklahoma heat is “rude,” but spent most of the first two days on campus outside taking in all of the sights.

On Thursday night, when Ed asked for those who feel called to ministry to come forward during the invitation, Jasmine walked up and surrendered her life to ministry.

On Friday you could find her in the Missions Center talking to students about coming to New York, showing them pictures that had been set up all summer long of the day she was baptized.

She encouraged them to go and serve in her neighborhood, to experience a part of New York that most people never get to see, but where God is changing lives as they experience everlasting life at Everlasting Church.