Testimony from Lori Stoker

I want to thank God for leading me to The Place International Church. I started attending this church in 2006. I knew I needed to get into church because I wanted to learn the truth. Pastor Murphy taught me truth, how to pray, about the Holy Spirit and how to seek God.


I grew up in the Jehovah's Witness religion where we were taught that God did not hear our prayers unless we were a baptized Jehovah's Witness, that there was no such thing as the Trinity, that everything outside the Jehovah's Witness religion was false.

When I was eighteen years old, I was sexually harrassed by one of the elders of the Kingdom Hall church I attended. I reported it to the other elders in the congregation and of course the person who sexually harrassed me lied about it, and I was told that it was his word against mine.

This was when I turned away from God. A few years later, I attended a christian university and received my first real Bible. Eventually, I started reading it. It was funny how everytime I opened my Bible, it opened to Genesis 12, the call of Abram. I took those words as a promise to me. A couple years later, I got saved while watching The Passion of the Christ movie. I did not know I had said the prayer of salvation until a few years later.

A couple years later, I started attending the Outreach Tabernacle, which is now the Place International Church. I attended with a friend who would eventually lead me astray about the church, telling me lies about almost everyone in the church. God started asking me to sit and read about wisdom in Proverbs 8. While reading, I would hear the conversation of other members of the church, learning that everything my so-called friend had told me was a lie. Shortly after, God moved me away from that person. I gave up everything to go back home and learn what God needed me to learn before I could begin to move forward. I learned that everything I had been taught was a lie and the devil had built up such a great wall of lies and deceit around me that I could not see the truth.

It took four years to break through every lie, every curse, every hex, spell and act of witchcraft that had been used against me to keep me absolutely ignorant of God.

I am thankful that God held on to me and did not let me go. I am thankful that God led me to the Place International Church to learn truth. I am thankful for every person that has prayed for me during this time of growth.

Now in 2012, it's time for a new start with the Place International Church. I promise to pray for this church daily, and stand with this church for whatever you are believing God for, because I know that truth is here.

God, bless this church that you created in Jesus' name. Lori Stoker