Mesa, Ariz., is the largest suburb in America, with a population of 450,000. For comparison, Mesa is larger than St. Louis, Mo., or Miami, Fla. Realizing that Mesa was growing rapidly, Pastor Terry Darnall and head elder Ed Beck began envisioning a new church complex.

At the time, Mesa had two churches about the same size. Because both churches were on small pieces of property, they wanted to buy land before it became too expensive or unavailable.

So, in 1997, both churches voted almost unanimously to combine memberships and sell both churches. In March 1999, the two churches officially combined the congregations.

Along the way, roadblocks popped up. The church leadership would call an all night vigil of prayer and fasting, and would ask God for leading. Within days, something would happen to knock down the roadblock and another door would open.

Thinking they had found a suitable piece of property in North Cenral Mesa, the congregation purchased 3.2 acres for $257,000. Within a year, the City of Mesa informed them that they would be buying half an acre of the new property to widen the streets. That was a crippling decision, because they could not build the 500-seat church and have enough parking to satisfy city code.

In February 2001, Floyd Roe, building committee chair, received a phone call from an Episcopalian church with five acres for sale in northeast Mesa, three blocks from the Adventist pastor's home.

The church negotiated a contract and purchased the five acres for $372,000 without the property ever being listed.

The Mesa Palms Seventh-day Adventist Church broke ground in April 2002 with Tom Bush as the new building committee chair. That fall they began clearing land and laying the foundation.

Darnall, who had been pastoring at Mesa for 12 years, knew that the dream for a new Mesa Palms church was soon to be a reality. They just needed to sell the first property, the purchase of which they considered a terrible mistake, in order to totally finance the project—a 500-seat sanctuary, classrooms, and multipurpose room.

Van Vanden Hueval, the site manager and a member at Mesa Palms, secured a loan from the Arizona Conference in lieu of the sale of the property in order to keep the project going. At the same time, a corporation that builds office buildings decided to purchase the first property. Knowing land value had escalated in three years, the building committee prayed for wisdom to know how much to ask for this property, which was in a very nice residential location.

Mesa members decided to ask for a commercial property price of $590,000. The church's realtor was angry, suggesting they had probably killed the deal with such a high asking price. They told him they believed God wanted them to have the commercial price for the property, even though it was zoned residential. Eight months later, they renegotiated the price, and in June 2004, closed on the sale for $500,000, a gain of more than $315,000 over what they had paid. Members decided that God had led in the purchase of that first property, after all.

The Mesa congregation worshipped in their new church for the first time on Sept. 25, 2004. On Oct. 23, they held a grand opening celebration featuring musician Dallas Holm in a special gospel concert on Saturday night.

"Throughout this building project," explained Darnall, "we learned to trust God and to be patient. God had it all figured out."