Henrietta Mears wanted to be a missionary, but as a child she was told by doctors that she would be blind before thirty which disqualified her from missionary service. She was convinced that God had a plan for her life. In 1928, she became the educational director of the First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood. Three years after her arrival at the church, the Sunday school attendance grew from 400 to 4000. During her tenure, 400 young people entered full-time Christian service—one of whom was Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. Settling in her new job, she discovered that the Sunday school material being taught wasn’t in keeping with her convictions. One lesson said that the Apostle Paul survived the ship wreck at Malta (Acts 27-28) because he had “eaten carrots and was strong.” This shocked Mears, for she knew it was the hand of God that saved Paul and the others. She immediately returned the material to the publisher with an explanation stating that she could not use any lesson that denied the miraculous in Scripture. In that day, sufficient Sunday school material was limited, so she began writing the lessons herself. The lessons grew in such demand, that she and a group of businessmen founded Gospel Light Publications, one of the first publishers in the Christian education field. She dreamed of a youth retreat center. A privately owned resort was on the market for $350,000, a sum much too great for Mears. She called a group of people together to pray. She insisted that they should “dream big whenever God is involved and trust Him for His blessing at the right time. After a miraculous intervention, she purchased the property for an unheard of price of $30,000.