"I have a company, and I have a heart for God. Can you help me?" Teresa Snow listened in disbelief, wondering if she had heard the unfamiliar voice on the other telephone line correctly.

The voice belonged to Lisa Counts. An e-mail message Teresa had sent caught the business owner's eye. Teresa, a staff member with Priority Associates—Campus Crusade for Christ's ministry to business professionals—offered to help equip people like Lisa with Christian resources. Lisa wanted to know more.

After Teresa hung up the phone, she announced to her fellow staff members, "I don't know where this is going to lead, but we have a live one on our hands." She immediately arranged to meet with Lisa, whom she presented an array of materials. "I talked as fast as I could in an hour," says Teresa.

After their meeting she gushed to the other staff members, "God has dumped somebody special in our lap."

That was the beginning of Lisa's involvement in Priority Associates. Two years later, Lisa still actively participates in Priority Associates, and the ministry has not only changed her, but is changing her business as well.

Lisa co-owns First Air Express, a freight-shipping company in Austin, Texas. When the former high-school cheerleader graduated from college, a local businessman hired her as an account executive for the company. Ten years later the hard-driving executive vice president runs much more than sales, and still takes off to a Mexican orphanage one weekend every three months to nurture abandoned children.

She wants to be married and have children of her own, but in the meantime, Lisa allows God to use her at First Air. For example, she held a lunch outreach in which she paid the speaker and provided food for all the participants. Teresa asked her if this was too much for her. Lisa replied, "It's nothing. This is my ministry. This is where God has put me."

Not only is she willing to invest her money, but also her time. Several weeks after that outreach Lisa felt God prodding her to share her faith with an employee, though she had never before initiated a conversation about the gospel. She went to speak with Nicky Osborne, First Air's human-resources manager. "I would like to share something with you," Lisa said while pulling out the Four Spiritual Laws booklet. Nicky was interested, and Lisa used the booklet to explain that God loves her and offers a plan for her life. Halfway through the booklet, someone called the 32-year-old business owner out of the room. She didn't quite know what to do, so Teresa offered to finish where Lisa left off. Picking up after Law Two—we are separated from God because of our sinfulness—Teresa explained the rest of the message to Nicky, telling her that God sent Jesus as the substitute for sin. Nicky then invited Him to be her Savior.

Lisa's Windex-blue eyes fill with tears as she reflects on that experience. She had begun praying for Nicky months before, when Priority Associates introduced Lighthouses of Prayer, a strategy in which a believer prays for five people for five minutes a day, five days a week.

"I don't have a void in me anymore," says Nicky.

Recently she and Lisa met to discuss Bible-study materials published by Priority Associates. They met in Lisa's office, where a flurry of paperwork had settled temporarily on her desktop.

"It [is] a learning experience for both of us. Lisa had never facilitated [discipleship] before," says Nicky. "And I'm not very familiar with the Old Testament and New Testament, so she explains the difference."

After work that day, Lisa navigated her red Ford Expedition down Austin's Mopac Expressway. Her cellular phone vibrated for the third time in 10 minutes. "This is Lisa," the 32-year-old said as she flipped open the phone, then changed lanes. It was Teresa. "I had a wonderful time with Nicky!" said Lisa, one hand steering the car and the other pressing the black phone to her ear.

Teresa says she often mentors Lisa via the telephone, due to Lisa's hectic schedule. One time the two single women were chatting candidly about relationships with men when Teresa asked Lisa where she was. "I'm in the produce department at the grocery store," the business executive responded.

Teresa encourages Lisa to be courageous for Jesus, and she is. When manager John DePietro, one of First Air's 200 employees, bumped his eye on a file cabinet at work, detaching his retina, Lisa took the initiative to reach out to him. "Lisa called me all the time," he said. "She also started an e-mail prayer system. It feels a lot better than just having someone say, 'I hope you feel better.'" John needed four surgeries, but he knew the office was behind him. He says that Lisa's faith in God has so encouraged him that he and his family returned to church after years of complacency.

	Time to Pray | Lisa Counts (left) meets with all her employees, be they truck drivers or executives. And each week she prays with air-operations manager Mary Shannon(right).

Similarly, Mary Shannon, air-operations administrative manager, says God is using Lisa to mold her. She learned from Lisa that faith isn’t just something personal but can be shared. "I [used to] cling to [the idea of] being an example rather than being bold for Jesus. I most admire Lisa’s openness about what matters to her," says Mary. "She helped point me in a direction I hadn’t been willing to go before. We’re always trying to find a way to reach out to associates, yet being respectful of their own religious choices. I never did that before."

But some employees don’t want anything to do with Jesus. Lisa received one e-mail message from someone declaring that work and faith should remain separate. Lisa remains undaunted. "She doesn’t fear failure," says her father, Lanny Counts. "Even when she was young, she’d try anything."

Lisa was born in 1968 in St. Louis, and moved to Texas as a 2-year-old. Entrepreneurs run in the family. Lisa’s father and brother each own their own business. Her dad also raises cattle and goats on the side. Lisa’s short-lived attempt to work at her dad’s business cinched in her parents’ minds that the younger of their two children was not a businesswoman. "[That she’d go into business for herself] absolutely never ever crossed my mind," says Lanny.

Ironically, his business experiences inspired his daughter. "I wanted to get into sales because my dad is in sales," Lisa says. "I didn’t know it would lead to owning my own business."

Lisa’s success comes at the expense of being connected to others. She finds only a sliver of time to participate with the singles group at her church or to make new friends. But those who do get to know her recognize that she is a woman of character.

"I know if I ask her to do something," says Teresa, "she does it with excellence. If we could have 10 Lisas, we could change Austin."