About Us
We are a Christian Bookstore located in downtown Wendell, NC. My husband and I opened Utmost in June of 2021. It had been a long time dream of mine to open a Christian Bookstore, and for years I had been set on that goal. I loved the idea of providing a place where people could obtain Bibles (something becoming increasingly less common) and other resources to help them give their “Utmost” to the Lord. I also loved the idea of spending my days getting to talk to people about Jesus and the Word of God. This was the goal, and it would take a few years and several miracles of God for it to come to fruition. Let me share a few.
I moved to Wendell from Wake Forest in 2016 when I was 25 years old. The housing market in Wendell at that time was still affordable - houses ranged in the low $100,000’s, if you could believe it. So I bought my first house and continued to work at my job as an inventory manager at my brother’s business, Dara Holsters - that had just relocated to Wendell. Throughout this time I prayed and waited on God for an open door to pursue the goal of opening a Christian Bookstore. In the summer of 2017, a building off Main St. came up for sale, and me and my family met with the owner to discuss. At that time I very much lived paycheck to paycheck and really had no business even looking at a commercial property, but God doesn’t care about those sorts of things, so we went and met with the owner anyway. By only what can be described as a miracle and the sure favor of God, the owner favored us and sold it to me - he himself would hold the mortgage, and asked only $5,000 down. I don’t know if you know much about realty or commercial realty specifically, but that just about never happens. But even then, I didn’t have $5,000 myself. My family were just starting their own businesses, still new and young. It took my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and me, all the spare income we had to come up with the $5k. So by the favor of God, the generosity of the previous owner of 30 N Main St, and the generosity of my family - I was one giant step closer to starting Utmost.
Now that I had the building, I still needed to renovate and stock it with inventory - and that again required money I didn't have. So even though I owned the building, I couldn’t really do anything with it. For 5 years, I waited on God to open the next door for me to be able to use the building He had given me for a Christian Bookstore.
In those 5 years, I met my now husband and got married. My husband had also bought his first home prior to us getting together. So when we married, I moved into his house and was able to sell mine. The real estate market in Wendell was beginning to rise, so when we sold my house we made enough money to start the store. However, a couple months before our projected open date, we ran out of money - the cost of inventory stacked up quickly. So we went to the Lord in prayer, and told Him we had no money left. We asked Him to make money come out of nowhere, so that we could finish the store and open.
My husband is an App Developer, and loves all things technology. Back in his early 20’s there was a new thing called, “DogeCoin”, a type of crypto-currency. It was only worth fractions of a penny each, and never amounted to much - until the moment we needed it to. After going to the Lord with our need, DogeCoin all of a sudden became worth a lot more than a fraction of a penny. You can look this up on Google, it’s amazing. For about 1-2 months, in the summer of 2021, DogeCoin’s value skyrocketed. During that spike in value, my husband found his old computer and on it was $15,000 worth of DogeCoin. After we sold it, the value of DogeCoin immediately plummeted back down to fractions of a penny. God made money come out of nowhere. He used what we had and increased it to ‘more than enough’. We finished the store and opened.
And here we are, 2 years later, the business is doing well and increasing. We just opened our second location inside of Painted Tree Raleigh. The Lord has incredibly blessed us and shown us so much favor in both our personal lives and in this store. We have seen the miraculous works of God.
So if there’s anything you’re hoping for - anything you’re waiting on - cry out to Jesus, and wait in expectation. For nothing is impossible for Him.
