Perfect Smile Dental was opened in 2005, one year after we got married. We did not know God then. During the first few years, we faced many challenges. Annie could not handle managing the staff and operations while performing dentistry. Tim was only able to help part-time as he was focusing on his career as a real estate broker at Keller Williams Realty. Our lives revolved around work and we were slaves to it. Even though we were doing well financially, we did not have joy and our marriage was suffering. We started questioning our purpose in life - there had to be more than just working and making money.
At Keller Williams, Tim learned that the priorities in life should be: God, family, then work. He deduced the reason we were not happy was because we put work first, and we had no God in our lives. So in 2007, we started a search for God. Tim grew up Catholic and I was raised Buddhist. We went to different temples to listen to the monks preaching, but we did not understand much and did not find any peace. We tried different churches, but ran into a few “weird” ones. Then, finally, our friends took us to Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View. There we felt God’s peace and the messages made perfect sense to us and were applicable. After three months attending ALCF, God touched our hearts, we responded to the altar call and accepted Christ. We were desperate for a change and we needed God to help us.
God immediately started the transformation in our lives. We had more peace and more joy. He convicted us of sinful habits; we gave it all up. We surrendered all aspects of our lives to Him and asked Him to show us how to run the business His way. He led us to rēp training and went on a venture to Jarkata, Indonesia. We came back and dedicated Perfect Smile Dental to Him, asking Him to use it for His glory. He gave us a vision that it will be a place to help the patients feel better when they leave than when they came in. He also called us to be shepherds to our staff.
For the past three years, we have a fellowship lunch every two weeks to share prayer requests and study Scriptures with our team. Richard Lai, a rēp alumni, has been faithful in helping us to lead the group . Some of them were hesitant to attend at first, but God moved on their hearts. As they join, they are able to witness His miracles and answers to prayer. Their faith in God is strengthened. We pray every morning as a team to ask for God’s presence. Our patients are happier; we also pray for some of them. A few say they feel God’s peace, or something different about this place.
We have applied many principles we learned from rēp to “repurpose” the business. The most impactful one was repurposing the “People.” It started with us as leaders. We no longer look at our staff as employees, we think of them as part of our household. We lead by serving them, encouraging them to grow to their fullest God-given potential. Some of them have come to us for prayers, advice, or even financial help. The transformation in our office would not have happened if it weren’t for God leading us to rēp. And we are grateful that Brett & Lyn Johnson have helped us to expand our thinking and encouraged us to hang onto our calling even when things get tough. Our prayer is that God continues to bless and use rēp to transform many other businesses worldwide for His glory.
On the road to societal transformation - We are so thankful that God had mercy and saved us. God has used our lives as a testimony to draw others to Him. Our friends saw the transformation He did, and are now following the Lord wholeheartedly. A dental colleague in Sacramento also sought for God’s guidance in her dental office.
What’s next? Brett is currently working with us to develop a spiritual-wellness program for our team. Also, God has called us to expand to another location to serve His people and reach the lost. When we opened the new facility, we gave the first day as a “first fruits” by providing free dental care to the families of our employees. Tim shared our empty calendar, void of dental appointments, saying he did not know how God was going to fill the calendar, but he knew God would. Just then someone knocked on the door needing emergency dental care. The journey of impact on our new household members began again.
A Note from Brett Johnson: A while ago I started calling Tim “Father Tim.” Something has changed in his self-perception. He is more at peace and knows that he and Annie can hold a spiritual umbrella over their staff and patients. As the sense of wellbeing among the staff has increased, it has a ripple effect on patients too.