Prayer Covering

Please keep us in your prayers this week. We will be part of a convention team that will be in services from Thursday – Sunday. This team will include two international visitors who will be the featured speakers. Last year at this convention we had the privilege to see 150 receive the Holy Ghost. The two years before that we had over 200 per year get the Holy Ghost at this convention. We are trusting God once again for a mighty move of the Spirit and are trusting God for many miracles and many souls filled with the Spirit. Please join with us in praying to that end.

Friday Night

Last night we had another English service. We are ding these most weeks and the response has been good. We always seem to have a good move of God and the people come ready to worship. Last night we had between 50 and 60 in attendance and I spoke on the importance of remembering our past. Looking to what God has done for inspiration and faith to help us believe he can do a great work for us today. At the end of the service I prayed a dedication prayer over those who wanted to be a part of the last day harvest.
After the altar call and closing prayer I was touched to find there were four people who stayed in the altar for a half hour after the church doors were all but closed. To be blunt about it, so much worship here, and at home, is emotion driven. When the crowd disperses and the music stops, so does the worship. It moved me to see people so desiring to be used of God that they broke with the cultural norm and really got a hold of God.
As I was walking and praying with these people as they lingered in the altar God began to speak into my heart. He said that the majority of His children live for him pressing towards the mark, the finish line. However, this majority feels the mark is heaven – that is their goal. He then said to me, it is the few, like those at the altar last night, who press for the prize of the high calling which is more then just making it to heaven. God said these few have set their goal at getting to heaven as the person God called and designed them to be. To be cliche, God was reminding me, my goal ought to be nothing less or more then being all that he wants me to be. If we are pliable in his hands, he will use us for great things!
We thank God it was another great Friday night in His house!

False Praise?

Over the weekend, while traveling to service, our driver told us a story. A lady we had interviewed about our nanny position had called him to see if he could get her the job with us. She told him he was so nice, so smart, spoke such good English, etc, etc. He knew she was trying to get on his good side so he would suggest we hire her. He cut her off and said, “Everything you are saying is true, but don’t be trying to put your butter on me!” Of course he meant, “don’t be buttering me up” but “don’t put your butter on me” has a nice ring to it!

My Weekend

Over the past weekend we were able to attend another local church convention. It was a great time in the Lord! We were just outside the city in a large Christian colony. The pastor, who we have visited before, normally has a Sunday crowd of 40-50 people. During the convention we had about 250 in attendance Friday night and over 400 in attendance on Saturday night! God blessed this gathering with his presence! Despite the fact that these people were not very educated in worldly or spiritual matters (most are “Christian” but had never read the Bible or attended church and had certainly never heard of the Holy Ghost) we still had at least 3 receive the Holy Ghost with the Biblical evidence of speaking in other tongues! We also had many miracles happen as people put their faith in Christ. Of the more notable miracles there was a man who had come to church with “cement hands”, very bad arthritis that made it feel like he had his hands immersed in a bucket of wet cement. He had had this condition for many years but when we prayed his joints were loosed and he is now moving his hands like a young man once again! A young lady, about 25 years old, had come to church with a serious eye condition. For 9 years she had lived with an intense pain in her eye which gave her bad headaches and impaired her vision. However, while I was giving my testimony of how God had changed my life, she believed that God could change her life as well. She raised her hands, and without anyone praying for her, she trusted God and was instantly healed. Her vision was restored and the pain was gone! Thank God he is still in the miracle working business and thank God he is still changing lives!

The Secret Revealed

Okay, I know pretty much all of the handful of people who read this blog are already aware of this. However, to fully reveal last week’s secret we had to travel to St Louis last week to be interviewed by the international Foreign Missions Board. They were discussing our application to be upgraded to full intermediate missionary status. Basically, for those of you outside of our organization, this is full recognition of our work and it will allow us to raise support from any where in North America and it will give us some benefits as well. This is a big step for us and we are thankful to all of you who hold us up in prayer. We have tentative approval from the Board and we will find out details of this appointment in the coming weeks, however, it was announced at our General Conference that we have been appointed as missionaries so it seems that all went well with our trip. We are all back on the field now and are doing well. Thanks again for all your support. I kept the purpose of our trip a “secret” just in case things didn’t turn out so well but thank God he directed our path and everything went great.

Back Again

This is just a quick note to say we are back on the field again, everyone is safe but very very tired. I will update you on the details of the trip in a day or so.

Update

For those of you who know where we are: we have arrived safely with no problems at all, it’s been pleasant actually. Do keep us in prayer. For those who don’t know where we are, I’ll tell you next week as we don’t want rumor mills to fly about what is happening in our lives by leaking the details.

A Long Journey Begins

As I write I am sitting in the airport in our city. We are flying out today for a vacation/business trip. I will post a little more about the journey after we return but we are going to be doing a lot of traveling over the next 10 days. Please keep us in prayer for safety and the will of God to be accomplished in our lives.

Results

Last week we had an amazing service. I did a healing meeting just outside the city with one of our young pastors. We had 150 people praying and fasting for the meeting and the results showed the power of prayer! In the service we had many miracles, unfortunately, many were embarrassed to testify because, as the interpreter put it, many women were healed of womanly problems that ought not to be mentioned in public.

However, there were miracles that were okay to testify about. For after the service we prayed over oil and sent it out into the community believing God’s healing power would continue by faith. We received a few reports this week of what happened, including: a young child who had measles was massaged with the oil and as the oil was massaged in to his skin the measles rubbed off like they were put on with a marker! A young lady had a cancer spot on her face and she massaged the oil into her face and watched in the mirror as the cancer spot rubbed off like it was a piece of dirt! One baby boy had been running a deadly fever for 8 days and when the oil was rubbed on his forehead the fever broke immediately! There was also report of a local crippled boy who’s parents sent a neighbor for some oil. They are of another religion and did not dare show themselves publicly trusting in Jesus. However, when they received the oil they massages the oil into their sons legs and he instantly rose to his feet and started walking! Now the parents are going public professing that Jesus healed their son and all the community knows very well that their son had been crippled. Pray for them as this is a dangerous time for non-christians to make public statements like this, but the family is so thankful to Jesus that they just can’t hold it in! Do you remember the last time you felt so good about Jesus you just couldn’t keep him to yourself? We are humbled and grateful God is using us and keeping the promises of his word!

Services

As most of you know, I have a lot on my mind right now, and I admit, it is hindering my blog posting. This morning I felt it only right to take a few minutes and just update you on the events of the last week and I will talk about my distraction a little later in the future.

Monday I had a healing meeting in a small church. The congregation is normally about 30-40 people based on my previous visits. On Monday though, we had a street meeting and over 150 people came! The negative side to large crowds in street meetings is that they are hard to control and the meetings tend to go LONG. I think I was given the pulpit about 10PM. Despite the delays we had a good service. There were about 15 miracles and, by faith, I am sure there were others who noted their blessings after they arrived home.

Last night, Thursday, I had another healing meeting. This was about a ten minute walk from the first meeting, but the church here was much larger. This is the church of our former Assistant General Superintendent who passed away this summer. The new pastor (the son of the former pastor) decided to cancel his Thursday night Bible Study and instead have healing meetings every week. The last bible study that he had, there were about 10 people in attendance. The next week, during the first healing meeting, there were 400 in attendance! Last night I am sure we crossed the 500 mark as there were 400 chairs, 10 benches and a carpet for people to sit on and there were still some standing at the back. We had another powerful night in the Holy Ghost and many were healed of diseases as God did his work.

So, please know, although the posts are slow in coming, the work is going forward!