Michael’s Story  

He came from Iran and stayed for a year in our care, together with his wife and two small children. He was seeking Jesus and had a very obvious conversion and dramatic salvation. His own admission of where he was in his past was heartbreaking for us. He understood the multiplication and ‘the disciple who makes disciples’ task and had a calling to multiply. He was seeking ways to help others. Michael was practical in his offers of assistance and helped us with lots of things, including building, maintenance, and teaching others.

In his early Christian days, he asked to speak to his new country people who were, at that stage, pouring into our church services. Every Sunday was different for us. It was not possible to plan a lot, but to be prepared to be used ‘in season and out of season.’

We recognised and encouraged the leadership qualities in Michael and his wife. We opened opportunities for them to teach and develop others, while praying and fasting for them.

One day, he told us he was returning to the capital city to work with his own people. It was difficult for us to let them leave. By faith, we have sent them on their way, and this blessed result is God’s anyway!

This story of disciples making disciples is a firm confirmation that Covid 19, refugee status, and going back instead of going forward geographically as they initially desired, are not problems for GOD! Praise Him! Ps 148!

Please join us in praying for many more lives to be saved.

A Strong Woman of Prayer

The woman who introduced Roshan to us introduced her as a strong woman of prayer. She relied hugely on Roshan when she had a friend that she was praying for who started to manifest evil spirits. She would find Roshan and say, “Please make me a cup of tea,” and that was Roshan’s cue to pray strongly for the two women in the moment.

Roshan became our number one prayer support and her daughter, Shirine, became our number one fasting and prayer person and storyteller, in the progressive storytelling of the plan of the Creator, starting from the very beginning with each new person.

The woman who introduced us complained to the Father as to why she could not have as many dreams as Roshan. He answered her in a specific dream given to Roshan. Roshan said to her, “the Father said to you in my dream that the answer to your question is that I need dreams, and you don’t. You see, Roshan cannot read, and she has a simpleness about her, which is due to having had two (after Shirine’s father died) abusive husbands who beat her in the head. Once she even had spinal fluid oozing from the base of her skull. But her simple faith makes her a wise powerhouse of prayer.

One example during the time we were friends: Roshan said, “Last Tuesday the Father told me to fast and pray tonight and that I must not leave the house. I had a houseful of guests, so I told my sisters and mother, who were there, ‘God told me to fast and pray tonight.’” They laughed and Roshan proceeded to serve her guests dinner, without herself eating. The next day, Wednesday, she left the house and, close enough that she could clearly see, she saw police apprehending two men and seizing the explosives that they had, before they detonated. She saw the police tying the men’s hands behind them, and she knew why the Father had told her to pray. However, she was not at all surprised at the power of prayer in Jesus’s name. After that, we all prayed that a lot more local people would be moved to fast and pray for their own country. In fact, we started to do teaching on fasting to the friends that we met with regularly, to whom we were teaching the story-telling method.

We were spurred on to do this teaching by another friend who told us the fasting experience of their young guard (unarmed.) He had a very unkind wife. Our friends who told us the story encouraged him to fast and pray for her, which he did. The very next day he saw a total transformation in her. We told our friends this story in our teaching about fasting.

Roshan receives prophetic dreams for others, like ourselves. She dreamt that we would have a granddaughter, which will come true in January. I wondered why the Father thought that I needed this dream. Maybe it was to emphasise another dream in which she saw me on a high tower being washed, and I came down all clean with flowers around and fruitfully effective. Shirine marvelled that the Father gave her a vision, because she, too, does not receive as many dreams as her mother. In her vision she saw herself teaching a certain group of people.

This gives her hope that she may be used by the Father to reach this certain group of very needy people. Actually, a year earlier her mother had dreamt that she saw Shirine teaching this very group. It was at that time that Shirine began to very faithfully learn their language, in preparation.

Shirine needs our prayers because this language learning has been interrupted by Covid 19 and other circumstances, including her and her fiancé being out of work. And please pray for the man her stepfather has engaged her to, that the Father will prepare his heart to be a “Person of Peace,” someone who is open to begin hearing the stories. And pray that the right person will be given to him to read the stories with him, so that he will follow before they are married. Pray that together they will be a spiritual powerhouse, as Shirine and her mother already are.

The Power of Dreams

Shirine’s stepfather has had Jesus come to him in dreams a number of times, but he still does not know that his name is ‘Jesus.’ Because he is a violent man, due to electrodes put on his head by insurgents many years ago, his family are afraid to tell him the name of the man in his dream. They keep fasting and praying for him.

Shirine’s mother, Roshan, is a strong woman of prayer and Jesus gives her a dream once or twice a week. Roshan’s father had a dream which led to both of her parents believing in Jesus shortly before her mother went to be with Jesus permanently. In her father’s dream he saw his daughter crying. Her father told her that the man in white in his dream told her to not cry and that He would take care of her.

Roshan told her father that the man’s name was Jesus.

Her father had previously been eagerly receiving the “Holy Narratives.” It is generally not recommended to tell these stories by phone, but in this case, her parents were so far away, so eager, and so old and unwell, that there was a timing urgency. Sure enough, after the telling of the Birth, and a week later, during the telling of the Baptism, Roshan’s mother had a turn and died soon after. Shirine has never doubted that her grandmother is now with Jesus, because it is she who was telling the stories and her eager grandfather had the mobile on loudspeaker.

But Roshan cried and doubted. So, the Father gave her a dream within a week. She saw her mother sitting in a lush green field surrounded by gorgeous flowers. Her mother said to her, “Go back to your family! I’m happy here!”

We knew that Roshan could have believed without the dream, but were happy to hear about her dream as an encouragement to all of us. And how precious that the Father went the extra mile by giving sight to her faith.

A Beautiful Man

Salmah heard a parable told when she was in primary school.

The parable involved Jesus supplying an old man in the market with gold to take home. For three days in a row, Jesus came to the old man, who was picking up sticks to sell for a living, and gave him a big piece of gold. Each day, the old man lost the gold. On the first day, he lost it in a saltshaker given away by his wife. On the second day, a bird plucked it out of his hand as he walked home. On the third day, it fell out of his pocket and was swallowed by a fish as he bent over the river.

The next day, Jesus came again and asked him, “Why are you still picking up sticks to sell? Where is the gold that I gave you?” The man explained that a fish had swallowed it. This time, Jesus gave him money to buy himself something to eat. He bought a fish, which was the one that had the gold in it. On the way home, he broke a branch off a tree to cook the fish and a bird fell down, which had the gold in it. At home he asked his wife for salt to cook the fish, so she went to the neighbour and borrowed back the saltshaker, which had the gold in it. Five times Jesus blessed the man and provided for his needs, as the man was able to sell all the gold.

Many years passed before Salmah, now a married woman, encountered the parable a second time on Facebook. Salmah didn’t know this at the time, but her facebook encounter coincided with Shirine fasting and praying for her and another lady.

Several months later, Shirine began sharing “Jesus stories” with Salmah, beginning with Creation and moving through the Bible.

As they looked into Psalm 23, Salmah remembered the parable of the gold. She told it to Shirine, connecting it to the Bible stories that had been unfolding for her over the past few months. Both ladies were profoundly touched by the Father’s presence and message in the connection.

Weeks later, as they snatched more sessions with each other in the trauma of events that were crowding Salmah’s life, they came prepared for story number 12, the first of the New Testament! After studying many Old Testament stories, Shirine read to Salmah the awesome birth of Jesus. At the end of the account Salmah said to Shirine, “I know what this is about!” She said,
“Four days ago I had a dream. A man in white clothes was stroking my hair like a father to a child. I said to him, ‘Who are you?’ He said, “You know me, and in four days you will know
who I am.’”

Before Covid 19 happened, Salmah was only able to hear one more story, the baptism of Jesus. Since then, though, she has had Jesus come to her one more time in a dream.

“A beautiful man came in my dream and I said, ‘Who are you?’ He said, “ I am from God and I Always Am. I see that you are very sad and I have come to help you.”

As such, with the difficulties that she has in her life, in her marriage, in finances and in health, we are now able
to say to her to “pray to the Man in your dreams, in His name.”

The second time we said this to her, via unsafe media, she said, “but I am not clean.” All we could say, although she has
not heard every story to the end (and beginning of new life), was, “Ask the man in your dreams to forgive you, in His name, and he will make you clean.”

Since this time, she again had a visit in her dream where the beautiful man told her that he would take care of her and that he would provide another friend to replace myself. I was,
therefore, able to tell her to keep having conversations in the day and in the night with this man, in his name, because she knows his name. She said, “Yes, I know his name.” I said to
her to worship him for his love and power.

I learned this week that Salmah has also told this dream to Shirine and Shirine was able to say to me, in regards to the fulfillment of the dream, “Don’t worry about Salmah. My other friend is already connecting with Salmah and her husband.”

I was “over the moon,” because we have been praying that her husband would be brought into the picture and, together, they would hear the stories and find faith.

It is Salmah and her parents-in-law who speak the language of the people group whom we have been called to reach. This is as much as the story has progressed, as far as we know.

Thailand

In January six families responded to the call of the Holy Spirit and went on a short-term trip to Thailand.

The team’s first engagement was a Drug Rehabilitation Centre that provides a faith-based rehabilitation program for men.

The Centre’s model is based on a family style community with a 1.5 year in-house residential program. Recovering participants pray, study the Bible, fellowship, exercise, perform daily chores and attend Sunday worship. The Word of God cleanses their hearts and that manifests into a transformed lifestyle. Some graduates of the program are called to further equip themselves by attending four-year discipleship training in a small scale Bible college.

We were blessed to help out during our visit, attending devotions, hosting activities, assisting with daily chores such as woodcutting, and building new toilets.

We also spent time at a local Chinese school dedicated to teaching one of the many highland ethnic minority groups who live in the mountains of northern Thailand. The school’s founder, Pastor Paul, was a drug user himself in his young teenage years and by God’s grace, after rehabilitation at the Centre he continued on with his discipleship training.

Through his transformed life, with his wife he returned to his hometown, built the school and set up an orphanage next to his residence. The school helps children from drug abusive families and those who have lost family members due to drug related death or imprisonment. Paul understands these children personally and his heart’s mission is to show them God’s love.

During the trip, God definitely took us into new territory to purposefully realign our perspective. When we read the gospel, it becomes more real. We see Jesus constantly active among the broken. By stepping out into the unknown, we give God the opportunity to show us problems we may never have seen before. Having His perspective on the world’s condition may open our spiritual eyes wider and awaken within us a greater desire to step out of our comfort zone
for God.

What God is doing in a church located in Africa

I would like to share with you what God is doing in a church located in Africa where I traveled to train local missionaries. Located 400 meters away from a Mosque, this church was established from a group of twelve households. When these few folks began to build a church, the surrounding Muslim communities rose against the initiative, bombing the church building and burning down seven houses belonging to local believers. The situation has been horrific, but the believers stood firm and continued sharing their faith to Muslims and the people of other faiths.
The attacks happened years ago, when I was still a Muslim. At the time, I applauded the Muslims and prayed to Allah to curse the believers and to give victory to Muslims. However, in the same year, God encountered me through a dream, which eventually led me to follow Christ after three years of searching for the truth.

In the last 28 years, the number of active members of this church grew to over one thousand and about 98 Muslims who were attending the mosque near to the church decided to follow Christ. The church also planted 27 daughter churches in that region, and the gospel has spread rapidly.

Indeed, victory belongs to God! No one can stop the work of God!

God has given me opportunities to be involved in the work of this church and I have traveled there four times in the last eleven years to train local workers. In my most recent visit about 64 workers came to a training centre and spent three days learning about evangelism and church planting. We had a fruitful time of learning, fellowship and sharing ministry experiences (challenges and opportunities) with the whole group. It has been a time that the workers were so encouraged and renewed in their commitment to serve the Lord.

During the training I was hosted by a family whose heads of the household (the dad and mum) were Muslims and their five sons and two daughters were believers from Muslim background. However, they live together in harmony. We had a communal meal every evening and religious conversation with the whole family. I really enjoyed the fellowship and the time of sharing the gospel with them. The mum showed interest in following Christ, but she is afraid of social pressure from her husband and the Muslim community. Please, remember this family in your prayers.