On April 2nd we had our first bilingual Healing on the Streets training course.
We had about 50 people attending and the majority had Farsi as their first language. We were fortunate to have some team members who speak both English and Farsi so the translation was shared amongst them.
In the afternoon we went out onto Edgbaston St to pray for passers-by. As the team was very large we divided it into three separate teams. One would give out the leaflets. The other would pray for passers-by as and when required. The third team would go into the church to pray for the teams outside. After a while the teams would rotate to give a chance for everyone to participate in all three activities.
In the feedback of last month we talked about people who keep coming back to HOTS for more prayers. Below is an account of one of those prayers.
The team pray for a lady from Worcester. She wanted prayer by proxy for her mother who has heart problem and her father who has lung cancer. Both parents live in East Timor. The lady also asked the team to pray for her daughter who was doing her SATS exams and her husband who has high blood pressure. At the end of the prayers she said: ‘I came here three years ago and asked you pray for me because I had been diagnosed with cancer. I no longer have cancer and I live in peace’.
- shared how God had healed him during the training when David, who led the training, spoke about praying for people from afar. To demonstrate what he meant, David placed a hand on F’s shoulder speaking against cancer, as if he was standing proxy for a friend. What no one knew was that when F was 17 his brother aged 22 died from blood cancer. F has been fearful ever since. As David prayed for F. he said he felt a warmth and he felt as if a burden lift off his shoulder. He felt peace.
There was someone with a slipped disc, in bad pain. She also said she felt heat as they were being prayed for. The heat continued even after the praying and the pain was gone.
P was amazed and confused about his healing. He had suffered pain in his knee and initially refused prayer. He had been to the doctors who couldn’t do anything. His wife insisted he would go for prayers. Initially there was no difference but then all the pain left. He went to his church the day after the training and testified that the Lord had healed him.
S had pain in his foot. He said the pain in his foot went when he was prayed for in the training.
Two, possibly three people came to faith, one was going to pray when she got home.
At the end of the session, as I was putting things away in the cupboard, two ladies came rushing through the church door. They said they came for prayers outside but they were late. They asked if we would still pray for them though. In fact, just one of them wanted prayer. A team member and myself prayed for her there and then. When we finished, the other lady started telling us her story about coming to HOTS before. Her story was so amazing that I invited her to join in with the team group who was doing the debriefing after the session downstairs in the Training room.
This lady had been prayed for 2 months before. She was really excited to tell us how God had answered our prayers. She had been falsely accused of a serious offense at work and was being taken to court. We had prayed for justice and God’s intervention. She was desperate and didn’t know what to do and then one day out of the blue without much explanation, the police turned up at her door saying they had made a terrible mistake and the case was dropped!
Because of her experience with prayer at HOTS this lady bought her friend for prayer too. She came back to tell of God’s marvelous deeds. She believed that what God did for her, He could do it for her friend too. Testifying God’s deeds is asking him to do them again. Let’s then never stop testifying what God has done.
Blessings
Revd Elsie Blair-Chappell
