Yesterday the team headed to a new village, Kantegalamire. It is a very interesting place, indeed. Although it is less than 10 miles from Kalonga, this village of 5,000 is remarkably isolated; in fact it feels like it’s a hundred miles away. I was surprised to discover that the people speak a different language from those in the surrounding towns and villages. This is because Kantegalamire was populated by a nomadic tribe a number of years ago. We found out that we are the first “musungus” (white people) to come in 15 years. The medical clinic that we set up yesterday was the first ever in this community. When we arrived, there was a large crowd waiting outside. Once again, the doctors and nurses reported that they encountered a lot of very sick people. Like the last village and Sango Bay, this has been a very bad year for malaria. There were also many serious stomach problems. While the nurses and doctors saw patients for hour after hour, the prayer team prayed for hundreds.
When we first arrived at Kantegalamire, we all felt a great spiritual heaviness; the atmosphere was oppressive, so before we set up the clinic, we began by worshiping. As the hours went by, the atmosphere became progressively lighter. By the afternoon, the prayer team was seeing person after person healed. (You can watch a number of video testimonies on our Facebook page.) David and I asked to see the town’s water source. We walked down a long path for about ¾ of a mile. Like so many other African communities, the water source was terrible. No wonder our medical team was dealing with so many very sick people. We then sent teams out into the town to set up water filters in strategic locations. While we were walking down a road, someone called us to come to a house to pray for an old man. We discovered that he was blind, deaf and completely lame––he had not been out of his bed once in many years. We began by testing his hearing, and sure enough, he was totally deaf. We prayed for his ears for only a minute or so, and the Lord totally opened them. His wife was overjoyed as she spoke to him and he was able to respond clearly. His body was very emaciated; his thin legs had not been used in years. First we prayed for the Lord’s strength to flow into his body; then I told him to stand. I was expecting to help him to get up and to support him, since it had been so many years without using his legs. Instead, he quickly curled his legs under him and stood up without us even having time to support him. Then he began to walk around the room. His amazed wife was overjoyed. We walked with him to the door and then prayed for his blind eyes. (I asked if he was tired and would like to sit on the bed while we prayed, but he said, no, he would rather keep standing!) After a couple of times of prayer he could see light from his left eye. We prayed a few more times and the light got brighter, but he could still not see shapes. After a while we simply asked Jesus to continue the healing. (When a team came back the next day, he was outside, enjoying his new mobility. He could now make out some shapes, so his healing was continuing.)
There is an interesting addendum to this story. After I went back to the clinic to check on things, the water team continued down the road. They were called over to a house to pray. It turns out the woman needed prayer because she was in extreme financial difficulty. For years she had been paying doctors much of her money to try to find a cure for her father who was blind, deaf, and crippled. You guessed it!! Her father was the man who the Lord had just healed a few minutes earlier. God’s goodness is amazing!
Later in the afternoon, we conducted an outdoor meeting next to the town market. Our translators are great singers and dancers, and before long, there was a crowd of 250-300 people gathered. After preaching, I invited them all to invite Christ into their lives, then to come forward. Over 200 people gathered in front of the rickety platform. Our team prayed for them and many others until after dark. It was a great harvest.
We returned the next day to distribute mosquito nets and more water filters. The prayer team continued to pray as the people kept coming. Blind eyes, deaf ears, fevers, acute pain––all of it was healed. In fact a single team member estimated that she personally saw over 200 people healed that day. By the time we left that village (after another outdoor celebration) about 1,000 children had the protection of anti-malarial mosquito nets, about 200 people had received medical care, and 300 people had a permanent source of safe drinking water. But what might be even more significant, a town that had felt so dark, and was so full of witchcraft, had experienced the Kingdom of God break in. The town felt completely different, with hundreds of new believers and hundreds of people experiencing first-hand the healing power of the Gospel. It was a very special two days.
Add new comment