Jesus makes the blind to see

A team of six went to Banket, in the Chinhoyi area of Zimbabwe, last weekend, 26^th-28^th October. There were from 60 to 100 people at different times gathered there from various places. The team gave both a seminar for the new people and discipleship for the more established members.

On the Sunday, they were at Mass in the parish church. Michael Sheshe was sitting at the back and a man with a stick asked him to help him find the toilet since he was blind. While they were outside Mike shared with him for a while and asked if he would be happy if he prayed for him. The man agreed and after Mike prayed for him, he was able to see light but could not distinguish anything. However, by the end of Mass, he was able to see clearly and walked around without his stick.

The man said to Mike, ‘You must come home with me and pray for my sick wife’. Mike went with him, together with some other BLCC members who were attending the weekend. The wife, however, refused prayer because she recognised one of them as being from the charismatic group and people in the parish spoke against this group.

The wife’s mother then said, ‘Why don’t you pray for me since I am also blind’. So they prayed for her and she looked out of the window and found she could see but one eye was not seeing well. When they prayed again, she went outside to test her eyes properly and found she could see perfectly well with both eyes. She then walked around saying, ‘Is it true; is it true?’

Such works of God as these go together with preaching the gospel, which they were doing throughout the weekend in giving the seminars and the discipleship teachings.

Bus ride to Gokwe

The bus journey to Nemangwe, in the Gokwe area of Zimbabwe, turned out to be a school of patience. By 6:00 a.m., Thursday 9^th October, it had filled up with passengers at Mbare Musika and set off; it went only as far as Sunningdale, where it joined the queue for diesel. When it had refuelled, after two hours in the queue, it went to the bus garage.

There they found that the bus was in need of repair and the passengers had to transfer to another bus. This other bus had to go first to another garage for the repair of its faulty brakes. Eventually, by 12:00 midday, they were at last on their way to Gokwe.

The team we sent on this journey to Gokwe were Constantine Gomo (leader), Michael Sheshe, Charity, and Cynthia. They sang and prayed while waiting for fuel; at one point, they had their breakfast that they had carried with them, or was it their lunch?

They had boarded the first bus in good time and they had their seats. However, when they had to change buses, other people rushed in and took the seats so they were standing, or somehow managing to sit on their luggage, until the last 40 kilometres of the journey.

When they got seats again, they decided it was time to start ministering, so they preached repentance to the whole bus; Gomo started then Mike, then Charity; Cynthia gave her support where she could.

Charity had to stop in the middle of her word when they arrived at Gokwe Centre, but when they got moving again some were calling out, ‘We want the word’, so she continued.

Gomo then came in again and announced that the gospel is not only the word but also the power of God, and he asked any who were sick to raise their hands and they would pray for them. One or two mocked when he said that, but when some of the passengers claimed they were healed by the prayer, they were silent.

They arrived at Nemangwe at about 7:00 p.m. People were asking them for their addresses and phone numbers and people from two places invited them to come and preach at their places.

The team did point-of-need ministry at Nemangwe and were able to visit one of the places where people from the bus had invited them. There they taught on deliverance and on baptism in the spirit and the Lord worked with them when they ministered. They returned to Harare on Tuesday getting back by evening.

For sure, the journey had been a school of patience, but it also turned out to be a school of ministry.

Hwange ministry

At Nekabandama, the Hwange team found a man who was due for an operation. He had a growth on his back, two or three inches long. They prayed for him in the evening and by the morning, the growth had disappeared.

There was also a woman from AOGA, a Pentecostal church, who visited them because she was having a problem sleeping, with evil spirits troubling her in the house. The team prayed for her and advised her to sprinkle the blood of Jesus, in faith, all over the house.

She did this and slept well afterwards; in the morning, she found a very big frog dead under the bed. It might be an exaggeration to say it was almost as big as a football, but it was big. She asked them to come and get it because she was afraid of it. However, they told her to bring it herself, which she did, and they lit a fire and burned it.

Evil spirits can use things like this, but if you are a born-again, Spirit-filled believer, as this woman was, there is no need to be afraid of them.

Burning is the best way to get rid of contact objects or anything connected with evil spirits.

Harare point-of-need ministry

We had asked at the Sunday Prayer Meeting whether anyone had any problem that needed a visit and we received a short list of names and addresses.

Yesterday, 12^th October, Mrs Pelagia Masuku and Mrs Lucinta Bwanaisa left the Community House early to call on two of these people in one of the high-density suburbs. The first person was not in, but her old mother was there and she was sick, so they prayed for her instead.

She was feeling chest, leg, and back. When they questioned her, they found that it was really a question of being upset that God had let her husband and grandchild die. They shared with her, led her to put her faith and trust in Jesus, and prayed with her, and all the pains disappeared.

They then went to the other person and found her weak and unable to stand up straight. When they started to pray for her, she started to show signs of spirit possession, jerking and twisting and trying to remove their hands.

They continued praying and eventually the spirit seemed to be gone and she was feeling better but they want to go back soon for counselling and further prayer.

It was late by the time they finished and they arrived home after 8:00 p.m.

We have since confirmed that both women they prayed for are now well.

Forty-six, plus one, demons

At a place called Kanyambizi, somewhere between Hwange and Vic Falls, the Hwange team (see previous post) were giving the deliverance seminar. One middle-aged woman manifested demons and Joe demanded to know how many they were. They replied in sign language with the hands, so Joe demanded that they write down the answer. The possessed woman wrote in a book, 46.

Joe asked where they were from and found that some were from different places in Zimbabwe, some were from under the water (njuzu, or mermaid spirits), and others were from other countries.

When Joe asked, what was their intention they replied it was to destroy the woman’s life. When he asked who sent them they replied they would rather not answer that one.

The team delivered the woman of the demons, starting with number 46, and they manifested one by one, using different languages, including English, then left. It took a long time, over two hours.

At the end of this, they found she still had a spirit; it was what we call a religious spirit and it was ‘praying’ in a sort of tongues. So, they delivered her of this one as well and she ended up on the floor, what we call ‘slain in the Spirit’, and remained like this while they went on with the next seminar, which was on baptism in the Spirit.

When they got to the ministry of baptism in the Spirit she sat up; she was baptised in the Spirit together with the others and began to pray in tongues.

She testified the following morning that she had never felt so free in all her life.

The team arranged for her to pray regularly with some leaders of the group so that she could grow strong in the Lord and not revert to her former state.

Generally, it is not a good practice to speak with evil spirits during deliverance ministry. You can easily be led astray and not know what is true and what is not.

Presumably, Joe had his own purpose, or guidance, in doing this. It may have helped them decide to do the ministry starting with the last and most recent one, and working back to the first one that had invited the others in.

This one had tried to remain, first by saying they were 46 instead of 47, and then by trying to disguise itself by imitating prayer in tongues. If it had remained, it could have invited the other spirits back in again.

Return from Hwange

On Saturday afternoon, 6^th October, Mr Shadreck Makore and Constantine Gomo returned from Hwange after spending about four weeks ministering in various places there.

They joined up with Mr Joe Jumpa and started ministry at the house of Joe’s mother at Empumalanga, a suburb of Hwange town. They then went to Number 2 and Number 1 areas in Wankie Colliery. After that, they went to Nekabandaba then to Dete, then to Lubimbi.

From there they came back to Hwange to rest for a day or two before going on to Victoria Falls. From the Falls they went to Kanyambizi then back to Hwange.

On the way back from there, they stayed at Bulawayo for three days at the house of Mr Eric Eluwasi. They visited BLCC members there and Father Muthombeni encouraged them to fix a date for giving the seminar that they should have given earlier in the year.

We were happy to see them back and to see them looking so fit and strong, both physically and spiritually.

They have been telling us many stories of what the Lord has been doing in their ministry; I can just give some of them, from time to time, in posts that follow.

Revival at Makumbe

The leader of the Makumbe area, Mr Cuthbert Mariwo, invited Mr Joseph Zimuto to come with a team and help them with a revival weekend, which they were holding at Manhenga on 28^th-30^th September. He took with him Mr Liberty Zinhara, Admire Mango, Nomore Mahovo, and Alphonse Bhunu.

There was a Life in the Spirit Seminar for a group of 42 new people and they gave discipleship teachings for revival to a group of 75 people. Makumbe Mission has 35 centres that they visit from the mission; 19 of these centres have prayer groups and were represented at this weekend.

Mr Zinhara reported that they found the singing at this place better than we manage in Harare, but the praise was weak and ended too quickly. Therefore, among other teachings, they gave the teaching on How to run a Praise Prayer Meeting, this gave them a fresh start, and the praise was better after that.

One woman was there who had been walking bent over for nine years; they prayed for her and she straightened up. There was also an 87-year-old man who gave a testimony of how he had been baptised in the Spirit and was praying in tongues. His testimony was so inspiring that it was a challenge to the younger people there.

Good Community the Key

The last few weeks we have been struggling to uplift the Sunday Prayer Meeting of BLCC, which we hold in Queens Hotel, Harare.

It is very difficult to keep a prayer meeting going ‘above the line’, that is, above the level needed for a meeting to be genuinely in the Spirit and where people can go away happier than when they came because they have met with God there. In contrast, a meeting will all too easily go down ‘below the line’.

With all our hard work lacking lasting effects, I have come to see this truth. We will only have a good prayer meeting when we have a good community. We have to put our efforts into building community.

I am sure the same will apply to any local church or fellowship; we will only have a good church meeting when it has a basis in a good community.

Aunty Tracy returns from heaven

We were surprised to see Aunty Tracy outside Silveira House when we attended the funeral of Mrs Kambuku. She came running towards me, gave me a big hug, and said, ‘Father, I’ve come back; I’ve come back from heaven.’

Aunty Tracy had been very ill and was dying. She had stayed at the Community House for a time and although it helped her when we prayed for her, she seemed to be getting generally worse and we saw she was on her way. She had then gone to some relatives in Chitungwiza and we lost contact with her. To see her now fit and strong, physically and mentally, was a wonder to us.

She told us she had gone to heaven and seen a street with houses, and further on it was like it was the king’s palace and it was very bright. She had entered different houses on this street and been told that this was not her house; her house was not yet completed. Someone told her to look behind her and when she did, she saw a vision of her son, Peter, sitting alone and forlorn with no one to look after him. She heard a voice saying clearly, ‘You have to go back and look after Peter’.

I asked her if she had been dreaming. She replied, ‘If it were a dream, I would have forgotten it. No, it was not a dream, it was real.’

It is often hard to know where the reality is with spiritual things. She might have gone to heaven, or the outskirts of heaven, or the Holy Spirit may have given her a vision or a meaningful dream, a Holy Spirit dream.

An ordinary dream, however, would not have produced the healing and well-being that we saw in her now.

Aunty Tracy is now telling everyone, ‘Heaven is there; heaven is there’, and I am left wondering whether there are really houses in heaven or whether this is symbolic of some kind of reward. Your house is not yet finished because you have not yet finished the task God has for you on earth. But if it is ‘some kind’ of reward, why should it not be this kind, a real house. Jesus did tell his disciples He was going to prepare a place for them (see John 14: 1-3).

In the end, we can only say that God is the One who knows what it is like in heaven, and as for us, we will see when we get there.

But I wonder, I really wonder, what sort of house…??

Mufakose

Sunday 16th September, Mrs Lucinta Bwanaisa visited Mufakose high-density suburb, where they have started their own Sunday prayer meetings because the high bus fares prevent their coming to the prayer meetings at Queen’s Hotel in town. About 40 people attended and it went well. Melissa gave the teaching; if they were still coming to town she would never have had the chance to give a teaching but in fact she gave a very good teaching. After the meeting they went to someone’s house to pray for her and then to an inter-church service.

Beginning of the BLCC Blog

This weekend, 14th-16th September, we have had a team of two people at Chikwaka, giving discipleship, a team of four at Welstone doing point of need ministry, and a team of three people at Hwange visiting all the places there for whatever ministry is needed.

We have already heard from the Chikwaka team that although the numbers were disappointing, the ministry went well. The team was Mr Liberty Zinhara (leader), and Franciscar Madzingaidzo. We have agreed that next visit in October we must go back to doing point of need ministry and perhaps another Seminar before going on with discipleship.

At Welstone, the team was Mrs Pelagia Masuku (leader), Collen Makeche, Alphonse Bhunu, and Charity Muronzi.

At Hwange, the team are there for three or four weeks; they are Mr Shadreck Makore (leader), Mr Constantine Gomo, and Mr Joe Jumpa. They are doing the rounds of all the BLCC groups in the Hwange area, including Victoria Falls.

Joe Jumpa has left his job with Hwange Game Park and we have asked him to be BLCC Promoter of Ministries in the Hwange area. We have helped him start a project for the support of his family and himself, and we will send him something each month to supplement that project.

In BLCC, we are committed to the work of evangelizing. We are prepared to evangelize in the church, the whole of God’s church, wherever this is still needed and the way is open to us, and in the world.

Mrs Masuku has now come and has reported that at Welstone they visited 17 homes and shared and prayed for people according to their needs as well as for others who came directly to Aunty Patti’s place, including Aunty Patti herself.

To give one example, a woman arrived, dragging herself along, barely able to walk. When her husband had died she had been sent away from her husband’s family in a way that told her they did not want to see her again. When the team prayed for her for this and for her physical condition she began to walk normally and could hardly believe that she was walking about like this.

Another example: at one house they found a man all huddled up; his wife had died and two of his children had died and he was always sick and was expecting to die. The team shared with him and prayed for him and he began to feel better. He even started walking and went off to tell other people what had happened to him; he told them they should receive these people well that had prayed for him.