2019 Asian Relief Medical mission

In an earlier post, I covered the phenomenal prayer results from 2018. I covered methodology in that post and will not cover it in this one. The methods of prayer were the same. In this short section, I am going to recap the 2019 ARMS mission. In the previous year we had an abundance of volunteers. This year the supply for prayer warriors was very small. There were five of us on the prayer team. Pastor Richard was one of the team. He was a local pastor and acted as our main translator. We were able to land a few other translators. We also had a few of the people from other teams stepping in temporarily. We were faced with a few challenges this year. Challenges included extreme heat and humidity, lack of personnel and logistical placement. The miracles were fewer since we were fewer in number. I am going to discuss just a few of the healings I saw take place for the purpose of brevity.

According to my records, the main request for prayer was for blessings on families. This included prayer for health, prosperity (having enough to get by) and happiness. The main prayer that I prayed was an embellished prayer from the Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:23-27). I hit the three main areas of the prayer using it as a guide. Praying blessing over the people, that God would watch over them and cause their house to be lit with the light of God. I also prayed that God would cause their house to be covered with Shalom or the complete peace that only God can bring. Then I would add to it an addendum. I prayed that their cooking pot would never go empty and there would always be enough regardless the number of guests (1 Kings 17:14). This always brought a big smile.

I prayed for many college students or prospective college students for clarity in study and career choices. We prayed for many symptomatic problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, congestion, sick children and entire families, and many, many other similar problems. Tuberculosis was a significant problem. I prayed for several cases. We will never know how all of these prayers were answered.

To my knowledge, every single backache, headache, and miscellaneous muscle pains were instantly healed. Arthritis pain was instantly removed in every case. There was no way to determine if the arthritis was healed or simply relieved. The same goes for the various body aches. The prayer of the team was that when God healed, it would be a permanent healing. We have no way to verify the outcome but hope that the healings of various problems were finalized. I prayed for a few cases of dizziness and confusion that were healed.

Eyesight that I prayed for was healed or drastically improved in 24 of 29 times. There were three remarkable healings were in this category. I prayed for a man who was blind with cataracts. These were noticeable because of the white color of the pupils. They were cleared from being able to visually see the cataract to a normal dark color. They were clear eyes from a visual perspective. The man was excited that he was able to see and read again. One blind person moved from blindness to tolerable eyesight where he was able to read. There was one case where I was able to get a translator for a few minutes. We prayed for several people and she was seeing the miracles. I noticed that she had glasses and asked if her prescription was good. She said, “not so good, prescription is very old”. I prayed for her and her sight was restored to the point that she took her glasses off and on in amazement. She claimed to be able to see perfectly with the glasses now. God did not remove the need for glasses, even though her eyesight was drastically improved.

I prayed for several women who had lumps in their breasts and one that had a mass in her groin area. With these, I had them put both hands over the problem and I gently touched the back of their hand. Then prayed for healing. All the lumps were undetectable after prayer. Believe me, the women were checking well. I was laughing and praising God.

There was one stroke case where a man was barely able to walk. His entire body was stiff and unresponsive. Moving was a chore for him. We prayed for the various areas of the body. I moved my hands from one area to the next. The man walked away, moving normally and without pain.

Asthma was a problem on the sites we visited on this trip. The doctors were giving several nebulizer treatments daily to asthmatic patients. Several patients came in to the prayer room to walk away relieved and breathing freely. We were able to witness that they felt better. Praise to God.

To wrap up this recap, there were two stories that were spectacular. Doc Nesti is an orthopedic surgeon that joined us for the trip. His job was to perform minor surgeries that were deemed necessary. Doc showed up in the prayer room on day 5 with a man who was in extreme pain. He had a growth/tumor under his bicep that was extremely painful. Doc said that the tumor was so incredibly painful that it was difficult to examine it. The man was unable to raise or use his arm. Doc Nesti was in great distress that the tumor was rooted deep into the arm and impossible to operate on in the field. I asked Doc Nesti if he could hang out while we prayed for his patient. This helped on two areas. First, Doc was able to participate in prayer and stretch himself. Secondly, he was able to act as a translator since he spoke Tagalog.

We prayed for the man for a couple of minutes gently touching his arm. I then asked Doc to test the healing and see if there was improvement. After a considerable amount of manipulation, Doc declared the tumor had improved to ten percent. I clarified, ten percent gone, or ten percent left? Doc said, ten percent left. We prayed a little more and the tumor was completely gone. Doc tested the healing by raising the man’s arm completely over his head. No pain. No tumor, it was gone. This doctor was excited. He had never seen a verifiable miracle. God allowed him to take part in one.

The last day of the mission, day six in the field. Doc Nesti sent a runner to find me. I went over to the surgery room to see how I could help him. He had a roughly seventy-year-old woman who was suffering from chronic scoliosis. She was bent over and her neck was twisted to the side. In addition to the scoliosis, she had arthritis in both knees and was barely able to walk. She was in extreme pain. With tears in my eyes, I started touching her back and praying for God to give her pain relief. My prayer was simple. Just relieve the pain for today so that she can have a day free of pain. She had been in pain for many years. I gently straightened her neck and continued to pray for pain relief and restoration. Then I asked the woman to sit down so we could pray for her knees. I laid hands on her knees and prayed for relief from the arthritis. This took maybe three minutes. I did not want to cause the woman pain by capturing her in prayer.

Then I tested the healing. I asked her to please stand up and see if the pain was better. To my surprise, and our amazement she shouted out excitedly “I’m healed!” This was the most dramatic healing on the mission. She started dancing in place standing up with perfect posture. Then ran off laughing, praising God and shouting that she was healed. I was in the prayer room a few minutes later and she entered bringing a friend for prayer. This friend was healed of her body aches. The woman was still dancing and praising God. About a half an hour later I ran into Pastor Nick. He was smiling ear to ear. “Did you see the woman running in circles in the school yard praising God for being healed?” He asked me. I said, let me tell you a story… Then the woman ran home continuing to praise.

Doc Nesti was absolutely amazed. In two days, he had witnessed two major verifiable miracles that he had participated in. Doc went home a changed man. He said prayer was going to become a part of his orthopedic practice from now on. Next year I will not be surprised if we see Doc breaking away to join us in the prayer room. I can’t wait to see what happens.

I can’t really add to the list of methods for prayer mentioned in the 2018 post, since I utilized most of them on the trip. I did notice that my main prayer during healing was that God would bring total shalom (peace) over people’s bodies. I prayed that God would bring healing that would restore right peace and perfect order to their bodies. Every single case that I prayed for included physical touch. I would touch the appropriate area over the clothes, or have the women cover sensitive areas with their hands and then touch the back of their hands with my fingertips. Touch enhanced healing. I also did my best to have a translator translate my prayer so that the person could hear what I was praying. This was most effective. Sometimes when translators were not available, I had to guess through sign language if the prayer was effective. God healed in these cases. But, that is also subject to my interpretation of their broken English and sign language. Often, the answer was a simple smile for healings. They would tell me, “all gone”, or “all better now”, then leave with a smile and blessing.

My brothers in the prayer room saw many miracles of their own. We were so busy being understaffed that we did not keep good records of all the healings. I was told of several lame and crippled people, some wheel-chair bound, who walked away. Many testimonies of the miraculous was being shared. God used every one of us in a mighty way. My testimony is only for my part in the trip. Each of the five other prayer warriors have their own stories and testimonies. What were the numbers? We kept horrible records the first two days, so nothing was recorded. The final four days we prayed for 959 people and there were 269 miraculous healings. God still heals.

We tried one new stategy this year. God put in on our hearts to blow shofars in the neighborhood in order to make some noise. The idea came to my brother Dan who felt that God would draw people in to the sound of the shofar. This worked. That morning we had a small showing up front. After walking the neighborhood for about 45 minutes, we returned to find the campus packed with people. It stayed packed all day.