Jesus loves the people of Sudan
The nation of Sudan has been on the hearts of our dear friends Heidi and Rolland Baker of Iris Ministries for quite some time. They have held a desire to establish churches there and bring hope to this land of sorrow.
As you know, the Sudanese people have suffered through 21 years of Civil War, enduring massacres, ethnic cleansings, starvation, disease and many other terrible atrocities brought on by the cruelties of war and genocide. 400,000 people have been killed, with many more still perishing.
Khartoum, the capital city, is the seat of power that tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country in 1983. It is well known for its record of hosting militant Islamists in the early 1990s, including Osama bin Laden. Arab militia, financed and commissioned by this government, have turned more than 1.4 million non-Arab Africans into refugees. Many of these survivors have made their way into unforgiving refugee camps.
The Lord brings us together and unites us as a team,
compelling us to go to Sudan. We match calendars
to find the earliest possible date.Last October while at a conference together, Rolland, Heidi, Winnie and I met a young missionary named Marie with revival fire in her bones and Hebrews 11 faith (also known as “Mama Sudan”). Marie helps run a children’s home inside one of Sudan’s largest refugee camps of over a half-million people, just outside Khartoum. God brought three different groups together and united in all of us a vision to reach out to the lost people of Sudan.
Immediately, we began to feel an urgency from the Lord to go. We matched calendars together and came up with our earliest date possible, the last week of January. We began preparations for a three day feeding outreach for the refugees. Time was short, and although this wasn’t planned or budgeted for, we were compelled to go.
To follow is a travel journal from our three day outreach where Rolland Baker, Winnie and I, and Pastor Perry Comas (of Christ the Rock International Church, Boca Raton, FL) and a photographer from his church, Joey Earl were able to minister the love of Jesus. We experienced a wonderful harvest of souls and a life-giving river of healings and miracles.
DAY ONE:
Simply put, Sudan is a field white for the harvest! This door has been opened to the kingdom and the laborers are violently pressing through. May this people behold the fullness of His Finished Work!
Just outside Khartoum is a refugee camp of 600,000 people living in an area of about 40 square miles. Everything is brown. Everywhere you look you only see brown dirt, brown dust or brown mud. The people live in mud dwellings and it is just like a gigantic brown dust bowl. There isn’t a single blade of grass, just barrenness littered with garbage and the bodies of dead bloated animals everywhere. There’s no electricity, no running water, no sewage system. Sometimes it smells like you are in a toilet bowl. It’s filthy.
The only colors that you see are the brilliant clothes that some of the women wear in their African dress – brilliant oranges, yellows, reds or purples. The people here have beautiful smiles, and they are the real beauties, the real treasures of Sudan.
This first day of crusade and feeding we were only able to minister to a crowd of about 1,000 people. It’s hard to count the people in this huge open space, but that would be our guess.
In the midst of all this we preached, we worshiped with joyful praise, and we gave altar calls for salvation and for healing. The Holy Ghost was moving. People were responding. It was incredible! We saw a lot of healings. We prayed for a mute girl, about 17 or 18 years old, and she can now speak for the first time! As the people understood that healings were taking place, they crowded in and pressed around us in gentle but relentless desperation. Our translators stuck by our sides and recorded all of the healings that took place.
So, on our first day of ministry we saw over 300 salvations and as many documented healings. Yet our faith cries "more Lord." Yes, heal the blind, the lame and the diseased. Recreate human hearts by the ten's of thousands. Reveal the Father's Love to a people with no homeland, no fathers and little hope. May they receive the entire Kingdom of the Son of Your Love!
DAY TWO:This refugee camp is huge. Every time we get in here, we get lost. There aren’t any markings or signs or anything, it’s just like a very desolate, very bleak 40 square mile maze.
All of the people here are exiled, displaced, and rejected, living under the shadow of the memories of atrocities without some sort of hope for tomorrow. You could see the battle scars on so many of their faces. They received love from us with a ravenous ferocious hunger.
The camp is populated by over 600,000 black Africans, originating from over 15 major tribes. They are called Internally Displaced Peoples or IDP's. More than half of the people have some sort of a Christian background, meaning that they know something about Jesus. The other half are Muslim.
Ironically, these IDP's actually live closer to the seat of government that tried to destroy them than where the major violence is occurring, which is to the south and the west. They somehow take refuge in Khartoum, which has the watchful eye of the world on it keeping the government accountable.
A lot of Muslims watched us from the periphery yesterday. You see, they simply don’t mix with Christians, and they certainly don’t mix with women. But they definitely need miracles, and so they watched from a distance. You can easily identify them because they dress a little differently.
Today, feeling the love of God and wanting to be healed, the Muslims began drawing in close to the meetings, and were mixing in with the Christians and women. It was marvelous. Everyone all together, in one Holy Ghost mixing pot!
The people are so sweet, they watched us so intently and would try to copy everything that we did. They even tried to laugh like Winnie!
Today was like yesterday, but magnified. Although hard to count – many more showed up, almost 5,000 people. The atmosphere was fantastic; kids were running to meet us. The people are so sweet, they watched us so intently and would try to copy everything that we did. They even tried to laugh like Winnie! The street people went wild when we worshipped, they began jumping wildly and having fun. Because of yesterday’s miracles, people were drawing in quickly. At times we felt like we were completely drowning in a sea of bodies.
After I finished preaching we did a couple of songs, and dancing and joy broke out. I took my violin into a circle of children and said, come on kids, let’s dance! The circle became an instant dancing mob. Sometimes so much dust was in the air it was almost suffocating. Winnie said that at one point she was afraid to breathe in because it would just be dirt going in.
Next, Rolland preached and gave an altar call. We were absolutely thronged with people coming for healing. We somehow broke the religious intimidation yesterday, and all of a sudden the people felt love and the presence of God, and the atmosphere for healing rose even more.
The people drew in even tighter, into a Holy Press to receive from Our Daddy. Obviously, the news of healings and miracles spread quickly. Good News of new hearts, new arms, new legs, speaking mutes, vanishing bodily pain and all sorts of illness under the glorious care of The Anointed One draws a hungry and violent milieu.
In a moment of time the multitudes of hearers became your brothers and sisters as Rolland Baker roared that glorious apostolic proclamation, packing the spiritual genetic power to recreate a continent, called The Gospel.
Then the miracles, I enjoyed my first hands on witness of an eight-year-old boy receiving his eyesight (both eyes!). Perry had the pleasure to witness a once mute boy’s first words, “Jesus.” Drunken healings wherever Winnie appears. Absolute mayhem, too many to name, being crushed by hundreds wanting a point of contact being ever mindful to have moments of worshipful focus on the real power source, Jesus.Many other healings began taking place, broken legs got healed and everything. More and more the crowd pressed in. Everyone came. Mothers with babies, lots of children, grown men crying – someone cares for them. Honestly, there were a few moments where it seemed that you couldn’t move, and that there was no escape. These people have never been loved before and they take your hands and pull on you to pray for them. They pull your clothes, they pull your hair. They pull at all of your fingers and it almost feels like they could break them.
There is a fear of mobbing here; all of the guards have whips and sticks in their hands. This is the complete opposite spirit of what we are all about. The guards are always pushing the people away, and yet we just jump out there in the middle of the people, gathering them around us so that we can touch them. It seemed like every ten minutes, another healing would take place, and the crowd would only mob us more. It was like diving for pearls in a wonderful ocean of bodies. I absolutely loved it! Today’s crowd is so much more aggressive because there are so many more, and they know about the healings. It is wild and almost dangerous, so many people trying to touch us, and the guards just don’t know what to do with us.
The translators were absolutely beside themselves, they were busy chronicling all of these healings, more healings than they’ve ever seen, and yet they were distraught with the intensity of the pressing crowd. Before you know it, they leave us alone to face the last hour or so in the crowd by ourselves, leaving many unreported healings and miracles behind.
By the end of the day, we were just completely tapped out. We returned to the hotel exhausted and grateful. The rawness of this place, both, spiritually and physically, is indescribable. As always and without fail, our cry for “more Lord,” gladly answered by the Holy Ghost.
DAY THREE:
Today was a total human avalanche. Even Rolland had never seen anything like it! The intensity of the need here is excruciating. There are no doctors, nobody to help – we saw so many open wounds, so many deaf people, and so many blind people. There were goiters on the necks of so many women, and there were tumors everywhere.
I got to pray for a 10 year old deaf girl who heard with both ears for the first time. I spoke little syllables like “doo doo” and “joo joo” into her ear and she repeated after me. I would try speaking these syllables in different rhythms and she was able to duplicate them. Her mother and all of the people around me just flipped out and the crowd went wild pulling on my fingers and my hair and my clothes, desperate for more. There were a lot of healings again, a lot of legs got healed. We were literally buried under a pile of bodies frantic for healing. Sometimes we felt claustrophobic when the people mobbed us.
The whole place is like a larger version of the garbage dump in Mozambique – there were miles and miles of nothing but humanity in total filth and trash and chaos and despair.
Marie told us that when the rain starts, it’s the same thing submerged under 3 feet of water and sewage.
We weren’t even in the worst area of the camp.
And yet, the love of God was gushing, and there was no other place I’d rather be.
Remember the Muslims who finally came into the crowd and “mixed” with everyone yesterday? Today, they were in the center of the mosh pit like pressed potatoes! I was grabbing them and hugging them, touching them, and they loved it. In one section, there was a row of lame Muslims. I started massaging one man’s leg and tapping him, and he jumped up healed. I said, “Hallelujah!” and he replied “Hallelujah!”. I said “Praise you Jesus” and he replied “Praise you Jesus” They were so attracted by the love of God and they just needed someone to touch them and squeeze them. I would take their hats and throw them in the air, and put them back on after rubbing their heads.
I got very physical with them and they just loved it. They just needed a hug. I’ve begun to realize that this has become one of my really strong anointings, trade marking the ministry -- the power of a healing hug.
The young girl [healed on the first day], stayed by Winnie’s side the entire time and helped administrate all of the healings from the platform. When she saw that Winnie needed rest, she would stop the crowd and let Winnie lean her head on her shoulder.
Winnie on the other hand stayed on the platform for most of the day. Our friend, the young formerly “mute” girl who was healed on the first day, and her mother, stayed with Winnie the entire time and helped administrate all of the healings. When it was time to pray for people, she would organize the people into groups and help Winnie. Winnie would reach out her hand to the people, and she said that she could feel the power of God just pouring though her. There were so many people, it was impossible to determine which faces belonged to the hands that she was touching, and so Winnie would just look up to the sky and ask the Lord to release His river. Whenever the sweet young girl saw that Winnie needed a rest, she would stop the people and let Winnie sit and rest her head on her shoulder for a little while. It was so profound.
Back at the hotel, we realized that we don’t have any photos of the food or the feedings. We bought food for 60,000 portions, and the food was eaten by the people and bags were given out for them to take home. We slaughtered cows and served meals on a pita type bread that was used as a “plate.” On top of the bread they served beans and lentils and for certain meals, they scooped out the beef. In the mornings, they also offered different spreads for the bread, like sesame and taboule. Each morning, there would be some food and then the service would start. By 3:00 we started to pray for the crowd and then we would feed the people again. No pictures of the food were taken because none of our crew wanted to leave the miracles by going over to where the food was.
We are completely blown away by the bigness of God and all that he was doing. We were submerged in a river of His love and pouring out His healing power. It was tremendous.As we leave, Rolland is staying behind, working together with Marie and the proper officials to see if Iris Ministries can gain permission from the government to establish a work here. There were definitely a few Holy Ghost sweethearts in the ‘state church’ here that he can work with. Please pray that this goes through, it is very important!
In addition, another Iris Ministries evangelist from Mozambique, Felito Utuie, has just flown in to join Rolland, and they are planning to continue meetings this Friday and Saturday in the same field where we were. We are all also hoping that this Mozambican preacher can continue on with the meetings for several weeks.
The word that Jesus heals is out in the camp.
The word that Jesus heals is out in the camp, and Marie has already had about 5 or 6 blind people show up at the children’s center for prayer. Rolland encouraged Marie’s children to spend more time with the Lord and to start preaching and laying hands on the sick... Ha! Ha! The River is here!
Thank you to all of our prayer and financial partners – your intercessions and support accomplished much. Keep lifting this work up, we are believing God for greater things in the Sudan, unprecedented things, the government of God coming to this part of the earth.
Thank you Lord Jesus for your amazing Love and Grace and Faithfulness! It was an honor to serve you here. Fill these precious new treasures daily with your Holy Spirit and teach them about your enormous love for them. Thank you Jesus for your great sacrifice, for with your blood you purchased people from every tribe and tongue to rule and reign in the earth as your Kings and Priests, giving glory to the Father in all things!
CLICK HERE TO READ ROLLAND BAKER of IRIS MINISTRIES REPORT ON THE SUDAN
