CAVANNA

I met South African James Petrossian in Belo Horizonte airport as we were both flying to Mato Grosso to continue holding crusade meetings in Brazil. James is a bold evangelist with a good anointing and we engaged a man in the airport lounge and prayed for his injured leg. Leaving James, I arrived at Cuiaba airport late on Tuesday afternoon, in readiness for the evening meeting there in the city of Varzea Grande. This was a smaller meeting and we experienced a short power cut during my sermon. In the dark, my interpreter and I lifted our voices and discovered that the Holy Spirit was not short of power, even if we yearned for those cooling fans to start moving again! There were a number of back healings and a lady with bad knees was healed and began running around. My lasting memory of Varzea Grande is the look on the teenagers’ faces as they witnessed a stroke victim receive God’s touch: healed right in front of their eyes. I won’t forget their look of thrill and shock in a hurry – I was pretty stunned myself! One young man committed himself to Jesus as Saviour that night too.

Leaving Cuiaba, I flew again to another city: Campo Grande. It was raining there and reminded me of England. The pastor’s packed in as he came to get me from the airport, and I tried to “bump start” it by pushing the car through Campo Grande’s rainy city streets. Well, I came to serve! I only just made it to the meeting in time. This was again a smaller crowd (maybe two hundred and fifty people) in a Quadrangular Church – a denomination descended from the American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. This was a more performance orientated service – the miracles occurred by calling people onto the platform, and some were “slain in the Spirit”; which was unusual in my experience for Brazil. Sadly, no-one was saved in this meeting, although maybe they were all Christians present.

I left Campo Grande to take the overnight bus to Rondonopolis. The meeting there was wonderful, a little taste of how things had been back in Minas Gerais. There were lots of people healed early in the service. One lady was a rich blessing – she came for prayer for her knees and she was healed at my word of command, but in some shock and disbelief, she almost fainted into her friends’ arms as she realised that a miracle had happened in her body. It encouraged me that even when there is doubt, God can still move! Another man came and asked for a blessing. He was knocked down and began speaking in other tongues, much to the amazement and delight of my interpreter. People in this city began to feel “fire” in their bodies. One girl was thrilled as Jesus healed her painful thigh, while another was cured of a permenant state of dizziness. Two came forward to committ themselves to Christ as Saviour.

The following morning, I was picked up at 5.30am and took a twelve hour journey by bus to Pontes e Lacerda. This journey seemed to go on forever and this was undoubtedly my most fatigued time in Brazil. At Pontes, I literally held on to the pulpit at times, for fear that I was going to faint! But the church was great – a full house, and there must have been around twenty testimonies to healing, largely related to freedom from pain or immobility, with four people responding to the Gospel message too. I was amazed at the numbers of children/young teens who were actively involved in the worship in the service. It was a long way to travel, but there was a fire burning there. There is revival at the uttermost parts of the earth!

Once again, I caught a 5am bus and began another twelve hour journey to my next destination: Lucas do Rio Verde. In this city I saw more back healings than ever before, with no less than nine people saved too! Hallelujah! In this meeting, a little girl was healed of deafness and pain in one of her ears, while many testified to cures from arthritic knees. Others began to experience some partial liberty, their healings not being completed then and there. The meeting concluded long after midnight and I was led outside to join the barbeque party going on outside!

The city of Sorriso was also a blessing. Seventeen people came to know Jesus as their Lord in this large meeting and there were numerous accompanying miracles. I had one more meeting in Mato Grosso and Jesus always saves the best wine until the last! I could barely find the city of Sinop on my Brazil map, but it proved to be a very special place to me. The church was Presbyterian; not normally a large church in the UK, but thisone was in rich blessing. By seven o’clock, the five hundred seater venue was full, with a hundred standing. A large screen was erected outside in the street and a further four hundred people sat on the provided plastic seats to listen to the Word of God. What an amazing Jesus we have! Something between fifty and sixty people came forward for salvation as I made the Gospel call, many of them pouring in from the outside. I had never seen anything like it. Of course, God demonstrated His power to heal once again. A young man, clearly deaf in one ear, received a very obvious miracle and his face beamed with delight as he now had two good ears again! A lady who had suffered terribly with an injured spine (and five surgeries to try to fix it) began to bend. The reality of her miracle proved too much for her and her friends, and they wept together, sobbing with joy. Another lady with poor vision, began to read the church signs without any problem. This was impossible for her before! She joined the twenty to thirty others in sharing testimony to the goodness of Jesus!

Praise God!

November 2007