The Lord has been doing powerful things in my life and through my ministry this past year. I have witnessed the moving of the Holy Spirit to bring physical healing and emotional healing, to restore relationships and families, and to set the captives free. I have experienced this in the US and in other nations. I want to take a moment to share with you about some of these different experiences and am including two videos in which I also share some of the story for those who would prefer to view the videos! In brief, I have been blessed to live in Northern Iraq for 3 months in the beginning of the year serving refugees and local believers, I traveled to Italy in the summer to minister to a wonderful group of Charismatic Catholic, and have had the opportunity to minister to many in the United States. I will give more detail to these experiences in the rest of this newsletter!

As I mentioned and as you may know, I had the opportunity to go to N. Iraq with students from our Missions and Prayer School (MAPS) at the Fredericksburg Prayer Furnace (FPF). I have served at FPF since 2009 and currently continue to serve there full-time leading and teaching at MAPS. MAPS is a 2 year school where we train students theologically and practically to serve the purposes of God in the unreached nations of the world (Matthew 24:14). Part of the 2 years of training include actually going to an unreached nation and serving there for 90 days during the 4th semester. I went this year co-leading a group of the 4th semester students along with Leah, another leader at MAPS. Our experience in N. Iraq was unforgettable as the Lord connected us with amazing new friendships and used us to bless so many people’s lives. We witnessed healing occurring regularly through our ministry in different refugee camps and as a result different people decided to surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus! There was one spontaneous gathering I got to be a part of when we ministered in a tent of 4 refugees. We started out with these 4 refugees but God began to manifest His healing power. As people were getting healed the numbers in the tent began to grow and people were coming into the tent pointing to where they needed healing. There were about 16-18 people in addition to the 4 we started with when I had the opportunity to share the Gospel! The wonderful thing is that this is just one of the many testimonies of what we got to witness as God brought hope to those that had none.

Our team also participated in the important ministry of worship and intercession at a prayer room in the city. We dedicated 20 hours each week to worship and prayer and were able to witness the answers to our prayers!

My time in Italy was much shorter than in Iraq and yet the Lord did so much in those 6-7 days. Every day I had the opportunity to minister to individuals and groups as the Lord opened the door. My mom came with me on this trip and one day as we were walking with a couple in downtown Bari they commented about how the husband had some hip problems. I prayed for the man and he was healed. That evening at a worship gathering he shared what the Lord had done for him and many others experienced healing as well! I also had the opportunity to do some sightseeing while I was there which was nice though for me the greater joy was to see the power of God at work in people’s lives! Nothing wrong with vacation, I’m just saying that for me a good vacation is experiencing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. I had gone to Bari, Italy to minister at a retreat and finally the weekend came for the retreat. The first day went well and I shared about the value of intimacy with God through worship and prayer, communion with God. The following day I shared about the 9 gifts/manifestations of the Holy Spirit that are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 starting in verse 7. After sharing on the gifts we took a break for lunch because of the time and followed lunch with a time of prayer for impartation of the Holy Spirit. It was an amazing time as many of the group were young believers, some of them no more than a year of walking with the Lord, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Many of them could not remain standing as the Holy Spirit would pour upon them. There were many more powerful moments in that retreat though I will highlight one more moment here. The last morning of the retreat I shared about God the Father. During this session I shared many keys to freedom as we know the truth about who God is. Many people experienced deep soul healing as truth shone in their hearts. We even witnessed families and leaders being reconciled as the Lord was doing a powerful work of healing. That moment was more than what I could have imagined or that I can presently express in this newsletter. I felt so blessed to have had the opportunity to be a part of such a deep work that God did in that community.

I had the privilege of ministering at Clarksburg House of Prayer in West Virginia in the middle of July. I am still hearing testimonies of what God did during these 3 days of ministry. I preached Friday and Saturday night and on Sunday morning. On Friday night I got a word of knowledge from the Lord and knew that God wanted to heal someone’s right shoulder. It turned out that the woman whose family was hosting me was there that night and she needed healing. I briefly prayed for her right shoulder and as she moved her shoulder she heard a crunching noise that she had never heard before and did not hear again. I found out later that the pain that she had had constantly for 10 years was gone. That night she slept lying on that right shoulder which would have been very difficult to sleep because of the pain, and woke up with no pain or swelling in her arm. Throughout the day the next day she was being surprised as she was finding herself doing what she had been unable to do for 10 years! I felt very welcomed and like I was among family in my time in West Virginia. A man that I had not met before gave me 4 books that were all on a particular topic. The cool thing is that day before I had decided that I would buy some books on that very topic. And much more happened!!!

It’s hard to keep these stories short as they are packed with testimonies of God’s working in people’s lives! In short, the Marked Teen Camp is a camp that our youth ministry at FPF has been doing for the past 5 years. Each year it is very powerful and this year was exceedingly abundantly above what we imagined in many ways. Many young people turned their lives back to God. There were several times where the Holy Spirit poured out on the young people and on anyone that got around what He was doing. On one of these occasions, for 2.5 to 3 hours young people were on the floor crying out to God for their generation and experiencing the power of God coming on them. They were 2 hours late to lunch, that’s how you know that they were experiencing the higher pleasure of knowing God! One morning I taught on healing and before we laid hands on any person several youth had already experienced healing! The youth prayed for one another and they were used by God powerfully to heal each other. What I have shared here does not do justice to all that the Lord did during this camp but this will have to be all for now. I’ll share a video here that recaps some of the experiences at the camp.