Omar Olier ministered at my church last Sunday. He is a leader in the Argentine revival who moves strongly in signs and wonders and physical healings. We saw some of those healing miracles in our church service on Sunday morning, March 2.

During the service, Omar prophesied that this healing anointing would remain in our church for the next seven days. So we have been trying to respond to God and the deposit of anointing He left. We are doing our best to discern how God wants us to respond to the deposit He left here. [Our church is participating in an area-wide Sunday School convention on Thursday to Saturday, where many of our leaders are workshop speakers, so we are already committed on those days.] But we have opened the church to pray for the sick on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. (Monday was easy because we already had our monthly healing room scheduled for that night.) In addition, some of our intercessors felt led to come into the sanctuary to pray and seek God from 6 AM to 8 AM daily for the "7 days of the deposit". And some of us have been praying and asking God to extend the time and leave the deposit much longer. (I started praying He would extend it for 70 days instead of 7, but now I am asking for a minimum of 120 days!) Others are praying similar prayers.

Anyhow, here is a little of what God has been doing healing wise...

We have a Christian pre-school on the church property. One of the teachers became sick and was about to go home. The director of the school took her into the sanctuary to pray for her first. God healed her. Instead of going home sick, she went back to the classroom to teach!

On Monday night, 17 people came for healing prayer -- and most of them received a noticeable improvement in their condition. Rodney estimates that about 1/2 of them received 80-100% healing, and the others a lesser degree. Pretty much everyone reported sensing a tangible touch from God. One lady received Christ. I don't know all of the stories of what happened, I only know the ones my little team prayed for.

The man who had his leg grow three inches in service on Sunday came back for more prayer. He was walking without his cane but he still had a fair amount of pain. We prayed for him and God took away most of the pain. We also prayed for some other conditions that were harder to measure.. such as liver damage he had from some of the meds his doctors had put him on. (We saw him again Tuesday night and he reported such a drastic improvement that he could sit cross-legged on his sofa .. he had been unable to bend his knee before Omar originally prayed for him on Sunday. In addition he saw his physical therapist on Tuesday afternoon, who documented a "drastic" improvement and who was stunned by it. Tony is not 100% healed yet, but he is about 90% .. he is only missing two degrees of movement on his leg extension/flexing which is an astonishing and medically documented change.

Another lady who we prayed for on Monday night had stomach pain that went totally away when we prayed for her.

On Tuesday, a "recovery" group meets. They opened their meeting to pray for the sick and had many guests. The Lord did a lot when we prayed for the sick there. I don't know all the stories, but let me share a few neat ones that I do know.

Rodney started with a general prayer over the group before any of us on the prayer team laid hands on any of the people. The Holy Spirit was on one lady (in the front-center of the group) so strongly that it was easy to see. I planned to pray for her first, but Rodney beat me to her and laid his hands on her. He did not pray specifically to rebuke sickness or to command demons to flee, he just continued his general prayer over the group. When he removed his hand from her a few minutes later, she reported that all pain was gone and she had been in substantial pain for a long time.

There was a deaf man, a first time guest and not yet a Christian. Rodney prayed for his ears to open and something powerful happened. The man had hearing aids and could barely hear someone talking loud to him directly in front of him with his hearing aids turned up to their maximum volume. Suddenly he could hear so well he had to turn it down to the lowest setting and he could still hear background noise which he had never heard before. Needless to say, he was very excited.

One lady I prayed for said that she wanted God to heal a cataract in her left eye. I did not realize she was also so near-sighted that she could not read the words to the songs on the overhead transparencies, which are pretty large and easy to read. We prayed a bit and when I did feedback for improvement, she said that she felt heat and that everything around her was much brighter now. Then she told me about the nearsightedness. So I looked around the room for something that looked about the same size as the overhead transparency letters had been from the back of the room. She could read part of it but not all of it (some letters and numbers). SO I prayed some more and then tested her again. She could read all but one of the numbers. The obstruction from the cataract was almost totally gone a well. She said she was glad that God did this because she needed surgery for the cataract but the doctors were afraid to do it because of the diabetes -- when I found out she had diabetes, I suggested we pray for that as well. "Would that be asking God for too much?" she asked. I told her that God would be happy to heal all of her ailments. So we prayed for that as well. Unfortunately, you can't measure improvement on that sort of thing without seeing a doctor, so I don't know what happened with the diabetes. But I think God did something because the Holy Spirit was on her so strongly that she was having problems standing up.

They had one last worship song after the healing prayer ministry time, and after the song was over, the lady came and found me. She was very excited and was crying. She had been able to see and read the transparency and sing and worship along! It was a drastic improvement for her vision wise and she was so excited that she was going to see her optometrist tomorrow to get tested again (her idea, not mine).

There must have been about 30 or 40 people up front for prayer, maybe more. When we finished the healing ministry time, Rodney asked for a show of hands of who was either healed or felt a strong touch of God (heat, tingling, etc). About 2/3 of them raised their hand.

And here is a little of what God has been doing personally in me...

I felt powerfully impacted by Sunday's service and I KNEW I had to participate in the mid-week stuff. This is, of course, a very bad time for me because I have so much to do to get ready for Mozambique (I leave Mar 11), not to mention for the workshop I teach for the Sunday School convention. So I told God this came at a really bad time because I had to get ready for Mozambique. He replied, "No, this is how I am getting you ready for Mozambique!"

There was a lady at church on Sunday morning who had a really bad case of intestinal flu. She left the service during worship because she felt so bad. I followed her out to see if she was ok and that is how I found out about her flu. I offered to pray for her in the parking lot and she was happy to have the prayer, but she still went home. About 3:30 PM on Monday, I started to get her symptoms and spent the next hour in discomfort and most of it on the toilet. I knew that I had about 24 hours of this discomfort to look forward to since I'd caught what the other lady had. I was about to call Mary and tell her that I was too sick to come pray for the sick, and I realized how ludicrous that sounded! I knew that God wanted me to be there to pray, so I went. I was concerned about being contagious, but God told me not to worry about that. I felt absolutely awful and was in noticeable discomfort, but I went. And the instant I walked into the sanctuary, (6:30 PM Monday night) the symptoms immediately vanished and have not been back since!

Tuesday morning I go to a 6 AM prayer meeting for the city of Hayward. At 7 AM we moved our meeting over to the sanctuary to pray. I walked in and went to the spot where Omar had laid hands on me on Sunday, and God's spirit hit me heavily. I was lost in His presence for a while. Then God began speaking to me about a translation system for Spanish speaking people and why it was needed. I felt strongly prompted to go tell Rodney about it, but I did not want to disturb him. I finally got up and "obeyed" the prompting. When I shared what God showed me with Rodney, he said that God had been talking to him about the same thing on Monday night. That was kewl. So I went back to my "spot" and continued to silently worship God. His presence was as strong and tangible as when we are in a service and someone anointed has just prayed for me. I was there for maybe 45 minutes and it was wonderful!

I don't know where God is going with this "visitation" and deposit of anointing, but I am sure enjoying it while it is here. And we are pretty much all praying for God to show us how to respond to what He is doing here in a way that pleases Him and facilitates His plans and goals.

I don't get to go to church today.. I have other commitments I just can't get out of. But I bet God will do some really neat stuff there today as well.