When Pastor Alces Dor showed some videos of our teaching on the family during his annual conference in the Turk Islands last year, the people in the congregation asked that he try to get us to come to the islands in person for the next year’s convention. Of course, we accepted the invitation — who wouldn’t be willing to go to a tropical island in the Caribbean to minister! As plans for the conference progressed, the team grew to a total of nine people including one of the worship leaders from Charis Bible College, several friends who have traveled and ministered with us previously and some of Pastor Dor’s friends from Colorado. In addition to the believers who joined us each morning at the church and in the sports arena each evening, we welcomed believers from all the islands in the region who joined us by radio for the full eight days of the conference. In fact, when we had some free time to do souvenir shopping, we met several vendors in the market who knew us because they had been listening to the meetings on the radio while they managed their shops that week.
The title given to the conference was “Pulling Down Strongholds,” based on a course that Peggy teaches at Charis Bible College. When Pastor Dor took this class, he immediately knew that this had to be the focus of the ministry when we came to the islands because so many of the people live in the bondage of old habits, condemnation over past sins, and the consequences of bad choices. This week of ministry proved to be a turning point in the lives of many of the people on the island as they realized that they did not have to live under these oppressing lies of the enemy. Additionally, we saw a number of salvations and many physical healings each night as our team laid hands on those who came up for prayer. One notable miracle was restoration of mobility to the pastor’s mother-in-law’s arms and legs after years of painful suffering. Pastor Dor’s wife had stayed home to care for their newborn baby the night of the healing, but she said that she could tell that something had happened as soon as she heard her mother enter the house. When she got out of bed to see what was happening, her mother was dancing around the living room and praising God for her healing!
Although this was the seventh annual conference for the island, this was the first time that they had invited outsiders to come for the ministry. We learned later that everyone was very nervous about having “white people” come to their meetings. They confessed that they were afraid that we might not fit in with their native culture; however, they also added that they realized as soon as we walked into the church for the first service that we were just part of their same family that they had never met before!
