Our ministry in the Philippines began with a Saturday morning meeting in an exclusive neighborhood where a successful business family had built an addition to their home specifically for holding Christian meetings. After having a life-changing encounter with the Lord when their daughter was miraculously healed, they totally reoriented their business to become a blessing to the kingdom of God. Instead of running the business six days a week, they cut the schedule back to five days and dedicated Saturdays to ministry – including the Bible studies and teaching sessions that they hold at their home. Instead of going straight into the business week every Monday morning, they start with a Bible study time with all the employees. The top-level have a second-tier Bible study in which they read a full chapter of the Bible each day – and are awarded with an all-expense-paid trip to Israel when they complete the entire Bible. In addition, the company has opened a free hospital for people who cannot afford medical care. At an annex to the hospital, the families who come to accompany the patients are given emotional support and spiritual comfort as volunteers share the gospel with them. Their company also has a large literature focus that has distributed over ten million gospel tracts and fifty thousand Bibles. After the owner of the company received the baptism in the Holy Spirit during Peggy’s visit last year, she purchased four hundred copies of Peggy’s book to distribute to women that she encounters through the business and her social contacts.
At the meeting, Delron preached a message in which he asked the people to respond at certain points by reciting a phrase in their native language. After the meeting, a couple came up to him and told him that the wife had had a dream a couple nights before in which she saw two faces – Peggy and Delron! She went on to say that the man in her dream tried to speak the Visayan language – exactly what Delron had tried to do in the sermon. This miraculous encounter set the pace for the rest of our time in the country.
On Sunday morning, our team split up and each of the four team members preached at a different church. Every service was characterized with healings and people being baptized in the Holy Spirit. In the church where Delron preached, an unbelieving woman who came to the church only because of the pastor’s persistence allowed Delron to pray for her and received an instantaneous healing of a chronic back problem. Surprisingly, she still didn’t want to receive salvation. Additional, there were a couple of deliverances from demonic oppression – including one young man who was freed from a homosexual spirit. On Sunday evening, the team ministered together in one church where a number of people were healed, including the pastor who had been suffering for two months with pain and immobility in his one of his shoulders.
On Monday and Tuesday, we sponsored a two-in-one conference in Davao City – with Fred and Delron ministering to the pastors and Peggy and Linda ministering to the ladies. In addition to the participants from the local area, there was a group of thirty young pastors who came from a remote mountain region – a six-hour bus ride away. The meetings were not only intensive training sessions but also times of spiritual impartation. In one of the ladies’ sessions a woman who was scheduled for hip surgery the following week was miraculously healed. One ironic element to this story is that she was not able to afford the operation, and her church had raised money to cover the hospital bill – but God had an even better idea! In the closing meeting, when Delron was asked to give a commission to the delegates, he said that Jesus didn’t give a commission to His disciples without demanding that they be baptized in the Holy Spirit; therefore, he wanted to make sure that the convention delegates were also baptized in the Holy Spirit before he could challenge them to go out to change their world. Suddenly the front of the auditorium was filled with about a hundred of the conference delegates who wanted to be filled with the Spirit – and then Pentecost happened, with scores being slain in the Spirit and all of them receiving the gift of tongues. After the meeting was finally dismissed, Delron met a young man in the church lobby – he was not even part of the conference; he was just stopping by the church for another purpose. But Delron walked up to him and – without even introducing himself – asked, “Do you speak in tongues?” The started young man replied, “No.” Delron’s next question was, “Well, what are you waiting for?” His response was, “The Lord’s time.” The answer came back, “The Lord’s time was AD 33. You are 1984 years late!” At that point, the young man burst into tears and began to fluently flow in a new language. He then confessed that he had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a young child at youth camp but something had happened in his life that made him think that he was no longer worthy of this gift from God, but this chance encounter had proven that idea to be a lie from the enemy. In addition to sharing the Word of God in the sessions, we were able to bless each participant with a free book in their native language – Delron’s So, You Wanna Be a Preacher for the pastors and Peggys’ Women for the Harvest for the ladies. A couple days after the meeting we got a report about a woman who had come to the meeting quite by accident – she had to stop by the church to bring a cell phone to her husband who was working in the sound booth. Just as she walked into the room, Linda spoke out a word of knowledge about a woman with a lump in her breast. She knew that the word was for her because she had been diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer; so, she rushed forward for prayer. By the time she was able to communicate with us a few days later, all her swelling had disappeared and she had received her total healing!
On the morning that we were to leave Davao City to travel overland to Valencia City for the second conference, we awoke to the news that the President of the Philippines had declared martial law for the island of Mindanao due to terrorist activity during the night. Undeterred by the news, we set out for the next meeting and traveled for the full day in total safety – without even encountering a policeman or having to go through a military checkpoint. However, there was one exciting thing that did happen – we met one of the men who was in the meeting when Peggy and Linda were in the Philippines last year. He shared that he had been diagnosed with stage-three cancer but was miraculously healed when they prayed for him. The really exciting part of the story was that he really wasn’t a believer at the time; he had only come to the meeting at the insistence of his daughter and son-in-law. But after the healing, he had truly given himself to the Lord and was now one of the leaders in his church. But the story doesn’t stop there. He was driving a beautiful new car that he had purchased with the money that the insurance had given him for the cancer treatment. Even though he had tried to return the money because he didn’t need the treatments after he was healed, the insurance company said that the money was his legitimate benefit and that he could keep it and use it as he wished! In addition to purchasing the new car, he also used part of the money to build a small structure on his property that he is using to hold Bible studies and gospel meetings with the vision of birthing a church.
The conference in Valencia City drew more than a hundred pastors and key church leaders and about a hundred twenty women including pastors’ wives and church workers. The highlight was when we prayed for the delegates who had never been filled with the Holy Spirit. Forty pastors and nearly one hundred women responded to the call. As we laid hands on them, they all began to speak in tongues and praise God. We ended the conference by giving copies of our books to each delegate.
Upon returning to Davao City, we spend a day ministering in the prisons with services in both the men’s and women’s units. We were surprised to find that the ministry had been allowed to actually construct a pole-barn-type building on the grounds of the men’s prison specifically for their services. But the real surprise came at the women’s prison where we found that one of the inmates was a professional musician who had raised up a top quality choral group who sang for us – a performance that could rival any collegiate chorus or professional choir. Before we left the facility, we extended an invitation for the ladies to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and about forty eagerly responded and were immediately baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to worship the Lord in new languages.
Our final formal ministry in the Philippines was at the “church without walls or doors” – the congregates meets in a restaurant that belongs to one of the members. They have opted to invest their finances in outreach ministries rather to spend it on bricks and mortar for a church building. In addition to the financial decision, they realize that the exposure of meeting out in a public place touches the lives of those who happen to be in the restaurant and overhear their music and preaching. From this single “church without walls and doors” meeting, a number of other congregations have been birthed throughout the city that meet in venues that are open to the public. The fact that the church meeting was in a public venue didn’t hinder the congregation from responding enthusiastically when we called them forward for prayer with the majority of the people rushing forward to receive prayer to be filled with Holy Spirit and to begin to operate in His gifts.
But the ministry didn’t end just because we closed out the last church meeting. At our farewell dinner, we were able to sit with two Christian leaders from the local community who had been at odds with one another and share in their conciliation. One ministry offered to help the other by supplying Bibles for their prison outreach and the two committed to work together to birth of a new approach to reach their community for Jesus!
After our return to the US, we received emailed reports of the continuing revival with those who were in the conferences going back to their homes and bringing many new believers to Christ and the move of the Holy Spirit to their congregations.