“My first time teaching! I ended up teaching the introduction and basics of The Elijah Challenge twice. First on Saturday afternoon at a rural church, and then on Sunday afternoon at a church in the town which also invited other churches to attend. [This was in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India.]
The one on Saturday seemed to go alright, but there may have been translation issues (they spoke only a local language) because I wasn’t sure they were understanding and when we went to do a healing it did not succeed. They just wanted for us to heal them instead of getting trained to heal others. Afterwards, though, we had tea at the house of one of the pastors and I found out that his daughter’s hearing was restored at the same time that we were attempting to minister healing. She had been unable to hear from one ear for the past 3 weeks, so I didn’t feel as bad after that.
The next afternoon at the church in the town there were 50 or so people attending the training. I thought I would have just one hour. When we reached the hour mark, the pastor told me to keep going. After about 1 hour 30 minutes it was already dark out so time to wrap up. I handed it over to one of the trained pastors and instructed him to walk the people through it step-by-step, as it was their first time. It got a little crazy, and despite the well-intentioned interference of one of the local (half-trained) pastors who would have had us depart from the teaching, there was much fruit.
Long story short, around 15 people or more were healed and gave testimonies over the microphone. I lost track because the testimonies were not translated to English, but I could sense the excitement on the part of those healed. I was later told that many were healed of pain in various parts of the body, including the stomach, back, legs, arm, shoulder, and 2 or 3 people had demons cast out. Among the healed were some Hindus who had come near the end of my teaching for healing and deliverance. We did not ask for commitments to Christ, but definitely seeds were sown and believers and nonbelievers alike witnessed the power of our God through his disciples.
I pray that God continues to use the trained believers in this town after my departure!”
-Joseph has a Law Degree from the University of Tulsa and has served in the US Army. He was on our India Mission Team in November 2015.
Joseph sipping coconut water straight from the source