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Tag Archives: Mozambique
The author
Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.
Rolland Baker Really Likes Fjords
Papa Rolland Baker of Iris Global has seen many amazing things in his life. His wife Heidi has been healed from MS, he has witnessed blind people seeing and deaf people hearing as they’ve ministered to the poor in Mozambique, and his ministry has led to the salvation of thousands of people. But when you look at his Facebook feed, you’ll find something else that totally captivates the heart of this man of God:
Rolland has recently been speaking in Norway, and while we Scandinavians tend to be more fascinated by palm trees and mangos, this Mozambician missionary thinks that mountains and lakes are the real deal:
And did I mention fjords? Rolland likes fjords.
His fascination is so great that he gets some romantic, although sadly not totally accurate, pictures of Norway:
God bless you, papa Rolland. We scandinavians might think that your country is 100 times more fascinating, but we appreciate your appreciation of the North. Now, keep us posted about the next exotic location you’re going to!
Heidi Baker: A Girl Who Changed My Life
This is a segment from Heidi’s message at Awakening Europe in Stockholm, October 2016. She tells about a young Mozambican girl who taught her how to love even one’s most cruel enemies. This is what Christian nonviolence looks like!
Heidi Baker Aims to Build African University the Size of Stanford
Heidi Baker is known to be courageous, ambitious and a bit charisma-crazy. Together with the rest of the Iris Global leadership team they’ve decided to build a whole frickin’ university in Pemba, northern Mozambique. “The Lord said: ‘Build it the size of Standford'” Heidi excitingly says in a recently published video that I’ve included in the clip above. The university will be an amazing contribution to development in the whole region. To support the project, head to Iris Global’s Giving Center and/or include it in your prayers.
At Heidi Baker’s Sunday School, Kids Heal the Lame and Blind
We who are a part of the MennoNerd vlog have been talking about welcoming children into the Kingdom recently, and that reminded me of a clip from Iris Global where Heidi Baker interviews some of the children at Village of Joy in Pemba. It turns out that these kids have prayed for lame and blind people who have been healed. A pretty good Sunday school, in my holy opinion.
Watch the whole Iris Global clip here:
New Podcast from Iris Global
Heidi Baker’s amazing missionary organization Iris Global has recently started a new podcast, called Iris After Hours. It is hosted by Join Nathan Kotzur and Crystalyn Human and its first guest is no other than Heidi herself. She gives a lot of details on how God called her and Rolland to Mozambique and shares, as always, many testimonies about miracles and love to the poor.
To make sure that you catch future episodes of the pod, follow Iris Global’s YouTube channel or search for Iris After Hours on any podcast app.
Aid and Revival in Mueda with Heidi Baker
Yesterday Heidi Baker spoke at a church in Stockholm not far from where I live. I wasn’t aware of her trip until it was too late, but I’m not sad since yesterday was an amazing day for me even without Heidi. Jesus showed Himself to me again just as He did when I just had become a Christian and needed a sign for His presence. It was in my house church as the brothers and sisters prayed for a very important decision I have to make, and I sobbed and praised Him for revealing Himself in this manner for the first time in nine years.
But yeah, Heidi rocks! And her ministry Iris Global have just published two beautiful videos about a recent outreach to the Mueda region in Mozambique. The first one is just mute recordings from the adventure with a powerful and touching worship song on top of it:
In the second one Heidi and Iris staff narrates what actually happened on the outreach. Wells were dug, education was supported, a deaf-mute girl was healed and people were saved. Praise the Lord! (more…)
Candy Gunther Brown on Miracles and Democracy
Candy Gunther Brown if professor of religion at Indiana University and an expert on both the global charismatic movement as well as healing and how it is measured scientifically. As content creator for Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice, I was able to conduct an interview with her which you can read here. An excerpt:
MICAEL GRENHOLM: You edited the anthology Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, which discusses various aspects of this international and rapidly spreading movement. In its final chapter, you write: ”The globalization of divine healing networks fuels the twin engines of supernaturalism and democratization, which together forcefully propel the global expansion of Christianity.” Could you expand on that?
CANDY GUNTHER BROWN: People in the Global North are taking cues from Christians in the Global South who tend to pray more expectantly for healing. Likewise, Christians in the Global South have tended to rely on pastors and leaders to do the praying; they’ve taken cues from the expectation of Christians in the Global North that any believer can pray effectively for healing.
This is a very interesting thought. I’ve often said that the North should give more money to the South in order to fight poverty whereas the South should share revival fires to the North in return, and while I think that Brown agrees with that she points at something more fundamental. Church democracy is great and biblical (1 Cor 14:26) and it’s actually something besides finances that us Northeners are able to share to our brothers and sisters in the Majority World. (more…)
Heidi Baker: The Blind Woman’s Eyes Transformed
Heidi with another woman
Charismactivist apostle of love Heidi Baker recently visited Sid Roth’s show It’s Supernatural, where she shared testimonies about what God has done in her life and among the poor of Mozambique. The following testimony just gripped my heart, it can be heard from 11:30 onwards in the video:
Heidi says:
Every Monday, in Mozambique, I visit my village. It’s just my local village, I like to keep it real – we have 3500 children in our school from there so I like to see their families. And I just sit and hold he poor, spending time loving them…
And on my way back from visiting a mama named Tina, I saw this little, old woman. And she was really poor, you know, her clothes were shredded, and a strange thing was that she was sitting in the sun. And I thought: “Why is this woman sitting in the sun in Mozambique?” It’s hot! At least she should be in the shade.
And I said “What’s your name?” in our local dialect. And she answered me back and said: “I have no name.” And I was undone by that. I thought, how can anyone on earth not be given a name? (more…)
Heidi Baker and Iris Global – an Introduction
In May 1976, a 16-year-old girl called Heidi was kneeling at the altar of a small Pentecostal church at a Choctaw reservation site in Mississippi. She had been saved just two months earlier, and now she was astounded as she suddenly saw a white light coming over her while she heard a voice, audibly, that said “I am calling you to be a minister and a missionary. You are to go to Africa, Asia and England.”
Heidi married Rolland Baker, grandson to the great missionary H.A. Baker, and God took them on an amazing adventure across the world. Today they live in Mozambique and help thousands of orphaned children, planting thousands of churches and witnessing amazing miracles such as blind people seeing, deaf people hearing and dead people coming back to life. I’ve made a video about them and their organization Iris Global which you can watch below:
Heidi and Rolland have inspired me so much in my vision to combine miracles, evangelism and social justice, and I pray that they will continue to make an impact in Mozambique and all across the world for the glory of God.
Surprise Sithole: Food Multiplication
I’ve written several times about Surprise Sithole, the South African apostle who has raised several people from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit and that has heard the external, audible voice of God. He’s a passionate activist and aid worker, and in this video he shares how he has seen multiple multiplications of food in Malawi and Mozambique. It’s certainly some food for thought!
Check out Surprise’s website and the homepage for his ministry Iris Global. You can also watch the full interview I made with him here. Or read his book, Voice in the Night – it’s amazing!
Heidi and Rolland Baker’s Extremely Inspiring Christmas Greeting!
Praise God for Heidi and Rolland Baker! These wonderful missionaries in Mozambique are so passionate about the love of the Father, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit, and their missionary organization Iris Global has experienced glorious revival for the last 20 years. Their Christmas greeting above was published a few days after Christmas (probably because of the amazingly beautiful editing) but who cares about that when the video is a masterpiece when it comes to inspiration, passion and faith?
Heidi shares how 2014 has been a challenge for Iris because of the horrible floods in Mozambique, but she is amazed by how God used countless radical disciples to serve, encourage and relieve the suffering population and bring the Gospel of hope and life. As I’ve written before on this blog, Iris experiences amazing miracles like the blind seeing and the deaf hearing while helping the poor and vulnerable with good, serious development assistance.
Since I’m a monthly donor to Iris I also got a physical Christmas greeting from the Bakers, this postcard with a nice worship CD. The reason they send their supporters worship music is so that their love for Jesus may increase, they say. I love it. They’re just great. God bless them!
The Miracles of Surprise Sithole
Surprise Sithole, to the left, and Francis Shongwe, who claims that Sithole raised him from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit
As you probably know by now, I’m writing a thesis in systematic theology about miracles. A week ago I presented to you my research on how pope Francis views miracles, and now I like to share what Surprise Sithole, pastoral director for Iris Global in southern Africa, thinks about the miraculous. Enjoy!
Surprise Sithole was born in the late 1960’s into an animist family in the small village of Cachote in Mozambique. In his biography Voice in the Night, he writes:
“From the time I was born, my parents hoped I would follow the family tradition and become a witch doctor. […] My childhood was full of strange spiritual experiences and spiritual oppression. This was the only life I knew. […] Did my parents have heal power, or were they charlatans? The answer is both. Much of what they did was trickery, pure and simple. But I also know that they sincerely believed in the spirits, and I saw many strange events for which I have no other explanation than the supernatural. More than once, I found myself floating above the floor as I tried to sleep at night.”
Sithole claims to have heard the voice of God at the age of 15. This voice told him to leave his village, and after wandering in the jungle for two weeks he met a Christian man, Mr. Lukas, who took care of him and taught him how to be a Christian. Lukas said that God had given him a dream where he foresaw Sithole’s arrival. Soon, they received the news of that Sithole’s family had been poisoned back in Cochete. Surprise was the only survivor.
Sithole writes that he then became a missionary, travelling mostly by foot in Mozambique in Malawi to preach the Gospel. He says that on the island of Chikusi, he started to preach in a language he had never studied – Chichewa. People on the island were converting to Christianity when they saw this, Sithole writes, since they knew that he didn’t know the language naturally. He also claims that he still speaks Chichewa, and that his first bible was written in that language.
Iris Outreach in Unidade, Mozambique!
I live to get updates from Iris Global’s YouTube channel. As I’ve written before, Iris combines development assistance and poverty reduction with evangelism and the power of signs and wonders. Just like Jesus and the apostles, that is. This video is from an outreach they made in Unidade, Mozambique. What they do is that they show the Jesus film to the local villagers, they preach the Gospel, they pray that the blind will see and that the deaf will hear, and they help the poor. People are saved, healed and empowered.
My Facebook friend Rosalyne Field is one of Iris’ long term missionaries in Mozambique. She’s posted the wonderful pictures I share with you here, and she often share the joy of spreading the Kingdom in the bush-bush:
Heidi Baker, the Widow and the Love of Jesus
Heidi Baker praying for a deaf woman
Earlier this year, Iris Global in Mozambique reported about the devestating floods that struck Mozambique, leaving hundreds of thousands of poor people in big need. Iris has been working hard ever since to rebuild homes and helping local communities develop, while they are also praying for the sick, preaching the Gospel and even raising the dead. Recently, they publiched a video showing the movement’s leader Heidi Baker buying a bed for a widow called Louisa, whose house has been destroyed in the floods:
It’s very touching to see the genuine care of Heidi and the overflowing joy of Louisa. Earlier this year, Heidi wrote a newsletter saying: (more…)
Glory Report from Iris Global in Mozambique
Iris Global is the best missionary organization I know of – they combine evangelism, poverty reduction and the power of the Holy Spirit, all soaked in worship and passion for Jesus. Last weekend they did an outreach in the “bush bush” (i.e. very rural place) of Mozambique to share the love of God – and it was truly a success. I follow Heidi Baker, the leader of Iris, closely on Facebook and found that she posted these amazing pictures:
“Pointing out scripture to a village chief and his mother. They both came to Jesus that day…..”
“Baptizing people in the ocean this afternoon near a remote village that never had a gospel witness before today…”
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