Sitting in his office in Pretoria, Willie Crew opened his inbox to find an email from a friend, Andre Du Plessis, saying he had received a word of knowledge that he felt was for someone in Mozambique. The word was for healing for a woman who suffered terrible pain on the right side of her abdomen. Willie was headed to Mozambique the following week, so he tucked the information away in his mind and moved on to all the tasks awaiting him that day.
Several weeks later, Willie, Chip Carol (an American rancher), and a team from the USA were on their way to Lichinga in northern Mozambique. The heat and dust of the road between the village of Lione and the city made the hour-long drive seem much longer. They were there for two events with churches from the region: a Sunday prayer meeting for unity among the churches—to be held in a stadium—and a four-day conference for pastors and leaders from the whole province as well as the Lake Malawi region. When they arrived, however, they discovered the plan had changed a little bit. Instead of morning services the next day and then the prayer gathering, the local pastors had unusually decided to not hold their own services. Instead, everyone would congregate for a march through town in the morning, ending up in the city centre from where church leaders would lead their congregations to the stadium.
That Sunday morning was as if Jesus had come to town. Around 1,400 people came, many with banners and flags, and the procession was led by the city traffic officers. After an hour marching through the city, we arrived at the stadium where a worship team and dance troupe from the local churches were singing and dancing praises to the Lord. The mayor and two government officials addressed the gathering. “This once forgotten province has suddenly burst onto the spiritual map of Mozambique!”
After three hours of intense prayer led by various pastors for their churches, city, province, and country, a number gave their lives to the Lord. And then Pastor Gamma Pereira made a call for salvation to which a number of people responded. There had been no plan to pray for the sick. Recalling the email, however, Willie asked if there was a woman in the crowd who was suffering from terrible pain on the right side of her abdomen. A well-dressed woman cried out, “It’s me!”, raising her hands in the air to be seen. She hurriedly made her way through the crowd to the stage where the team prayed for her—and the pain disappeared.
She later told the crowd that she had not been without pain for 15 years but was now healed. That God would heal that day unanticipated, but with the healing of this one woman from Maputo, perhaps there were others. And there were. Dozens if not hundreds responded to the call for healing. For the over an hour, each member of the 12-person team prayed one on one with everyone who came forward. Little did they know that the entire morning service was being broadcast live on radio across the province.
Later at lunch, a member of the organizing committee got a call from a someone in the city asking for prayer. The team wondered how someone would even know to ask. It was then they were told about the radio broadcast. The caller had been a listener. They were asking for healing prayer, for their mother who was in a coma and suffering from seizures.
A spirit of death and desperation was palpable in the home when the team arrived. Yet, believing, the team anointed the woman, laid hands on her, and prayed in humble submission to the Word of the Lord. They also prayed for her husband and children, that the Lord would give them strength and joy in the midst of their pain. Willie honestly wondered if she would live to see Monday morning.
The next two days were busy with the pastors’ conference, and Willie and the team were ready to get some much-needed sleep when they returned to their accommodations Tuesday night. There was some justifiable confusion when they were met by two women, but they asked how they could help. The older woman spoke first. She was the mother they had prayed for, the woman in the coma. She had been completely healed and had come to find the team—to give glory to Jesus!
