Cape Town May 2014

Cape Town May 2014

Tania is a mutual friend of Henk and myself. Over the years she is known as somebody who connects people. She moved to Cape Town as the Spirit led her about 5 years ago. She loves Jesus, flows strong as a prophetic evangelist and she is a good friend of the Lord. Somehow, God knows how, we arranged for Henk and I to visit her and minister in the church she serves; Lofdal Church.

Lofdal, we quickly learned has been experiencing revival for the last 50 weeks since Todd Bentley ministered there. Many awesome stories and testimonies were birthed during this time. The congregation is based in Kraaifontein and has amazing projects running. Kraaifontein is not known for its money, and poverty can be seen most places. The church started with head pastor Gustav during the Apartheid years and has faced huge challenges and persecution over the years. But many faithful members that has stood together as a family through thick and thin through the years has shaped this amazing story to what it is today. Except for the church building, they bought a hotel that was meant to be sold as a brothel. Now they host the many international guests that visit them and they provide a place for the poor to stay. Many people from the congregation call this place home. Then there is also a huge piece of land that's being occupied by other members of the church. Here they also have a school, farming projects and a rehab for twenty people! The church is very active within the community they serve and we saw a piece of a picture of how a church could and should look.

Tania picked us up at the airport late afternoon on the 13th of May and took us to a local mall to enjoy dinner and discuss our program for our time in Cape Town. We shared many stories and just enjoyed fellowshipping with her. She is almost a full time missionary serving at the church, as she has no family with her and works for the love of Jesus and the people here, many times for no money at all and surviving with the bare minimum. Still she does this with a great joy! She serves mostly with the children but is active in almost every area of the church, helping where she can. Henk and I were honoured to be given a room of our own in the hotel which the church renovated. It's truly an amazing place!

The first morning we ministered there at the hotel in a meeting mostly attended by the leaders. Henk shared a powerful message with them and God ministered to us all. It was truly special to see how God touched our hearts as we focused again on His love for us. It's all about the first commandment to love Him and we can only love Him because He loves us and we know and experience His love!

After the service we had lunch with few of the leaders. We enjoyed many stories of their congregation and churches in general in Cape Town. They find that the more traditional churches are hungrier and open for what God is doing than the "other" churches who just wants to support their own congregation. It’s sad for me to see the church pride and politics within the body of Christ. Instead of shaping each other and grow and learn from each other, we let pride and our own ministries get in the way. This is not only here in Cape Town, but all over the world. The Lord is rising up a standard in the body that will inhabit the promise He has over His children where we will truly love and serve one another.

In the afternoon we visited the drug rehabilitation centre. One group of people just finished the rehab course and another group was in the process of moving in. So some were on their way out and others in, but they were only about six young men. Henk and I shared a short testimony with them and then they allowed us to pray over them. We prophesied over all of them one by one and prayed God's blessing for them. They said afterwards that they have never seen something like this and were surprised how we got all this information. We could explain to them that God is real and He knows everything about them and He loves them and is absolutely crazy about them. Whilst we prayed many of them got filled with tears in their eyes as God touched their hearts. To minister Jesus like this on a one on one basis was real fun for us and it encouraged us a great deal to minister like this again.

 God is again bringing us back to this basic yet extremely powerful way of ministering one on one. There's millions of Christians, (never mind the lost!) that has never had the honour and privilege to hear the teachings and experience the flow of the Spirit that we consider as a basic and given. God is restoring and has given us a deeper appreciation of the "small basic" things again. Every vision, every Word suddenly has the greatest value again, all because of His everlasting love!

We had a short rest and headed to Stellenbosch to a house church. It was a very nice house with many water features. We discovered only yesterday that this was Henk's brother's house church a while ago but he moved to a town more than two hours drive away and then couldn't attend their services any more.

As we arrived and were greeted and welcomed at the door, Henk's brother and father stood there to greet him; they paid him a surprise visit! This was truly a massive blessing for Henk! We greeted the people and then got escorted to a prayer room at the back of the house where we could press in to Jesus and pray and soak a little bit before the ministering started. It is a really nice room!

There was quite a few people there and we worshipped as the evening started. The worship was powerful and many hungry people sat in the room. Henk preached about the new thing God is busy doing and how does it look. Afterwards we prayed for the people and many got healed. I remember a back pain, headaches and few other things like this got healed. One lady received a diamond necklace from Jesus! 

 

Another lady struggled with severe headaches every time she comes in the presence of God. As we prayed it even shifted in her head. Her husband has prayed numerous times then it goes away only to return later. I sat with her there after the ministering and started to pray with her, taking her to Jesus for help. Jesus removed a huge root from her head and she was healed! He also showed her some amazing things! We then sat down and enjoyed dinner together and just having awesome fellowship. It was a very special group of people just loving Jesus and doing amazing things with Him.

The next morning we had a later start to the day and went to the school late morning. We got to share about the Holy Spirit the Gr R kids. Their about five, six years old and extremely cute! They prayed for each other for healing and they gave their hearts, pains, and hurts to Jesus. I love kids! They are so open to the Spirit! No wonder the Word instructs us to become more like them! The teachers also had a turn and we got to pray and prophesy over them. It was really special to bless them with the love of Christ and prove that He is very much interested in them! One lady even experienced an angel standing behind her and the presence of the Lord just overwhelmed her! Another lady in the office who has been serving in the same church for 16 years also came for prayer. God touched her as well! We then got to pray for her entire family!

In the evening we had a meeting with the young adult small groups. Henk shared about outreaches and how does it look when heaven invades earth when we reach out. Outreach is a lifestyle! Afterwards we prayed with the people for a release of the gifts of the Spirit and a heart for the lost. What made this meeting fun also was one couple and a Swiss guy named Thomas. They were Spirit filled and Holy Spirit crazy! They are radical lovers of Jesus! The couple runs a Bible School mixed with a school of supernatural here in the Cape with great success over the years. Thomas went to Bethel church in the States and then came to Cape Town with the Bethel students. He decided to move here and is teaming up with the guys from Iris Ministries. Those who knows ministry will know that these are two global powerhouse ministries and anyone who has something to do with these two ministries will be totally messed up for Jesus for life! Meaning they will be absolutely crazy for Jesus forever!

What I loved about Thomas was not only his radical love for Jesus, but his easy theology. They are moving to one of the most dangerous areas here in Cape Town in August. He says that he is not a tough guy at all but as they went to this place they realised Jesus shows up, and when they went at night, He shows up even more! So they decided to move there! No plan or even a house yet. Just a desperate hunger to have as much of God as they could possibly get and nothing else matters! He says all this danger talk is just the enemy trying to exalt himself and its demonic. The people there are amazing and Jesus loves them! I love it when people lives a simple easy Gospel like this! Jesus loves the lost and broken hearted!

Friday was our tourist day and Tania and Henk spoiled me and took me to Cape Town. We went to Table Mountain and enjoyed a spectacular view of the city and its harbour. They then took me for a coffee in Camps Bay. Apparently it’s the only affordable thing there! :) . The cold and wet weather also began to disappear and we went to the world famous waterfront for window shopping and lunch. It’s surprising to see the amount of tourists there! I haven’t been here in many years so it was really special for me that they made all this effort to show me Cape Town. This is really special to me as it strengtens relationships and we also have opportunity to appreciate life as a gift from God.

The weekend we were scheduled to minister at Lofdal Church. Experiencing their 50th week of revival. We spoke about it and all of us felt in our hearts that it was time for this thing to go to the next level where people lose their orphan mentality and step into their identity as a son of the most High. What we discovered was that this is the prophetic meaning of the number 50! It was confirmation from God for us. Henk spoke about this during the evening session. Before the session we enjoyed a cup of coffee in a sort of pastors lounge back stage. Then someone escorted us into the service carrying our Bible and stuff for us. I felt like the most VIP person in Cape Town almost! Not something I’m used to, but it is amazing to see how the congregation honour their guests and make them/us feel welcome. After Henk shared his message one guy came forward to give his life to Jesus! We also prayed for many other young people and witnessed how the Lord touched them. One guy got touched before the preaching because of a word of knowledge. God showed Henk someone is struggling with their pancreas and this made his sugar levels unstable. The guy came forward, Henk prayed and God moved! Another guy struggled with his leg for three years. Right there in front of the church he started walking up and down, very uncomfortable and in pain at first but as he walked he got healed and then started to run as he realised more and more that Jesus healed him! Over the 50 weeks many on fire men and women of God ministered here in the revival. The thing is Henk came, ministered in a very calm way and from the heart. It was almost opposite than what they were used too but still they experienced Gods sweet and amazing presence. After the service many stayed and just enjoyed the presence of our awesome Father.

We were supposed to have an outreach the Saturday morning but unfortunately nobody pitched for the event. Most people were at a funeral on the day. But this gave us quality time to pray. We prayed for the church and each other. Tania also showed us her passion for the kids’ ministry. She has awesome puppets and dreams and plans to do with the kids, but just need that financial backing to get her to live her dream. She then took us in to a big room at the back of the church where they apparently have children’s church and the dancing school. We don’t know what was in that room but the moment you step into the room one can feel Gods presence very strongly and as you walk deeper into the room it just becomes stronger! We had fun in there! Just soaking and drinking from Jesus. This kind of set the tone for the day!

We went to a mall to meet another friend of Henk and his pastor. When they arrived the pastor told us about his church. It’s about 30 people strong and consists mostly of musicians. There’s no structure to the church but it is just family in the Lord getting together and worship Jesus with all their hearts. They have experienced stuff in the spirit (with no teaching except from the Spirit) that most Spirit filled people still dream about whilst listening to all the teachings. They value the family and the fellowship (as they call it) supports their people strongly in their marriages and personal lives. Their numbers are small in church terms, but with the level of maturity in this church it is absolutely amazing what these guys have done for the greater Cape Town. They played a huge role in their community by just worshipping God and shifting things in the spirit! We had an amazing lunch with them and all of us felt alive and excited after the meeting. God knows, maybe in the future we can work with them as well as they have a hunger for more of the supernatural and also outreaches...

 

The evening service at Lofdal just added to this Blessed day. Again we went to that presence filled room to pray for the evening service and then joined the powerful worship. Henk ministered on the breath/Spirit of God and how He loves us. The presence of God was really strong and I enjoyed Jesus throughout the service as He ministered to me.

 We then decided that for the ministry we would form a fire tunnel and let the people walk through a line of the ministering team as they pray for them. This is always a recipe for holy chaos! Holy Spirit always does something special with these fire tunnels. People got filled with the Spirit as some laughed, some cried, some just enjoyed Him in their own unique way. Gold dust started appearing on our hands as we prayed for the people! An older guy came to the front. He had a stroke a few years back and it did amazing damage to his body. We prayed with him for a while and he testified that he felt God touching him. His leg got better as well! He also said he saw Jesus and He gave him healing! The presence of the Holy Spirit just kept increasing so we decided to continue ministering! We prayed for people to see Jesus, for people to receive gold teeth, for people who had the nations and missions on their hearts. It was a real special evening! After the meeting we again got to fellowship with the churches leaders and enjoyed dinner with them as we shared ministry stories and just had a good time in His presence.

A very good friend of ours has moved to Durbanville to start a church. He is one of the people who can hear Gods voice the best according to my opinion. A plain Afrikaans boer but he moves extremely powerful in the Spirit. His stories are crazy on how God uses him. We had the privilege to minister in his church for the Sunday morning service. The church is on a wine farm in the mountains overlooking all of Cape Town and its surroundings. It’s a picture that is usually only seen in paintings or exclusive travel magazines. The beauty of creation had us staring in deep appreciation of His marvellous works. Then to realise that He says we are the crown of creation, meaning we are even more beautiful to Him! Jesus loves us!

Henk had many things in his mind on what to share but God kept on putting it on his heart to teach on the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This is always an interesting topic! Even before the service one could feel the anointing and the presence of the Lord. Its an amazing congregation filled with families and a tangible love. Henk ministered and then we got to pray for the people. The presence was just so special and amazing and then to see how God touched the people, was just priceless. These moments just keeps increasing in value and it has a way of just deepening your heart that’s hard to describe. It’s falling more and more in love with our Father and Creator, our precious King. After church we enjoyed lunch with our friend and his family and it was good to see what God is doing through them and in them!

The last service was at Lofdal and the church was rather full. The atmosphere was set up for something awesome. The worship was divine and I saw how we worship and exalt Jesus in the throne room of heaven together with all of heaven. Jesus was high and lifted up; every breath bringing glory to the risen King. It was such a holy atmosphere. I also discovered that holy has nothing to do with a frowning serious face! Jesus is holy and He is extreme!!! Henk saw the Lion of Juda walking the community and marked His territory in the church, claiming what is rightfully His.

The Lion roared and the sound demolished darkness and declared sovereignty over all in the spirit. The atmosphere was so thick with the presence of God that Henk could barely walk or talk during the service as he spoke about Gods glory. Throughout the service we prayed for people but as Gods presence became thicker, people dropped to the ground and got touched and healed by God without anybody touching or praying for them. Joy broke loose and yokes were lifted. Some people call it chaos, God calls it order because He got to sit on the throne and be God. Order is when Jesus is first. How that looks will differ from our perspectives sometimes. I know God is right so I need to change my perspective to fit in with God; not the other way around! 

This is what that order did:

A guy who was a victim of a smash and grab was tortured by fear. He had physical pain because of it. God healed him! A lady suffering from pain because of arthritis now has no more pain. Another lady struggling with lower back pain for 5 years got completely healed! Another got healed in their ankle after 3 years in pain. Another suffered with her back for twenty years with disks and tissue that was damaged or missing. Now that is something of the past as God touched her!

We had an amazing and glorious time in Cape Town. People received us with open arms and hearts and many invited us to come back and even minister in their churches! God did amazing things and it is something I will always treasure in my heart. More importantly, I am more in love with Jesus than I was a week ago and the people who were with us I believe can say the same thing. So in heavens eyes this was a successful outreach! Thank You Jesus for everything!