January 2007

Our dear friend Albert went home to be with the Lord. He died very peacefully, with Ruth his wife and his children around him. We are very fortunate that we met him, we had fellowship with him and Ruth many times. We appreciated his wisdom and courage. We enjoyed his humour and love.

Even at the most difficult moments of Albert's struggle, his family showed incredible faith, dignity, steadfastness. In the last days of his life Albert shared the hospital room with an Arab Muslim, wounded in a shooting clash between Palestinian factions. Ruth and the children shared the gospel with him and made sure that Christian Arabs went to see the wounded man. These are real Kingdom values, true love and true compassion.

1. We greatly enjoyed the service at the Morning Star Church in Sunningdale, the first Sunday of the year. We had reports of healings and some encouraging testimonies from our previous visit. There is something special and fresh in that congregation and we love to minister to them. Their pastor, a dear friend of ours, prayed for us, blessed us and we felt we were sent to Pakistan with all the backing of the Body of Christ. In the afternoon, the main leaders of the Redhill Vineyard, exuding youthfulness and as usual bringing breaths of fresh air, came to see us and did the same. We were sent with a double portion!

2. Our visit to Pakistan was substantially different from the last one. There was much less tension in the air and we found the brethren relaxed and more confident. This year we had no need for armed escorts, except in G.

The school for leaders and pastors was relatively small, about 40 people in K and about 100 in L. However, it has been a very valuable experience. Apart from the very positive reports (and we are waiting for the comments from a Brother, who followed us in the ministry at both locations and is still in Pakistan), we learnt a great deal more about the real needs of Christian leaders, evangelists, pastors, church workers and so on and we had very useful, informative and encouraging exchanges of ideas with the local leaders. On that basis the local leaders are now preparing for us a much longer, and better focused, visit next year.  

In addition to the school, we held two outreaches in M and G, with some remarkable healings at both locations. Especially at the second one, there was a good response to our altar call. There was a young woman, totally covered in black, sitting right in front of me. I could only see her dark brown eyes. We were poles apart and yet I felt I could read all the questions in her heart through those staring eyes, while the man with the machine gun was shouting "amen, alleluia" at the end of every one of my sentences.

At the Sunday services in L we had a mighty visitation of the Holy Spirit, with laughing anointing and people left soaking in the presence of God for a very long time.

It was good to hear first hand reports of our visit last year. This year there were many miracles of healing. For obvious reasons, there is some reticence on the side of the local leaders about sharing too much, especially regarding conversions and baptisms, and we want to respect that. We know what happened, we do not need statistics; we know it was all very good.

We did several house visits, many more than last time, with more opportunities to pray for the sick. A moving experience was a short visit to a family, in a village just outside K. They had a boy of about seven, born totally mute and deaf. He was instantly healed during our outreach and he is now catching up with school. The family has little or nothing, but they wanted to bless us with refreshments and different sorts of gifts. Their overwhelming joy was our reward.

Giancarlo & Catherine