In Africa, summer has started.

One of the strange things about growing up white in Africa is that in December many of us seem to suffer from "seasonal dislocation". It is a strange affliction that comes from having cultural and historical roots in the colder climes of the Northern hemisphere. So, as a child I grew accustomed in December to singing about "Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh..." and to festooning our house or classrooms with "holly" despite the fact that I had never seen neither snow nor holly. (Actually there was one Holly, but she didn't seem be one to inspire many songs of Joy) At times the temperatures outside were blistering the tar on the roads whilst we put cotton wool on our Christmas tree to create the right freezing climate indoors. In Zimbabwe at Christmas we maintained many of the customs that our parents and forebears brought with them from Europe, including Eggnog and a large stuffed Turkey dinner which led to a January of unpleasant left over Turkey sandwiches. That was a custom that never should have come to Africa, Turkey still feels like a necessary evil to me, to be endured so that we can get to the presents later. None of which felt appropriate for an African Summer.
However, as time has passed I have come to appreciate the fact that the seasons are different here in Africa, and at the moment despite the global sentiment of pessimism and despair due to the Global war on terror, the global economic downturn etc, I can't help feeling that Africa is somehow coming to summer not heading to winter. As with most things in Africa it is coming slowly, but at least it is coming. Across South Africa I see hopeful signs that a significant national revival is underway, almost daily I hear of churches and Christians having significant breakthroughs and encounters in and with the presence of God. Recently a friend of mine who is very connected in government circles shared about encouraging trends in our political arena. This year I journeyed to Mozambique and saw first hand the power of God sweeping a nation into the Kingdom of God and marvelled to see young people from the world's richest and most resourced nations coming to a nation which is crippled with all the problems that beset Africa, poverty, illiteracy, war, famine, etc coming not just to help but coming to learn from Mozambicans, coming to find hope, because, as cliched as it seems, they could tangibly sense and see God working amongst these third world Christians for whom miracles are a daily reality not a distant literary controversy. God is working in Africa and the spiritual hunger provoked by the offering of the watery gruel of either meaningless hedonistic materialism, or sugary New Age feel good philosophies or the cold left overs of a Christianity that was once alive, hot, intimate and life changing that has dominated the cultural menu for so long is driving a new generation to find a more satisfying diet and many are finding it in Africa!
So, this Christmas I am celebrating the fact that things are getting hotter in Africa, even if in the North and the west it may feel cool. There is one thing we can all be thankful for though this December. The King, and I mean Jesus, not Elvis, is alive and his Kingdom is coming.

Thanks for the ride

My last day in the states was awesome, in many ways it was the culmination of the whole time. Mark and I ministered at Potter's house, the Mission's School of the Arts and The Supernatural. Before we ministered the students all sought God for words for us and ministered to us, and they came LOADED! They were spot on and anointed, then Mark preached a great word on how our Kingdom Identity gives us not only Kingdom authority but Kingdom Access! I was meant to preach after him but when I got up to preach I wanted to start a few small fires to raise expectancy, but things got out of hand! WILDFIRE swept across the class and we just had fun with Dad for the next 75 minutes!

Well as you may have gathered if any of you are out there and are still following my blog, I am home and so the reason for this blog is at an end. All in all my experience in the USA was amazing. God poured out his grace and favour in such an awesome way. However I so enjoyed the experience and the challenge of writing that I have decided to create another blog. If any of you are interested, bored enough, or you are experiencing a downturn in your other forms of entertainment you can find it at http://www.nigel-myfireplace.blogspot.com/

Flying High

I am in seat 15b on United flight 96, listening to Jika the fantastic new Album released by Colin Dembovsky (You can pay me when I get home Col) on the "red-eye" to New York and I have nothing better to do than Blog! On one side Mark Simpson in out cold having taken a sleeping pill, on the other is a guy also fast asleep who is leaning over into my seat space, (he can hardly help it he has large shoulders and a narrow seat) The contradiction of modern technology is a real pain in the you know where. Here I am connected to the whole www but they just cannot seem to invent a airplane seat that does not turn into something the the KGB could have used to extract confessions of mass murder out of innocent nuns living in Siberia! Oh well I suppose you don't really want to hear me moan, but as they say misery likes company! I just finished watching "Julie & Julia "the in flight movie, it is about a woman who becomes a published author after she begins a blog, man sometimes it does seem that God lays it on a little thick even I couldn't miss that encouragement to write! So here I am flying high literally and spiritually!(The guy just put his head on my shoulder, shesh, and he didn't even buy me dinner first, so now I am sitting forward!)
Monday was another fantastic day Jacques, Jenny, Mark and myself were totally spoilt by Dano, Regina, Rob and Michelle. They took us to the Muir Woods, a stand of awesome Redwoods. There is nothing to compare them to in South Africa, they tower over you so high that you seem to lose sight of them. They are so thick that cars can literally pass through the centre of the larger specimens.
Then we went into San Francisco, stopping to do the tourist thing and take pictures at the Golden Gate Bridge, where I came to the realisation that I am majorly under utilizing my camera. It has wonderful functions that I am not using! Got to read that instruction manual, the whole work it out as I go along is not working out all that well! Then we had supper at Bubba Gumps shrimp restaurant, I had "Shrimpers Heaven" washed down with an American beer. Then at about 9 p.m. we dropped two very cool Obies off at the airport for their 10:20 flight, I was having kittens on their behalf!
This trip has been awesome all the way along, we have just experienced favour and blessing at every turn, we have been prayed for by some of the most anointed and incredible people on the planet, been vacked from Baltimore (More Bolts Lord, more!) to Vacaville (zee town of zee Vacking). I shared a little at The Mission on Sunday, and Mark has been sharing the pennies from heaven testimony all over. People here have heard that South Africa is the new Brazil, and they believe it! I am coming home with a truck load of resources that were given to me free in Redding as well as have a ton of books for Debs and the kids.
However this morning was the cherry on the top, we ministered at The Mission's school of Supernatural ministry. It was cool, the fire fell and they all got Hammered!
We are landing, got to go!

Getting Vacked in Vacaville.

The King and the Castle

It will come as no surprise to many of you that we are all getting thoroughly "vacked" in Vacaville! We arrived here on Friday afternoon and it has been fantastic to connect with our friends Dano McCollam (and to meet his family, ) and Rob (aka King Rob I) and Michelle Harris.

Yesterday has got to be one of the most fun days of my life. It felt like God was pouring his love and favour all over us. After an awesome breakfast cooked by Dano, the four of us and Rob and Michelle set out for the famous Napa Valley to do a little sight seeing and wine tasting. Fire coloured vineyards stretch out on either side of the road as we wound our way towards our destination; a wine estate boasting a recently built castle called Castello Di Amorosa, or the Castle of Loving. The Castle itself was awesome and even though it is a modern reproduction it had a very authentic feel to it. We toured the castle and then descended into the cellars where we got to taste some of the famous Californian wines. The sense of the presence of God was amazingly strong as we just enjoyed being together and having fun as he poured his love and blessings onto us. Standing there, sipping a California chardonnay it seemed like the logical thing to do to pour out God's goodness on someone and so we decided to prophesy over the young woman who was serving us. God laid open the dreams of her heart to Mark and I and she was so touched that she almost began to cry and asked for our e-mail addresses so that she could stay in touch. The Chardonnay wasn't bad but the new wine was better! You didn't need to be a prophetic genius to recognise the significance of us standing in the Castle of Loving, surrounded by new wine!

New Wine in the Castle of Loving

As dusk fell we headed in to San Francisco. On our right the horizon looked like a flat black cut out against a peach kissed sky, then as your eyes climbed the arch of the sky the peach washed away to blue, then grey until it landed on the opposite horizon and the grey smudged and blended with blackening hills. We were moving slowly down a crowded eight lane highway. To our left the traffic looked like a river of white light as cars streamed by happy to be escaping the city for the weekend whilst in front of us the tail lights of the vehicles stared back at us with angry inflamed eyes until in the distance they merged to form a red tide sweeping us into the city of saint Francis.Rob and Michelle treated us to supper at Yoshi's, where we had the best Sushi I have ever had. It arrived looking so good I wasn't sure if I should just look at it or eat it. (So I decided to compromise and take a photo- who says you can't have your Sushi and eat it!) This was followed up by a Jazz concert, also at Yoshi's. Jean-Luc Ponty was performing and it was phenomenal. The drummer in particular wowed us!

Yoshi's great food and great Jazz!

This morning we attended the Mission, Dano's church. The worship was glorious in every sense of the word. Strong presence of the Lord and a real atmosphere of freedom and celebration. There had been some confusion over dates and so I did not get to preach, instead an awesome couple Bill and Carol Dew who do a lot of ministry in Brazil and travel with Randy Clark preached it was tremendous! They called up all the South Africans and prophesied over us that the flow would be 12x greater in S.A. than in Brazil! Yeah, I receive that for us ALL!

The Mission, Vacaville

Then we came back to Dano's house to have a braai to celebrate Regina's (Dano's wife) birthday and over the flames of the grill we got prophesied over again by Keith one of the prophetic/apostolic guys in the church here who heads up their second year of of the school of ministry. It was a huge and powerful word, we felt like the well done steaks from the grill by the time Keith was done.

It is not long now till I come home and my thoughts are more and more focused on South Africa. I can clearly see that something new and fresh is coming to and through Africa for the Kingdom and I have been declaring that "South Africa is the New Brazil" in terms of revival and many witness with that statement. In fact a lady came to me in the service and shared how whilst in prayer two months ago the Lord had shown her a vision of a fire breaking out at the base of Africa and burning all the way up the continent and into Europe! We are living in momentous times!

Connecting with Revivalists from all over the World.

I am in the promised land! Yes, we are currently spying out the land of the Buck Star and it is indeed flowing with Mocha and Hot Chocolate. We are returning from the Leadership Development Program Retreat which was a great time of connecting with Pastors and revivalists from all over the world. There were Kiwis, Zimbos, South Africans, Germans, Brits, Australians, Kenyans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Canadians, Texans (they still think they are a separate country) and of course Americans all pressing in to revival culture and crying out for more! It was glorious!

When we arrived at the retreat (it was strange to go straight from the Leadership Advance to the Leadership Development Program Retreat, I mean really which waydo they want us to go;) ) Everyone was sharing testimonies, we heard testimonies of God using adolescent and even younger children powerfully in Honduras to heal the sick and change the hearts of an island community under the leadership of a beautiful missionary couple from USA, to the remarkable story from an Aussie pastor of how God took a man out of a legalistic background, turned his heart to love for Jesus. One day this man invited the pastor to come for a ride in his truck with him whilst he did deliveries. They had a great outward journey, but whilst they were out in the outback far from doctors etc he suddenly dropped dead! The pastor phoned for help, to the intercessors, and the hit the man's corpse in the chest, crying "You will not die!" He broke three of his ribs, ...and raised him from the dead.

One of the most moving moments was when Martin Spreer a pastor from Germany and pastors whose fathers had fought in the second world war prayed together mutually asking for and extending forgiveness for the sins of our nations, and calling Germany back into her prophetic destiny as the "Father's Land". The power and presence of God just seemed to fill the room and many men wept as God poured his loving presence into our midst. Watch Germany, revival is coming!

We are now on our way to Vacaville. (Apparently the name means Cow Town). However I feel a better name would be, Town of Vacking!

Mark and Bill Johnson.

Drinking and getting others Drunk-in the Holy Spirit.

I started the day yesterday attending the "Prophetic Round Table", I knew I was in the right place as soon as I walked in as the chairs were in the shape of a rectangle and there was no table! When I said that to Dano McCollam he just smiled and said "You COULDN'T see the table????" I arrived late, and the only seat left was the one next to Kris Vallotten so once I got over the embarrassment of knowing that the prophet saw me walk in late, I sat next to him trying to SUCK anointing out of the atmosphere :) It was a great meeting!

Three anointed Prophetic ladies!

After that I went to receive prophetic ministry from a team. The team was made up of two adults and one child! Wow, it was incredible! The anointing and the accuracy was so phenomenal. It was so good that when I came to fill out the feed back form that I was concerned that no-one would believe that I was being sincere when I said that the ministry was 100% accurate. It was wonderful to see this 11 year old girl deliver a bold and accurate word and to know that this is what all our children are going to be like. It got me so excited for our December conference, God is going to raise up a company of supernatural children who are going to rock South Africa and the world!

At lunch time we dashed off to see Wendy! Wendy is awesome! In particular the Baconator!

In LOVE @ Wendy's-with the BACONATOR!

Then we dashed back to minister to our friend Deborah and her team at Sound Wisdom, as the sound ministry is called at Bethel. It was an incredible powerful time with people getting whacked all over the office. The people were so eager to drink and God was so eager to pour out his love! It was great to drink with them! Whilst we were praying I looked down at their water cooler and noticed even the water cooler looked happy, it promptly got renamed the wine cooler, and any-one who took a "drink" from it got hammered! It was glorious! I went back today to minister to the rest of the team today and God fell on them there was such an open heaven.

Even zee vater cooler got Vacked!

After lunch Beni Johnson shared on transition and a number of other topics it was tremendous.

It honestly feels like one is permanently trying to drink from a fire hydrant at times. Then after a short break we went to supper where we got to meet with Steve and Wendy Backlund who are the Bethel leaders in charge of the Leader Development Program which we signed up to do this year, we really had such a divine connection, and I went away from supper feeling I had made new friends,

Lots of other things are happening, but this almost brings me up to date, in my next post I will tell you about Mark Simpson preaching in this morning's session, don't miss it, I may even be able to post a video clip.

Overtaken By the blessings

I honestly woke up this morning not knowing which day it was! That is the downside of international travel and great conferences like the Bethel leaders advance. There is so much going on that the Blessings just seem to run into each other. So I am going to give a synopsis of the last 3 days to try valiantly to catch up.

Sunday

It is not every day that you get to lead a fighter pilot, doctor, future astronaut and governor to Christ, but that is what happened on Sunday! On the flight across from the Baltimore to San Francisco Mark Simpson and I found ourselves seated next to one of the most accomplished men I have ever met. With grey hair, blue eyes and an intelligent face he seemed like Hollywood type casting. The moment we sat down we introduced ourselves and we never stopped talking the whole flight. Our topics ranged through American politics, the wars they are involved in Mr. Obama, the Nobel peace prize, history, philosophy, the free masons, religion, marriage & fidelity, books, leadership, the future, his family and finally we talked about salvation. Tom* flew A-10s for the air force and had already done a few tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he had also served in 25 other countries.You can imagine Mark and I had to deal with more than our fair share of jealousy as he described one day when he got to fly from Kuwait over to the Med, over Greece, Italy take a left turn then over Egypt and North Africa viewing the whole sphere of ancient history including the sphinx and the pyramids from the solitude of his fighters canopy! As we spoke of what he has already done and his plans to enrol for Astronaut training school and his desire to enter politics when he leaves the military we all realised that God had put us together for a reason. That reason soon became clear as we talked about salvation and peace with God. 20 minutes before our plane landed God turned the conversation towards home and Tom* gave his life to Christ! It was such an exciting day!

Monday

We spent most of the day resting and just trying to catch up on some sleep. Extradition was at 3 p.m. so we went off to Bethel full of faith and expectation and almost immediately run into a solid wall of..favour! I was standing in the queue to register and to my delight I saw Deborah Steven's one of the staff members here at Bethel who is a walking miracle. She appears to be permanently vacked, and as a result is always smiling or laughing. She came over to me, pulled me out of the queue and proceeded to organise priority seating for me and our entire group, introduced me to Danny Silk who was finalizing a power point presentation for later and then took me to the front of the line got me registered and signed up for the prophetic ministry on Tuesday Morning! It was like getting hit by a loving whirlwind! Then Deborah said good bye, went off to organize something getting several people vacked who were blessed enough to find themselves in her joy-filled flight path! So I decided to go over to HeBrews, Bethel's coffee shop I was waiting to get my coffee when a guy next to me asked where I was from and when I told him I was from South Africa he got excited and said to me "South Africa! I am going to South Africa in September with Dano McCollam!" With a smile I asked him "Do you know where you are going? To my church!" We had cup of coffee together and had a great connection!" I even ended up prophesying over his wife. They are Patrick and Tricia Vandenburg Senior Pastors of Father's House Church. He has written a book called "A Knock on the Door" the story of his life how this ex-con became the evidently joyful man he is today! He gave me a copy!

The conference started with awesome praise and worship, followed by one of the best teachings I have ever heard on the 5-fold ministry and apostolic Government by Danny Silk. Well I am running out of time now, the gentle rumblings from out of the darkness have stopped informing me that my room mate is awake, It is time for another day in the blessing zone.

Attacked By Tiggerrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In our children's stories we often encounter metaphorical places which point to our in-build awareness that there is another place, a home to which we long to return. Alice had her "wonderland" that she fell into as she tumbled down the rabbit hole in her pursuit of that harried hare, Peter Pan was the most famous citizen of "Neverland" before Micheal Jackson upstaged him, and of course many of us grew up romping through the Hundred acre wood with Winnie the Pooh and his cohort of playful friends. Sadly though for most of us once we become adults we seem to lose the way home to these fantastic realms and are forced to "grow up" and keep our "feet on the ground". However there are people who seem to manage to retain this wonderful childlike ability to live in two realms at once, a gift I firmly believe God wants us to cultivate. Three days ago I was "attacked" by one of them, Roland Baker, aka "Tigger".

Although Roland did not speak for long at the conference his life was eloquently shouting throughout the whole conference. Just four months ago most people had abandoned hope for Roland he was suffering from an awful form of dementia which left him completely incapacitated, he did not know his name, could not dress himself, or take care of himself and had to have 24 hour care. There seemed to be no hope and his family were summoned home to say good-bye because the overwhelming medical opinion was that Roland was about to move in to the heavenly mansion that he and Heidi have built over a life time. That was four months ago, before God healed him! Today he is healed and bursting with love, joy and mischief! It was impossible not to notice his playful delight as he bounded about the conference getting anyone who came within range "vacked".It seemed like a small whirlwind swept through the crowd as Roland pounced on people and prayed for them. The power of God left people strewn in joyful bundles all round him and Roland would bounce Tigger fashion to find someone else to attack with the love and joy of the Holy Spirit. Watching was fun, experiencing this attack was awesome.

I went to the altar on the second day of the conference to see if I could get Georgian Banov and his wife Winnie (Hurricane Winnie) to pray for me when Tigger appeared and started wrecking the altar call. I positioned myself directly in his flight path and soon found myself in his sights and I was not disappointed. Roland bounded over to me, (this is not writer's hyperbole, when Roland begins to pray for people he bounces) and laid hand on me saying "God give him more than he can contain" Glory swept over me like an electric current jolting me from head to foot until I was barking out uncontainable laughter. He prayed for me several times, as I kept going back for more, after all he said give him more than he can contain! It was great but more was to come.

The next day, Saturday, I bumped into Roland outside my hotel and I went up to thank him for who he is and for praying for me and to explain I could still contain more ;). Then we went to the afternoon meeting at which Georgian Banov was speaking. God just poured out his blessings on me that afternoon! On the bus over I was given a free T-shirt, Georgian gave me a CD because I was from Africa, then he asked all the pastors to stand to receive prayer. I stood expectant, my eyes on Georgian but I was being stalked by that spiritually ferocious creature the Pemba Tigger! Roland pounced on me from behind releasing the full power of Jehovah sneaky on me! This time I was unable to go back for seconds, I was glued to the floor, laughing uncontrolably, blind drunk for the rest of the meeting. When ever I started to recover the Tigger would come over and love maul me again! I have vowed never to say "Stop Lord," as I have determined to live with the motto of "more Lord" but I will admit I was close to the edge this time as my stomach muscles were in pain and I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe as the joy of the Lord swept over me! It was so much fun! What a way to end the "Voice of the Apostles" conference! I missed the evening meeting to get ready for our flight early the next morning, I was looking forward to having a long snooze on the plane, it worked out differently though God was lining me up for another amazing encounter, more of that in the next post.