Monthly Archives: March 2013

It was great to see the happy, smiling (if totally knackered) faces of Lee & Katie Collier arriving at Cali airport last night. Lee of course was here with me last April, it’s Katie’s first time in Colombia: last year, Lee, along with just about everyone I’ve brought here, fell in love with the people, the city, and the country. Katie also seems to have fitted in really well. It’s a slightly surreal weekend, seeing as there are the ‘usual’ Easter Football Stadium ‘vigilia’ meetings – prayer vigils – 40,000 people there: Walter has wanted me to go and speak there, but it’s not particularly part of my ‘vision’ to be in huge meetings, much preferring smaller churches where you ccan get to know people a little and pray for them on a ‘persoanl’ basis.

So, today has been good for Lee & Katie in that they’ve been able to acclimatise, as well as recover from the journey (acclimatise is important, as the temperature here this afternoon is in excess of 35C (about 98F), when it was -2C when they left England yesterday morning…. and today, of course, we started as we’d like to mean to go on (!) visiting ‘Lenos & Carbon’, the steak restaurant, everyone’s favourite place… and, very kindly, now, so that the sizzling meat doesn’t splash you, they provide bibs….as you can see!

Both Lee & Katie have been hectically busy in the lead up to this trip, so today’s been good for them. Dear old Chris ain’t going to have it quite the same way – his journey, which began in Plymouth, Devon, early this morning (2C!) ends when he arrives here tomorrow night at past midnight. I’ve booked him in to preach at Walter & Lupe’s church Sunday morning at 10am…. hope he finds that to his liking!

As soon as I land in Colombia, for some years now, it has felt like a second home. Arriving after midnight this morning was no different (0045hrs), even after the ‘broken’ journey from Ireland (overnight in Surrey), it was 36 hours of tavel from home: for those praying for me, thank you, it was a smooth journey. It’s a real blessing that the Colombian national airline have joined my airline alliance of preference – the Star Alliance – and because of that, and not having to transit Canada, I handed my bags in at Heathrow and didn’t see them again until Cali (I was wondering if they WOULD turn up…!!). And, more thanks, because these jolly old knees did fine, right up until someone knocked me over on a moving walkway in the domestic terminal in Bogota! It was on a downhill sloping ,oving walkway – an interesting experience! – and they lost control of their trolley! By the time I got here, 36 hours of travel and a fall hadn’t helped, but, Alan prayed for them again one the way to the airport Tuesday evening, and the recovery this morning is pretty good!

Seems like it’s going to be a busy schedule! Slow starter, as it’s Easter, many are away, and churches have special services planned, plus of course, there’s the big ‘vigilia’ (vigil) in the Stadium Saturday all day. Walter’s trying to get me a slot to speak for 15 minutes, just to 50,000 people, but to be honest, whilst I’m happy to do it, I won’t mind if I don’t….

What I really want here, from Benny (Mexico), Chris, Lee, and KAtie (England) is for THEM to do the preaching, the praying, see the salvation, the healings, the miracles… I love to do all of that, as you know, but I’m more up for ‘baton passing’ than ever before…

Lee & Katie are in the air as I write, somewhere over the Atlantic between Madrid and Bogota: with no seat back televisions, they told me as they boarded! Aaarrgghh…. a plane out of the ark! Please pray they arrive safely, and Chris, too, as he sets off from Plymouth tomorrow, but doesn’t arrive here until Saturday night.

Sorry, but it does seem that the unbelieveable weather we’ve had – according to the current-day Michael Fishes – is going on until Easter…I was watching film of Scotland and Norhern Ireland on the TV, it’s unreal: it’s spring, for goodness sake, almost April, and this is the coldest March ‘since records began’. (Please can someone tell me: who, one day, and when, sat down and thought, ‘Today I will begin records: I can’t remember what happened yesterday, or last week, so records can’t begin then, they must begin today’?).

It is with some delight, then, for me and a few cronies – Chris, Katie, and Lee (plus Benny, but it’s warmer in Mexico than here already) – head 6,000 miles south-west, to where, at the moment, it is approximately 35C, and in two nights’ time I’ll have air conditioning on. Yessss! Just praying that Belfast City airport is functioning tomorrow evening, I’m sure Heathrow will be, then it’s Madrid, Bogota, and Cali. Groan….a lot of time in a hollow metal tube, under the control of a guy named Miguel (I guess…)

With everything seeming to function ok here, it is with sadness that today, I tried to use the external hard drives that Lee brought back from the USA for me, in November: alas, they don’t work. On them are some wonderful photographs, and lots of video testimonies, that I want to put on this new, light, bright, sleek website… maybe I’ll have to get Lee over here when we’re home…

On a more serious note, we’d all appreciate your prayers while we’re away: once upon a time, I’d have said ‘for safety’ as we’re in Colombia, but, thankfully, that really doesn’t apply so much these days – we just want to see the heaven opened, and a river of God’s wonderful power pour into the lives of people, churches, and into the streets of the wonderful city of Cali. I’d love to be able to walk ok, so your prayers there are requested!

And, hopefully, I’ll be here every – or most – days of the time away, reporting on the amazing works of the Holy Spirit. Thrilled just an hour or so ago to (provisionally) be invited back to Sweden, in June – at last I seem to be going to places at the right times of year for the good weather! Last time in Sweden it pitched in at -20C one day….

Soooo…new website….! Thank you to my lovely mate Lee Prior Collier for putting this together, and getting it online, and to Jess Williams for designing what I think is a really cool logo…. if anyone wants to buy my licence for Adobe Contribute, I’ll sell it at a good discounted price…!! What I need to do now is ‘populate’ the website with videos, photos, and stuff I’ve never been able to do with the old site.

It’s been a necessarily quiet week, with a hectic 3 weeks coming up, in Cali, Colombia. On Thursday (I think) evening, my great friend Alan came and prayed for my knees – I know lots of people have been, and thank you so much for those prayers! – and right now, I’d have to say that the improvement has been extremely noticeable, so I’m believing that by the time I head to the airport Tuesday, I’ll be walking well, without wincing (no, not mincing!) or chewing hard on my bottom lip to try and re-focus the pain…. Generally I’m not one to blame the enemy for a lot of what is ‘the stuff of life’, but these past weeks have been a bit of a concerted onslaught that doesn’t seem entirely ‘the stuff of life’… They’ve also been a few weeks of trying to raise some additional funds for Ana Beiba, the amazing lady who runs a ‘faith’ ministry in one of the worst districts of Cali, for abandoned old people. I took a good amount in November: with that I was hoping that the money would buy for her commercial sized cooker/stove, washing machine, refrigerator, and freezer. Instead, that money went to buy her another house, the one next door to hers, which seemed like a God-intervention. So, this time, I’m hoping to do what I couldn’t do last time, and buy the appliances

A couple of weeks ago (12th March), I bizarrely had another ‘Notice of intent to revoke’ (my visa application) from the United Sates Customs and Immigration department, BUT with leave to (once again) appeal it. At the end of May, it is four years since this whole absurd, odd, and – unfair? – saga began: four very expensive years in many respects. In the USCIS communication, what was good for me to read is that I wasn’t rejected based on anything I’d done….it’s actually to do with the USA end of things. I’ll tell my immigration lawyer before I leave for Colombia whether or not I’ll appeal, but unless God tells me with a loud voice otherwise, I won’t be appealing…. It seems that, after many months of trying to get people to clear the house in the USA of my stuff, a very kind lady, Kiki, who used to be in the church I used to be part of, has done an amazing job: and it seems that at last, having tried to get this underway last August, the stuff I need to be shipped back to the UK is on its way. I just need somewhere to store it now… while I get round to selling some of it in the hope of clawing back some of the huge costs. As you can imagine, too, the long delays have cost the owners of the house dear, as house prices have crashed through the floor even since getting it valued last August, when it was ALREADY 40% lower than the price paid for it….

So I owe the enemy big time, and plan to pay him back – with God’s help of course! – over the coming trip, and trips! I’m thrilled to bits that, on this trip, I have two guys going for their second visits – Chris from Devon (Head of Maths, but I can just about forgive him for that!), and Lee, doctor and web genius, along with his lovely wife, Katie, also a doctor (who just, as it happens, has done a course on knee injections!!). And… really, really thrilled to have my lovely friend Benny Osorio with me: I’ve known Benny since 1996, he’s from Mexico City, where he and his lovely wife, Paty, head up a church, and a network of churches across Mexico. I’ve been part of their family, really, since ’96: sad that his lovely dad, Enrique, went to be with Jesus three years ago, but thrilled to see Benny not only stand in his dad’s place, but grow it… in 2001, I had the absolute delight of marrying Benny & Paty, a week before Christmas, in Mexico City: and their son (they have a beautiful daughter, Ceci, too) is named Pablo… after me, which I find incredibly honouring and humbling…. God has really intervened BIG TIME in getting Benny there, so it’s going to be a blast…..

I’ve not posted anything here for a couple of weeks, as, rightly or wrongly, I sort of assume that you don’t really want to know every day that I’m home, went shopping (though that’s not QUITE accurate!), ate food, went to the loo… all the things people seem to think are vital we need to know on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve not become a ‘Twit'(terer), but I do get mighty frustrated with some of the garbage on Facebook!

The shopping comment is an oxymoron reall,y as, since getting back from Australia, my knees have been pretty dire! For a few days, I could barely move….but, being the determined (or stupid??) bloke that I am, I made them move. Prayer, Tiger Balm plasters (from the far east), Voltarol gel, and occasional painkillers, have helped! Saw my new doctor last week (lovely Jimmy Courtney retired soon after I’d permanently registered with him: hmm, thinking about it, the first doctor I registered with here also retired pretty quickly: is it something I’ve done??!). My new one, with a lovely Irish accent, is name Omar Mohamed, super bloke, just the accent doesn’t quite seem right :)! I went to see him as I need a months’ worth of painkillers, with Colombia coming up (yep, even people who pray for healing feel pain, and people who see knees healed can have duff knees!): they’re pretty heavy duty painkillers, so he asked about my knees… took one look at them, and said that he’d rarely seen such osteo-arthritic damaged knees in his life…. hmm again! So, I got the pk’s: and a probable appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon for ‘urgent surgical intervention’. I’m hoping that I get a good look at the scans, so that people can pray specifically into the damage, as I’m not really inclined to go down the surgery route!

Heard this week, too, that the house in Virginia, USA, is now emptied of my ‘stuff’: some to be shipped, most to be sold/given away…. awfully, though, the Estate Agent (sorry, Realtor!) valued it for sale at about 40% of the price paid for it…. also heard from immigration that though my ‘case’ has been revoked, they’re leaving the door open for appeal. Not too worried, really, what happens now: I’m very much at peace with where I’m at, even if at times I feel anger towards the States for dragging this on 4 years, at great cost financially, and emotionally.

Much more important are stories I’m still getting from Australia: if this stupid software would work, I could paste the message here, but…. Lee, my lovely friend who is putting up a whole new website for me, is working on it even as I type, so it’ll be goodbye to this aged, dated, chronic website… wonderful message on facebook too, from someone whose name I didn’t recognise instantly (her married name, now) – but she is Erin, from Seattle, USA, whose knees were miraculously healed in Perth, Western Australia, when she was a YWAM student, and I was speaking at her school: her knees are fine, perfect, and wonderful, 11 years on…..another old YWAM student wrote to say that what I’d spoken about on her school 10-11 years back, changed her life forever…. so it’s all worth it…..

Now, preparing for my 49th trip to wonderful Colombia: I leave for England Tuesday next week, fly on Wednesday: on this trip, Lee & Katie, his lovely doctor wife (with two doctors, and a brain surgeon friend in Cali, that’s the time to be ill, huh??!!), Chris Spark, and my long time friend Benny Osorio, from Mexico City, are going with me…. it’s going to be wonderful….