It’s been a great few days so far on this trip around the Cotswolds  – Evesham and Worcester, where the sauce comes from! – and a great few days in Welshpool, Powys. I was with some fantastic churches in Evesham, lovely pastors – Steve Wilderspin at Vale of Evesham Community Church, and Steve Mizzi, at Evesham, Elim. I stayed in Worcester with my longtime friend Graham Coyle, we met at Roffey Place Christian Training Centre in 1984. I loved being with the Evesham churches – a number of meetings, a more ‘seminar’ style get-together on healing, services in each church Sunday morning and evening, and visits to people one to one to pray for them. God did some lovely things….

A lady with multiple sclerosis and osteoarthritis was in a lot of pain, understandably,  she’d been stricken with the MS for 9 years, and has a young family, which of course was very difficult for her, as some days mobility was pretty non-existent. What was even more non-existent was sleep – she slept most nights for two hours. Her legs were especially painful when we met for prayer: and she had virtually no movement side to side or up and down in her ankles. It was wonderful to watch her start to move her ankles, and even better to hear her say that the pain in her right leg, especially, was much reduced. As I prayed for her, I felt that I should command sleep to her. As someone who, for many years, suffered from sleep deprivation, I know how incredibly debilitating it can be, so I prayed for her that she’d sleep for 8 hours, not just for one night, but from last Wednesday onwards….

Well, thank you Jesus, she called the pastor next day to say that she’d slept for 12 hours! I didn’t hear about the next night, but, after such a radical answer to prayer, I don’t see any reason why it should revert to two! Another lovely lady with a lot of shoulder and neck pain, and sciatic pain, had all her pain go…. As always, there were others whose pain or disability was reduced, even much reduced, so it was a real blessing and privilege to be in Evesham.

In Welshpool, I was speaking at the Filling Station, an inter-church meeting for worship, encouragement, and great cakes(!), as well as visiting people in their homes to pray for them. Again, God did some beautiful things, and it was a particular delight to pray with a slightly older couple Tuesday morning – for a wide variety of things from cancer to osteoparosis, eyesight, and other things, and they are such an adorable couple, it was a blessing to be with them. The Filling Station was really well attended, and I felt very much that, having told the people that THEY could pray and see people healed, that I should get them to do it. Which they did. And saw results. A couple of testimonies were shared at the start, of people who’d been healed when I was in Welshpool in April, that was so encouraging. One was of a totally ‘unlikely’ transformation in a large cancer tumour, another of a major miracle in a foot that was due to be amputated within days (it wasn’t)….

I’ve loved being involved in Wales this year: as my dad’s birthplace, it’s the first time I’ve been in Wales for ministry in all of my 39 years, and I’d love to do more.