This morning I ministered at a big church here in Bujumbura, the same one where I shared my testimony on the first Thursday. Domitien tells me that their membership is around 900, my guesstimate of the congregation today would have been around 500, maybe 600. As usual, lots of formalities and introductions, great worship and half a dozen different choirs presenting numbers. The Holy Spirit was all over me during the worship, and I found myself going into the deep places in Him that I was going to before I came away, much to my joy.
The service started at 9, and by 11.30 I was still not up. I was beginning to wonder just how much time they were going to allow me. Having very forcefully told our Congolese pastor yesterday that I was not about to preach a ten-minute sermon so that I could get away early to catch the ship, I was starting to think that maybe I would end up with only ten minutes anyway. However, Domitien leaned over and told me that I had an hour, so that was fine.
I love the anointing so much! Under the anointing I am a different person. Under the anointing I don’t even notice being on my feet for an hour – without it my body is complaining if I stand for ten minutes. And the anointing was strong today. When I gave the altar call for salvation, six people responded. Hallelujah! Six new souls in the Kingdom.
As I keep saying, I am not an evangelist, I don’t preach evangelistic messages, and I don’t have an anointing for salvation – at least I haven’t had up till now. On this trip it is growing. In November, there was one salvation. In December, there were four. In January, nine. And so far in February twenty-nine! I can hardly wait to see what March and April will bring.
At the end of the service they asked me if I would pray for those with needs. At first I thought they meant the normal laying-on-of-hands prayer line, but no, far too many people came out for that. Instead I prayed a general prayer over all of them. As I began, the anointing that hit was so strong that I could barely stay on my feet. I declared healing, and prayed for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit for those who had not already received it, and for open doors and provision for those called to go to the nations. I am absolutely believing to hear back testimonies of healing and God transforming lives.
Afterwards Domitien and the pastor who is head of that denomination here took me to lunch. One of the things I find most daunting about Africa is the predominance of men – and sometimes women – in uniform with big automatic weapons. They guard ATM machines (that’s good, at least you can be confident that you are not going to be held up at the ATM) and shopping centres, and seem to be just about everywhere, as well as every so often speeding down the road in open trucks. Today as we were going into town there were soldiers with big guns every hundred metres or so as we came near to the town centre, then we were turned off the road onto a side road.
We had encountered this same kind of thing one day last week, so I knew what was happening: the president was about to go past. We went into a cafe in the side street, so didn’t see all the hoo-haa this time, but the other day we watched half a dozen open trucks full of soldier speed past, followed by half a dozen black SUVs with dark tinted windows – I assume this was so that, in case of an attack, nobody would know which vehicle held the president – and another half dozen trucks full of soldiers. Quite a drama, but over very quickly.