‘That would be a good title for a blog’, said one of the CMS partners as we sat hearing how a Syrian refugee girl who told her teachers ‘I did it and it worked’. When her sister collapsed she did what had been taught to do. She commanded sickness to go in the name of Jesus as she had learnt do in her olive grove school. In the Lebanese countryside looking down on the Mediterranean Sea her sister stood up and walked.

Her teachers were previously nominal / traditional Christian believers who had been dramatically impacted by the return to Lebanon of a former priest and his MBB [Muslim Background Believer] wife. She was a trained teacher from N Africa who had found herself worshipping Jesus aged 5 without ever having been humanly taught about him. When they returned to his family olive grove home they found Syrian children playing and fighting all day long under the trees, living in tents where their parents had them stay as refugees/migrant crop pickers.

Although the family and village wanted no part with the Syrians and implored them not to speak with them, she wanted something to be done. Syria had been an occupying force in Lebanon after the civil war and many still remembered pain and atrocities inflicted by their neighbours on an already smarting nation so they wanted nothing to do with them. But this MBB lady started to talk to the kids 10, 15 at a time and take them pens/colouring and teach them. Soon there were 50 under a tree, then when winter set in they took 100 into their small house (a converted lower-ground floor parking lot under a brother’s home) and taught away.

Eventually God provided a neighbour to share her unfinished second home as a school and even to serve in that school. The school grew to 350 kids! She did it and it worked.

But the backstory was more dramatic still. A story of dramatic change and transformation over a costly nine month period in North Africa where God had showed this mission partner how to move with authority in the gifts of the Spirit. Aged 33 he was stuck in a country and culture far away from home, and unable to communicate as he was used to. He said that it was like God had brought him to a place where he had to be silent so he would be attentive to God. God was washing the insides of him on a daily basis. It was like he died and rose again each day. A daily crucifixion to his old self, and a daily resurrection to more of Christ’s life and power. At the end of this time first prophesy, then healings, and knowledge came. By the end God was using him in dramatic deliverance ministry, seeing satanists released from the powers of evil that had bound them.

I asked them to pray for me at the end of our visit. It was a powerful experience. A real father and mother in faith. Such a privilege to have met them this week.