Philippines Journey - from Steve Stewart

We left early this morning in a convoy, travelling almost 3 hours to a village of about 1,500 people. They have no medical clinic or facility. We are the first group to come and do a clinic. We were accompanied by several military trucks and even an armoured vehicle. The bishop over this part of the Philippines had asked us a year ago to come to several of these very needy villages.

We were able to treat over 400 people today, including dental extractions for 40. We also have a surgeon from Australia on our team, and she was needed to so some simple surgery at the clinic. The team worked very hard all day and came back to the city tired, but happy.

One of us went out into the village to pray for the sick with a couple of the team. At the first house we encountered a grandmother who had great difficulty seeing because of cataracts. She also had very diminished hearing and arthritic pain in most of her joints. We prayed for just a few moments and the cataracts disappeared; then her hearing was completely restored; then all of her pain left. The woman was very excited. All of this went on with a group of teenagers watching at the door. When we went out of the house, there were over 20 of them gathered outside. We began to preach to them about what had just happened and the group grew to about 40. Because of the healing that had just happened, they were very open to hear the gospel. Every one of them prayed enthusiastically to receive Jesus.

There were many, many healings in the clinic as some of the Impact team prayed for all those who came to the clinic. One healing really stands out. A man who had been struggling for some time with very high blood pressure (the top number was 200), asked for prayer. Michael prayed and asked the Lord to bring it down to 120 over 80 (ideal blood pressure for a young man). Then one of the interns came and took his pressure—exactly 120 over 80!

It was a wonderful first day. Tomorrow we travel by trucks, jeeps and river boats.

Stay tuned.

Steve