Do I work or do I baptise someone?

As part of my work I have the option of working from home. I can also choose the hours that I work. As long as I do my hours by the end of the week my boss is happy. The other day I had planned to do two hours of work to finish off my week. I sat down and turned my computer on just before 10am and I was going to work until lunchtime. Just as I was checking my e-mails I heard a knock on the door. It turned out to be Mike saying that an old friend of his from church wants to be baptised and she only lives around the corner from me. They were on their way there to do it. So, without much hesitation, I threw on a jumper and headed around to the house.

When I got there the bathtub was running and I was introduced to ‘Heather’, who had been wanted to be baptised for a number of years but no-one was willing to do it for her. She found out that Mike and April would do it so she contacted them and arranged a day to do it. I was quickly introduced to Heather and we started talking about her reasons for wanting to be baptised. She was very sincere and very excited about it and definitely understood repentance and what baptism is all about.

The bathtub was taking a while to fill up so we decided to pray for her while we were waiting. 

Whenever we pray for someone we expect demonic activity so we weren’t surprised when she started shaking a bit and screaming. The demon left and Heather said she felt much lighter. We then dunked her in the bath and gave her time to get changed before praying for her to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It took a while but she did start praying in tongues a little reluctantly. We will continue to encourage her to be bold and that she is a new creation.

After the baptism we went back to my place for lunch and had an amazing time of fellowship. I didn’t actually finish my two hours on that day because I was so busy in the kingdom. I managed to finish off my work the next day.

This is Mike and April’s side of the story:

A past churched friend called us as she had been desiring to be water baptised (not sure of the whole story behind but she had been turned down by 3 churched leaders over the last year or more -very weird) she heard that we baptize people so called us . so this morning we went to see her ..[grabbed Andrew stirling on the way ] ..we prayed with her and cast some devils out ,then we baptised her in water on her own faith .she also had an appointment to see her Dr later today for somthing wrong in her throat, so we commanded healing and she messaged us an hour Ago to tell us the Dr found Nothing . God is So good .love this life in HIm .So privileged to be a part of what he is doing

Sharing gospel at the playground

It was a sunny afternoon in Hamilton and I decided to give my wife a break from the children and take them up to the playground. It is only a five-minute walk from our place to the playground and my young children love going there. When we got there, I noticed a young couple already there with two young children that were similar ages to mine. I didn’t say anything to them for a while but they didn’t seem in a hurry to leave so I wasn’t too concerned. I was trying to think of some way to initiate a conversation. I noticed the man had a coloured scarf on his hand which I assumed was some sort of gang symbol. I wasn’t frightened though because he seemed to be responsible with his children.

I noticed they had a lot of groceries and there was no car around so I asked them if they had to carry their groceries all the way home. The man said that they just lived around the corner so they didn’t have to go too far. I then said it was great to see a young man looking after his children like he was, because so many young men in this country don’t take responsibility for their family. He agreed with me and said that he works hard down in Christchurch to take care of them and that they are only in Hamilton for a short while because one of his family members was sick. We then got talking a bit more about our young families. Now that the conversation was started, I was wondering how I was going to steer the conversation towards kingdom matters. I ended up saying that I think if I hadn’t have found God then I would be like a lot of those other young men that abandon their families.

He then asked me what church I go to like so many people do. I explained a little bit about home church but I don’t think he understood. He said that he attends a church in Christchurch because his partner’s family forces him to as they are very religious. I asked him what he thinks of it and he said he quite likes it because he’s interested in knowing more about God. I asked him if he’d ever heard the gospel before and he said no. So I shared with him for the next 5-10 minutes what it was. The whole time this was happening my young children were happily playing on the playground without once talking to me which is pretty rare.

After I finished sharing with him I got to the part about how we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. I asked him,

“Have you heard about the Holy Spirit?”

He replied, “Yeah… oh, na…”

So I explained who the Holy Spirit is to him and he understood, because afterwards he said that he wants to be clean and he said he was going to think about baptism. He was due to fly back the next day to Christchurch so I put him in touch with someone down there who could baptise him.