Reports from Carl Henderson
Carl trained with The Elijah Challenge in 2006, and is presently serving as a missionary in the Philippines.
This has been the most exciting of year of ministry we have ever experienced. We prayed that our ministry would bear visible fruit before we left the United States and we have seen more fruit than we ever imagined possible. We know that this is not our doing but God’s Spirit at work. We know that many times we are reaping what others have sown; however, we also know that God rewards faithfulness and obedience. By God’s grace we have done our best to be both.
By God’s grace, this was an exciting, life changing, empowering, and powerful year of growth, change, miracles, training, maturing, and stretching our boundaries for the growth of the Kingdom of God. Listen to just a few of the things we have been able to accomplish due to God’s grace and your support and prayers. Most of these things happened in the seven months from May to December of 2007.
– We trained over four hundred (400) Filipino evangelists. Most are powerfully using the skills we taught them to bring people into the light from the darkness of sin and death. All are preaching a full gospel message of law and grace and repentance and faith. They have been trained not to preach a message of “easy believism” or the sinner’s prayer approach.
– We have trained three (3) missionary training schools and one Bible College on the subject of evangelism.
– We preached in seventeen (17) different churches. We preached in many of them on several occasions. We preached in everything from bamboo village churches with dirt floors to majestic church buildings that seated hundreds. We also preached at weddings, funerals, to business employees, open air to crowds gathered in parks, pavilions, meat markets, vegetable markets, college and High School campuses, street corners, and in private clubs, etc.
– We had fifty-one evangelists at our MOR (Mission of Reconciliation) Evangelism Boot Camp Adventure. They shared their faith with 1,386 souls in just two days.
– We evangelized and trained people in evangelism on six different islands of the archipelago of the Philippines.
– We traveled on buses, boats, outrigger canoes, ferries, tricycles, motorcycles, trucks, jeepneys, airplanes, and taxis. Most of this was arduous, some was scary, and some of it was an exciting adventure in trusting God and our boat captain. On several occasions we were in outrigger canoes, in the ocean, at night, in the middle of powerful rain squalls with no lights visible from the shore. Our God saves physically as well as spiritually.
– Approximately 52,400 tracts were distributed in seven months by our ministry. We used the captivating Living Waters tracts, which are typically read with great interest.
– During the month of May, I preached twenty-eight (28) times in thirty-one (31) days.
– During the month of July, I preached fourteen (14) times in sixteen (16) days at Roxas and Kalibo City.
– We conducted fifteen (15) crusades (mostly open air) in front of audiences that were nearly always numbered in the hundreds.
– We have spoken before crowds of high school and college students in the thousands. We frequently had crowds of over one thousand students in a single audience. All heard the gospel and most heard it for the first time.
– According to our conservative estimates, about 20,000 people heard the gospel because of our ministry. This figure is in addition to the 52,000 tracts already mentioned. This includes crusades, one-2-one evangelism, and one-2-one evangelism by people we had trained and were leading/coaching in their first evangelism experience.
– We have ministered in two countries; the Philippines and Malaysia (an Isl–mic country).
– We have seen so many miracles and people being healed that we feel as though we are living in the New Testament era. The Lord has used us to perform miracles like blind eyes being opened, deaf and dumb people hearing and speaking (this happened three times), crippled withered hands and arms restored to strength, foreign objects impaled in an eye disappear, breast cancer soften and dissolve, broken bones restored, kidney disease and liver disease healed, severe fevers leave, and sick comatose infants healed and return to their playful selves. There were also back, leg, knee, hip, shoulder, foot, and neck pains healed. In addition to healings, we have seen demons cast out on a number of occasions. We do not take credit for any of this; it was God moving according to His will as we used the power and authority that comes in His name for the purpose of bringing the lost to repentance. When they see the power of Jesus’ name heal the infirmed, many believe – many who might be skeptical under other circumstances.
– We believe we are beginning to see a mighty move of God in the Philippines. Everywhere we go we see people coming into the Kingdom of God. We have been frequently told that people in “this village or that town” won’t receive the gospel, but when we come to evangelize and preach there are dozens who repent and put their faith in Jesus. There are hundreds who come under strong and obvious conviction over their sin. People are healed and the churches grow!
– More important than what we accomplished, the people we have trained have started churches. There have been over one hundred people(100) from a single village baptized. They go door to door doing evangelism, regularly conduct evangelism outreaches, pray for the sick and have seen them recover. After our departure, they have literally seen hundreds come into the Kingdom of God. They have seen growth in their churches, ministries, and even their own walk with the Lord. Many feel like they have wasted their time for years until the Lord used us to show them the biblical way to evangelize. This, by the way, was my experience in America before I learned biblical evangelism as taught by the Way of the Master.
We have used two main tools to teach evangelism and lead people to faith: the Way of the Master (WOTM) and The Elijah Challenge (TEC). Both teach biblical forms of evangelism that are powerful and effective. We have found that there is synergy between these two evangelism programs and using both together is resulting in an exponential number of people entering into the Kingdom of God.
This next year we will be teaching and implementing the same courses, but we will also be teaching a simple ten step Obedience Based Discipleship program we call the “The Way of Jesus, His Basic Commands.” We will also be emphasizing and teaching small group discipleship in order to develop cell groups. The same model and method can also be used to plant new churches in areas where the gospel has not existed before. We will also be focusing more of our efforts on our hometown, here in Baguio. We expect to train more people in Baguio how to evangelize and make disciples. We hope this will reduce our travel expenses and the amount of time we spend on the road.
I want to thank you for supporting our ministry with your prayers and finances. I also want to encourage you to continue to sow and reap bountifully into our ministry. God is moving here in the Philippines and I want to encourage you to pray and contribute so that you can be a part of this great and powerful move of God.
We are also increasing our missionary force by bringing more Filipino missionaries on board and this has increased our financial needs and given us greater ministry opportunities. This is an opportunity for you as well as us to receive treasures in heaven.
Read the details at www.m-o-r.net
In Christ service,
Pastor Carl Henderson and family
MOR – Mission of Reconciliation