They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
Revelation 12:11a, New International Version
Early one morning in Ecuador, as the Charis Bible College missions team was sitting down to breakfast, screams split the air. Rushing out the hotel’s back door, five team members searched the alley to find the source of the trouble.
“We found a woman pulling her hair, screaming at the heavens over a young man holding a very still baby in his arms,” one member recalled. Apparently, the one-year-old had fallen and cracked his skull on the concrete. He was dead. As the missions team began to minister to the woman and work to calm her down, a team member who happened to be a registered nurse verified the baby’s injury. “His eyes were set; there was no pulse. The child was dead.”
Moments before they left to take the baby’s body to the morgue, the Holy Spirit spoke to one of the team members. “You have a choice,” He said. “You can close the child’s eyes or speak life back into his body.” So, she began to speak life. The other team members joined in, and suddenly, the baby blinked. Shouts of praise erupted in the house as the mother took her child into her arms.
Later that night, the team held a powerful service about the power of testimony. During Larry Wilgus’s teaching, the parents of the baby who was raised from the dead shared their story with the congregation. Thirty people were healed that night—and word began spreading. The next morning, the Charis team’s hotel was surrounded with people requesting prayer. “Word about the little boy spread quickly, and people began to pour into our hotel, requesting the ‘Charis people’ pray for them,” Larry reported. “It was so awesome seeing God confirm His Word with signs following [Mark 16:17-18]!”
The testimony of the little boy’s miracle started a tidal wave of faith in Ecuador. After hearing the testimony, one mother approached the team for her six-month-old girl. She was born with a deformed hip that caused her legs to grow inconsistently. Two days after prayer, the mom brought her child and x-rays to show the team how her daughter had been healed. The hip was perfect, and both legs were the same length!
“This trip was a life-changer,” one team member said. “I’ve never seen such hunger for God or witnessed firsthand the power of the Gospel.” During their time there, the Charis team ministered in churches, at meetings, in the mayor’s office, and out on the streets. The entire hotel staff was born again, and the mayor openly requested prayer. The team witnessed people getting saved and filled with the Spirit, deaf ears and blind eyes opening, arthritic pain disappearing, cancerous cysts dissolving, limbs growing, and much more! “You could hear shouts of praise all over the city!”
