Day 1 - Wednesday, 6 December 2006

Dear Mission-Partners,

Today was the first day of our Ikom-Gospel-Crusade. 80,000 gathered in the rural area and listened with great eagerness to every word preached. Multitudes found salvation in the name of Jesus. When I prayed for the sick to be healed, mighty miracles happened. An eight year old boy, born blind, received perfect sight! His mother was shocked and overwhelmed! One man who was left-sided paralyzed for seven years, run across the platform – totally made whole.... Four months ago a man in our Wukari-Crusade was healed from total madness. He was in chains for 5 years, but Jesus set him free. He arrived with the crusade-chairman and showed us the scars of his chains. Jesus delivered him from lunacy completely and totally. The crowd roared praises to God.

Yesterday we had a rousing welcome in Ikom. The streets were lined with shouting people! The Paramount Chief heartily welcomed us and conferred a special title on me, but I prefer to simply remain an Evangelist.

Please continue to pray for us. We expect to see God’s power in awesome action.

Yours from the Harvest Field,

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist
with the whole CfaN-Team.

Day 2 - Thursday, 7 December 2006

Dear Mission-Partners,

Today was the second meeting of the crusade and 100,000 people were in attendance! It was a day of great deliverance. The Paramount Chief had presented me symbolically, among other things, with a tray of soil from Ikom-Land with the request to break all curses that bind it. I believe that this has happened tonight, glory to God! What a mighty outpouring of the blessings of the Gospel. The sick were healed wholesale. Hernias disappeared, the deaf and dumb hearing and speaking perfectly, blind eyes opening and cripples walking. The Fire Conference also started today and it began with a bang. I am sure that the Lord will pour out His wonderful Spirit upon the Ikom-people.

Please continue to pray for us.

Yours from the Harvest Field,

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist
with the whole CfaN-Team.

Day 3 - Friday, 8 December 2006

Dear Mission-Partners,

The crowd increased by 50 per cent tonight, and the level of attention was awesome! When it came to the altar-call, Jesus was in full action! He received all who called “on the name of the Lord”. Huge piles of witchcraft items were burned while the people danced for joy. The local pastors keep telling me that nothing like this has ever ever happened before, and I can easily believe it. Miracles of healing rocked that place. A man who was totally blind for six years suddenly saw perfectly. His son was with him and he really rejoiced....and so many others.

Peter van den Berg took both sessions of the Fire Conference this morning (to spare my scratchy voice for the big evening meeting) and it was gloriously blessed.

Thank you for your prayers and all your love. We know that we are one with you in this great harvest of souls. We expect a huge swell of people over the weekend.

Yours from the harvest-field

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist
with the whole CfaN-Team.

Day 4 - Saturday, 9 December 2006

Dear Mission-Partners,

Today’s crowd grew to 250,000. To think that this can happen is small little IKOM is a big surprise. We had a mighty harvest of souls, a fiery outpouring of the Holy Spirit and glorious miracles of healings.

A man received a highly dramatic healing when his short leg began to grow to equal length by making noises. In the morning we had the final session of the Fire Conference and the Holy Spirit also fell there in great power. The harvest season is not over; we need to be busier than ever to bring in the sheaves.

Thank you for all of your intercessory prayers and all gifts, which make this Ikom-miracle possible.
Yours from the harvest-field

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist
with the whole CfaN-Team

Day 5 - Sunday, 10 December 2006

Dear Mission-Partners,

Today we had the final crusade-meeting and again 250,000 gathered to hear the Word of God. What a move in salvation and the miraculous! I said to Peter van den Berg “this is not where the rubber meets the road, but where heaven meets earth! Jesus was truly in action. A young woman was 10 years totally mad. Jesus set her free and her family brought her to the stage to show the heavy chains with which she had been bound for so very long. Most notable miracles followed, one after another.

We are so glad we came to this hyper-remote place. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were waiting for us. The local pastors are overwhelmed. It is more than they had ever dreamed. “We have never seen a crowd before even as big as the Fire Conference” they said. The follow-up work will begin immediately. In the meeting tonight we burned extra-ordinary witchcraft-idols because a major sorcerer has given his life for Jesus. We give all the glory to God and return tomorrow to our respective homes for the Christmas recess, a well deserved rest.

Yours from the harvest-field

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist
with the whole CfaN-Team

Smashing Satanic Strongholds in Ikom

The crowd roared praises to God as the flames reached upwards engulfing the piles of witchcraft charms and idols on either side of the crusade platform.  Just as Bonnke had told them to do, the people had cleared their homes of fetishes and idols and brought them to the crusade for destruction.

There was much dancing and rejoicing because they knew that spells and curses over their lives had been broken and that they had been set free from all bondages! Throughout the week, witchcraft items had been consigned to the fire, bronze idols had been smashed, and implements of sorcery and satanic worship were burned. It was the reason for much celebration in Ikom!
 
Celebration in the City
Just six days before, there had been another celebration that had brought this remote agricultural city near the Cameroonian border to a standstill. The crusade team had arrived in town and the streets were simply overflowing with a joyful crowd. At the Paramount Chief’s offices, Pastor Bonnke was presented with cassava and a tray of soil representing the rich agricultural resources of the region and a pair of symbolical ‘keys to the city.’ At the same time, he was ceremonially dressed with royal garments in the manner of a chief and given symbols of status and granted the title of ‘Bringer of Peace.’ It was not just the man that the Paramount Chief recognized and welcomed to his city, but the One whom he represented … Jesus, the true ‘Prince of Peace’ in Whose name he came.

One pastor referred to the gathering crowds at the crusade ground not as the ‘congregation’ but as the ‘population,’ and indeed, as the crowds surged to 250,000 it seemed that he was right. Each day busses crossed the border from neighboring Cameroon, an armada of motorcycles ferried people to the huge grounds, and trucks, normally filled with the region’s agricultural produce, were simply packed to overflowing with joyful crusade goers. At the edge of the main road where the jungle had been cleared, a bustling ‘shopping center’ of hundreds of small kitchens and shops selling all manner of things quickly sprung up making it easily the largest and busiest sales point in the entire town.

Mighty Miracles
On the first night, Wilfred, an eight-year old boy whom his mother said had been born blind, received perfect sight. When he was on stage sharing his testimony, he easily stretched up to take hold of Bonnke’s white handkerchief. His mother was shocked and overwhelmed. The following day when visiting his family home, the amazing transformation was confirmed by the boy’s sisters as well as by aunts, uncles, grandmother, and father, and indeed, everyone in the street who had turned out to see what the Lord had done!

I was told that ‘the boy used to fall down, walk into walls, fall in the cooking fire, and could not be left by himself … not even for a minute! Now,’ (his mother said, looking out the windows for where Wilfred was), ‘he runs down the streets, plays with the children in the road, and must go to school!’ His small body was covered with burns, scars, and healing wounds as evidence to the claim, and his broad smile and sharp vision now told me that something amazing had happened. After three days he was totally agile, no longer feeling his way around the walls of the house which still had hand marks to show where he had been, but instead he was now carrying his grandmother’s shopping to her home up the road … all the while still clutching his favorite possession … Bonnke’s white hanky.

Night after night, it was the same. At the age of four, a ten year-old boy had lost his ability to hear and speak when all four children in the family had been struck by a mysterious illness that went on to claim his three siblings. ‘It was witchcraft!,’ young Wilson’s father, Linois, explained. ‘Our whole family was under a curse, and now it is broken!’ Sure enough, young Wilson could speak broken words to me and could hear quite clearly even from behind. Three days later, I visited him again and he was as talkative as any young boy. Something had clearly happened and his beaming face reflected it.
   
The expression ‘The Signs-Following Gospel’ was surely correct in Ikom. Each night after the word was preached there was a prayer for the sick and a multitude of ailments and diseases were specifically named. One man, however, claimed an unusual and mighty healing when he said that the previous night after Bonnke had prayed for the sick, he had gone home and was woken up by movement in his injured leg. He and his wife could hear bones creaking and moving!

A couple of years previous he had suffered multiple fractures in his lower left leg resulting in this limb being crooked and six inches shorter than its counterpart. David had walked with a bad limp and dragged his left foot, but now, as confirmed by his family, chief, and entire village, he stands perfectly straight and level and walks normally. His leg still bares huge scars from the damage and his left knee is lower than his right knee yet his legs are apparently the same length and his feet are perfectly positioned!

Great Fruit, Great Blessing
Across this agricultural center where cocoa, cola nuts, cassava and yams are produced, it was a bountiful harvest season. The forest echoed to the sound of singing as groups of people worked to reap the equatorial produce. Cocoa nuts were laid out in the sun to dry, cassava cooked on large pans over open fires before being sieved. It was a time of great blessing to the people. Yet their hearts were filled with joy because of another, even greater harvest that they knew would bring greater blessing to their lives – and that was the harvest of the Ikom Gospel Crusade. A message of peace had demolished the strongholds of the enemy; curses and bondages had been removed, opening the people for great blessing to their lives. 

Dear Mission-Partners,

My heart is filled with joy at what I have just witnessed right here on the closing night in Ikom! What a mighty harvest of souls! Hundreds of thousands received Jesus as their Savior just minutes ago! It was like a sea of raised hands with hearts open to the redemptive power of the Gospel! Every night we also witnessed wonderful miracle-healings. Among them, a young boy whose mother claimed that he had been blind all of his life ... I checked him out and there was no mistaking, he could see everything around him. He could even reach right up and snatch my handkerchief! So many more miracles happened! Jesus gives healing to the people like a father would give bread to his children. That is our God and what a mighty God we serve!

Glorious Potential
There must be great joy in Heaven, and this is just the start of the new Crusade Season! … First Lagos, now Ikom, then another four Gospel Campaigns to follow in the next few months and we are right on target to see One Hundred Million Souls in this decade! But we cannot do it without you, your prayers and your financial support are all a vital aspect of this great thrust into the heartland of the enemy! 21 containers filled with vital follow-up literature are right now in the harbor waiting to be cleared; convoys of trucks carrying a multitude of technical items; literally millions of posters, handbills, and banners all to be placed … the logistics of this six-month-long crusade season are quite staggering … and so are the bills! Yet the potential is glorious!

By the time you receive this I will probably be on my way to our next crusade in Ado Ekiti ( Nigeria). One city after the other, we will press forward in the name of Jesus! Oshogbo, Aba, and Ogbomosho, all great population centers that are anxiously awaiting the proclamation of the Gospel in this ongoing CfaN Crusade Season … and we shall rise to that challenge!

Stand with us and believe with us for great things and a multiplied harvest of precious souls!
Thank you for your prayers and timely help.

The Lord will richly reward you!

Reinhard Bonnke, Evangelist