Heart After God Ministries Erin and Rory Wolff

Rolland and Heidi Baker have a ministry in Mozambique, Africa called Iris Ministries. The below testimonies are taken from their website: http://www.irisglobal.org

Before being called to Africa, Rolland and Heidi Baker longed to go to Africa in fulfillment of their calling to prove the Gospel in the most challenging situation they could find. They wanted to see a continuation of “Visions Beyond the Veil,” which is a book that was written by Rolland’s grandfather (H. A. BAKER) after he took care of and ministered to orphans in China, in which the orphans were saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and were taken up in visions to God’s Holy Throne. Roland and Heidi were drawn to Mozambique, officially listed at the time as the poorest country in the world.

A few days into their initial visit to Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, they were offered an orphanage that no one could or would support, not even large churches in South Africa or European donor nations. The Chihango center, was a previously government-run children’s center. Conditions were bleak. Over 30 years of warfare within the nation’s borders left an enormous population of orphans, with countless others living in extreme poverty. Government aid was nearly nonexistent. At Chihango – which represented the government’s best effort to care for homeless children – food was scarce, living quarters stark and medical care all but absent. The most “incorrigible” children from street gangs were often brought there as a last resort. Physical and sexual abuse were common. A very large proportion of the children were infected with STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Thievery was to be expected, especially from the officials in charge. Efforts at education were insignificant. It was horribly neglected and dilapidated, with 80 miserable, demon-afflicted orphans in rags.

Rolland and Heidi thought it was a perfect test of the Sermon on the Mount. Saying that “our Father in heaven knows what we need. Seek first His Kingdom and righteousness, and these things will be ours as well…Take no thought for tomorrow. Why worry? Jesus is enough for us, for anyone.”

On one of Heidi’s first visits to the children’s center, she gave away an open bag of potato chips from her truck window as she prepared to leave. This began a miniature riot. Children instantly attacked one another, tearing at the bag. They bit and clawed in the dust for the last of the chips. In the mostly empty buildings, roofs had collapsed onto bare concrete floors. Chihango displayed all the most terrible realities of the developing world, but Iris had also found what it had sought, a place where it could make the greatest possible difference in the day-to-day lives of those who had lived as the unwanted.

Alone and without support, they offered to take over the center and provide for the children in return for the opportunity to bring the Gospel to them. Within months the children were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, weeping while still in rags with gratitude for their salvation.

Jesus provided miraculously; more so as the children prayed night and day for their daily food. God provided more than enough food, every day – which at times required various miracles of finance, unsolicited aid from strangers, and occasionally of supernatural multiplication. The Iris staff began to take in more children from the streets, and after a year there were 320 children.

Despite story after story of extreme neglect, most of the children began to show a remarkable joy in short order. They worshiped and prayed with all their hearts. Many were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to manifest healings, visions, and many other spiritual gifts. IrisMinistries brought in teams, improved the center, and took the children to the streets to testify to more orphaned and abandoned children. Some were lost in visions, taken to heaven and danced around the throne of God on the shoulders of angels.

While all these things occurred, witch doctors often chanted curses around bonfires at the property’s edges at night, and the echoing sounds of AK47 fire, both far and near, were heard daily. Electricity was sporadic, and maintaining access to clean drinking water was difficult. Many thousands of dollars worth of goods were stolen over the passing months. Bureaucrats obstructed paperwork in an attempt to acquire bribes. Corrupt police and displaced ex-soldiers stopped vehicles constantly, extorting bribes for trivial or invented violations. Burglars broke into the property repeatedly. The staff at Iris underwent many muggings, and some were supernaturally rescued from deadly threats. These were relatively small difficulties compared to what was coming.

But abruptly, after they got up to 320 children, the government evicted Iris Ministries and denied the children permission to pray and worship on the property. And Heidi was informed that she personally could not re-enter the property. It was also said around the community that a contract had been put out to kill her (for twenty U.S. dollars).

The children were immediately forbidden to pray or sing any of the worship songs they had learned. Many more of the activities they had enjoyed came to a sudden stop. They missed their friends at Iris, the long-term staff and the short-term visitors. They greatly missed Papa Rolland and Mama Aida (Heidi). So when they next entered the big dining room, which had also been used as for church meetings on Sundays, they simply began to sing praise and worship songs at the top of their lungs. They were beaten and chastised for this, but in the end they absolutely refused to accept the changes. They would take their chances on the streets rather than live under such rules. Totally without a back-up plan, the children marched off the property barefoot and without a home. They lost everything.

One by one at first, and later in groups, almost all of them left Chihango and began to hitchhike and even walk the many hot miles back to the city. Since arriving in Mozambique, Rolland, Heidi, and their 2 children had been renting a small, single-story house in Maputo. Staying there now, uncertain of their future in Mozambique, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a swelling crowd of children who wanted to stay with them and worship God, no matter what. There was no space for so many, but it was unthinkable to turn them away. Dozens began to camp at the house, and their numbers were growing fast.

Iris’s people began scrambling to find some sort of emergency location for the children to stay. Two small Christian missions heard about what had happened, and volunteered to keep groups of children in some of their unused buildings for up to three months. Their offer came just in time. Everyone who had fled from Chihango found shelter.

At one point during the week after this exodus, with more than 50 children still packed into Rolland and Heidi’s house, food had begun to run low. Nelda, a friend from the U.S. embassy, came to visit them, bringing a pot of chili for Rolland, Heidi, and their two children. But “I have a big family,” Heidi replied. Nelda protested that she had only brought enough for the Bakers, but Heidi gave thanks for the food and immediately began serving it to the encamped kids. The pot, brought to feed 4 people, was not empty until more then 50 people had eaten!

The situation continued to appear desperate for some time, but as the three months were coming to an end, they began to taste the power of God in Mozambique. Land was donated by a nearby city. They got tents and food from South Africa. Provision came in from supernaturally touched hearts all over the world. Soon they could actually build their own dorms. And practically overnight a new village of children sprang up where a week before there had been only grass and trees. It was even more basic than Chihango had been, but it would do for the time being – and the children were overjoyed. Iris’s little community had prayed long and hard for water, both in spirit and in the natural. Very soon, a new well was dug at Machava, yielding fresh, clean water. Iris now had an abundance of both kinds of water.

By the end of its third year in Mozambique, Iris had acquired and lost one major center, begun a new base from the dirt up in Machava, and purchased a new compound at Zimpeto, an outlying district of Maputo. Zimpeto lay at the outskirts of the capital, close to what Heidi calls her favorite church: the “bocaria,” Maputo’s largest dump, where crowds of the poor scavenged mountains of trash for a scant living. Many of the greatest miracles Iris has witnessed occurred there. Many circumstances at this time remained difficult, but all the most bitter setbacks – of which there were many more than can be told – were more than offset by the extraordinary wonders and the manifest presence of God.

One such event, which has permanently shaped the values of Iris, occurred when Heidi, exhausted in the midst of the Chihango struggles, flew out to a Christian renewal conference in North America. She was in especially desperate need of renewal, exhausted by the work and the responsibility of over 320 who called her “Mama Aida.” Finances were tight. Two doctors had just told her she absolutely could not make the trip because she had a serious case of double pneumonia and blood poisoning. But being stubborn in faith and spirit, she boarded a plane anyway and flew more than 30 hours to the conference.

At the very start of the event God opened up her lungs and allowed her to breathe freely. Each day after, amid constant worship, teaching and prayer, her strength increased. She spent many hours receiving prayer from loving people on the ministry team. Heidi often tells of finding it difficult to be still and receive after years of speaking and teaching, but this soon became a deeply healing time for her.

One night she began to feel like she was having birth pains, and lay groaning in intercession for the children of Mozambique. She began to see them. There were thousands coming towards her. She cried, “No, Lord, there are too many!” Then she saw Jesus, and heard him say, “Look into my eyes. You give them something to eat.” He took a piece of his broken body out of his side and it became bread, and she began to give it to the children. Again Jesus said, “Look into my eyes. You give them something to drink.” He gave her a cup of the blood and water that flowed from his side, and she gave this to the children to drink. The Lord said, “There will always be enough bread and drink, because I paid the price with my life. Don’t be afraid. Only believe.” She returned to Mozambique with supernatural strength.

Ever since, one of the absolute core principles of Iris has been to offer a home to any child found in Mozambique without a family, regardless of financial or other considerations. The numbers grow. More testimonies are now accumulating than can be written – but the great story of this rising generation of children is just beginning.

Bush pastors longed for a Bible school, and to receive what the children had received from the Holy Spirit. Graduates went out and began healing the sick and raising the dead and church growth in the bush exploded.

As churches swelled and community outreaches multiplied, Iris began to expand into other nations, opening bases in similar ways. As of this writing, Iris is active in fifteen nations, and is still growing. As expansion has proceeded far faster than all initial expectations, Iris is hard at work to develop effective, Spirit-led, new organizational capacities to serve the movement. Their ministry has been entirely miraculous: they currently feed well over 10,000 children a day, as well as various members of many other communities, currently including 4,000 families in Malawi.

Its network of churches also numbers more than 10,000, including some 2,000 churches among the Makua people of northern Mozambique. Iris operates 5 Bible schools, in addition to its 3 primary schools, and its school of missions in Pemba. Current major projects include continuing outreaches to very remote coastal regions and a special well-drilling initiative.

Iris ministries believe that the best is yet to come as the Word of God is spread in power to the remote corners of the world, to the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and to the people who have never before tasted the goodness of God. They believe these people will be drawn to the King’s great banquet!