This past August, I received a phone call from my good friend Krista. Krista and I have been on many prayer journeys together in Egypt, Cambodia, Thailand and India. She is a wonderful woman of God, who married a man from Egypt named Ayman. They recently moved, with their three-year-old daughter, to Seneca, Missouri, where Krista grew up (never imagining she’d return!).
“Dan, something crazy has happened!” she exclaimed. “Ayman and I have been praying for our neighborhood. We felt drawn to pray for an old Methodist church across the street from our house. We approached the church leaders as we were curious to know more about it. They told us the church was dying with some older folks keeping it going. They said they did not want their church to die and asked us if we would be willing to take the building and use it for ministry. They want to give us the building to use! We don’t know what to do with it, so is it possible you could bring a prayer team and help discern what God wants us to do? God wants to establish something here. Please come help us pray!”
Immediately, I knew this was an assignment from God, and within a short time we had a team of seven people eager to go to the small town of Seneca, located in the SW corner of Missouri and is very near the borders of Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Its location is very strategic, as any ministry there can affect all four states.
In God’s amazing timing, just prior to the trip, Karl and Kenda (team members and 5 Rivers board members), were at a meeting on an Indian reservation here in Arizona. They were told that there was a prayer gathering of pastors who met every month near Seneca, across the border in Oklahoma. Believing this was a divine appointment, Karl and Kenda left a day early to attend this meeting, inviting Krista to meet them there.
5 Rivers also made a commitment to help build a guest house in our village in Kashmir. The first two payments toward this 20,000.00 project have been made and construction is well underway. The foundation is laid, the walls are coming up and they hope to have the roof on before the heavy snow comes. God willing, this cabin will be ready for our teams to use starting this summer.
WOW!!! This is crazy! In the midst of intense persecution (reports of beatings, villages being burned, and pastors imprisoned in the middle of the night continue to come in), the Gospel is being preached. People, entire families, are being saved. People are being healed and set free from demons. Thousands of leaders are being trained to be church planters and the Kingdom of God is being manifested in India.
Over the next several weeks my phone was blowing up as people began to contact me. Well over one hundred people, (that we know of), began to travel and pray all over Arizona. We created an online group where they could communicate with each other, saying when and where they were going, how others could join them, posting praise reports and pictures from their travels and cheering each other on as people released the Kingdom of God everywhere they went. It was an amazing thing to see so many people so fully activated to pray for our state. Several people who have lived here all their lives said they had never seen anything like it. It was truly a historic spiritual moment for Arizona.
When I got home In August, I was able to make several prayer trips and I have continued to connect with intercessors across the state. Now, moving into 2024, the Holy Spirit has given us a strategy for activating people to pray like never before. We are looking forward to what God has in store for the upcoming year here at HOME!