ISRAEL - May 15 - 27, 2011

Pastor Steve and Sylvia Neptune are partnering with HarvestNet Institute and Soresh Study Tours for a life-changing journey in Israel. You are invited to walk with us in the steps of the ancient people of Israel and Jesus the Messiah, as we travel from the Sinai wanderings, through the heartland of Israel, and north to the source of the Jordan River. The whole of the Land will become our spiritual classroom as we seek to understand God’s message to His people, both in those ancient days and our own. We will incorporate worship, praise, spontaneous singing and Davidic dance as we celebrate God’s word in the Holy Land.  

This 12-day pilgrimage is unique because we will:

         - study God’s word on-site – HarvestNet students can receive credits;

         - enjoy the Mediterranean Sea at the beginning and end of our journey;

         - embrace the Negev desert in the South and Dan to the far North;

         - sail on the Sea of Galilee, taking in the surrounding hills and valleys where Jesus spoke

           and ministered to the multitudes;

         - experience Bethlehem and the Shepherd’s Fields;

         - stay at Christ Church Guest House, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, thus enabling us to

           immerse ourselves in the culture, and the sights, sounds and fragrances of Jerusalem…

Click here for itinerary

If you are interested in going with us, please feel free to inquire at 440.708.1199. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

GUATEMALA

June 2008

GateWay Church’s, seasoned missionary, Doris Hang, traveled to Guatemala in June with a HarvestNet Institute team. Once in Guatemala they attended a conference on “teamwork & teambuilding” at Casa de Dios, a church in Guatemala City with about 25,000 in their congregation; went to the headquarters of Help for Orphans and Widows Worldwide (HOWW) Ministry and spent several days with pastors from HOWW ministering to children in poor areas of the city. For more information about upcoming HarvestNet Institute Missions Trips see: www.harvestnet.net

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AFRICA

Pastor Steve Neptune ministered in Kenya, Africa in October of 2008.

        A Chiropractic Adjustment of Spirit
                                        A report on Kenya
                                        By Steve Neptune

Last fall, while discussing the subject of angels and demons in my Systematic Theology class at HarvestNet Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, Abraham Fiodembo, a student from Kenya, Africa, raised his hand. When I called on him, he said, "I can tell you from experience that these things are true." He proceeded to tell the class that his cousin is a powerful "doctor" in Kenya. Three years previously, when Abraham was walking towards his cousin's house, gourds suddenly came flying out of the hut beside the house where his cousin kept his paraphernalia for contacting the spirit world. The gourds swirled around Abraham and cried in a shrill high voice, "He doesn't believe in us! He doesn't believe in us. He doesn't know that we protect him!" Abraham's cousin came running out of the hut with a horrified look on his face and began pleading with the gourds saying, "It's alright. He's only a child. He doesn't understand. Please leave him alone." And with great difficulty he persuaded the gourds to go back into the hut.

Perhaps if it had been anyone else, I could have or would have dismissed this testimony as an in-poor-taste attempt at humor or the delusional exaggerations of a misguided soul craving atten-tion. But I knew that this 48-year-old Anglican priest was highly respected by all who knew him both in the States and in his native Kenya. He is college educated, pastors a new church plant, and works at the Cleveland Clinic as a chaplain. And in this and two other classes in which I was privileged to have him as a student, he never once said or did anything that would wrongly draw attention to himself or defame the name of Christ whom he loves and represents.

After a momentary stunned silence, the class of largely Midwestern, suburbanite, middle-class evangelical Christians barraged Abraham with questions. For me, it was the culmination of sev-eral "indicators" I had received over the years which I interpreted as guidance from the Lord that I was to go to Africa. So after much planning, careful watching of the political unrest in Kenya, and correspondence with Christians in Kenya who had invited both Abraham and I to visit them, we embarked on a two-week mission trip on October 15, 2008. Shortly after arriving, I couldn't imagine having gone without Abraham as a traveling companion, door-opener, and guide. Of course he knew the land and people, but also his five years in America and his western education served as a vital bridge of understanding between two worlds.

Kenya is located on the East coast of Africa. It is the 47 largest country in the world having a land mass about five times that of the state of Ohio. It has a population of 38 million. The 2006 Forum Survey of adults 18 years and older based on a sample representing roughly 97% of the population found that approximately nine-in-ten identified themselves as Christian, comprised of roughly 23% Catholic, 62% Protestant and 5% African Independent Churches (AIC). Renewal-ists-including charismatics and pentecostals-account for roughly half of Kenya's population. Only 7% are Muslim. It was a British colony until it gained its independence in 1963 and has since been governed by a semi-socialist one-party dominant regime with only three presidents in 45 years.

I found Kenya to be a land of contrasts. The flora, fauna, and landscape of the country are beauti-ful. But I have traveled to quite a number of nations of the world, yet have never witnessed such a level of wide-spread poverty and decay. The people I encountered were warm and friendly and the worship and prayer intensity of the Christians is infectious. But corruption pervades every part of the societal infra-structure. Most significantly for me, I was struck by the contrast of a country whose citizens have in a large measure partaken of Western education, technology, and religion, yet continue to experience some of the most startling displays of the outright demonic that human beings have ever known or heard of. And it is to this subject I now wish to turn.

Medicine man with Steve's Friend

I went to Kenya with three purposes in mind. First, I went at the invitation of Abraham to meet and share with groups of leaders he knew there and also at the invitation of a Julius Mbgaya-an apostolic leader who is doing a marvelous work in Kenya and a long time friend of many of the leaders of ATMI. So of course, I wanted to be a blessing to those with whom I met and shared. Second, this trip was exploratory in nature to see if the Lord might have some of us in the Cleve-land area connect with those in Kenya on an ongoing basis. But third, and for me by far the most important reason for me going, was so that I might receive what I can only describe as "a chiro-practic adjustment of my worldview" deep down in my soul and spirit. That is, for all of my reading and all of my praying to the end that I might walk in the fullness of the two halves of re-ality of God's creation-the seen and the unseen, the natural and the supernatural-I found my-self continually pulled to the natural because of the predominantly western, intellectually ration-alistic atmosphere in which I have been immersed since birth. The Lord graciously fulfilled all three purposes.

He fulfilled the last one in great measure while I was riding in a van with nine other Africans as we were returning from a mission trip in the bush area of The Great Rift Valley. Six of the men were pastors, many of whom have suffered severe persecution from their families because of their stand for Christ. The following stories are a small sampling of the ones they shared with me:

·    A man had a corn field and had it "protected." Two thieves came into the filed at night, loaded up some bags with corn and headed out of the field. But they couldn't get out. They wondered around the filed all night long. The owner found them the next day and demanded a ransom before he would release them. Their relatives were contacted and after much hag-gling the men were released for a price. (I didn't ask if they couldn't get out because their minds were muddled or if there was some kind of invisible shield around the field.)

·    A man suspected his wife of committing adultery. He contacted a medicine man. The wife took her lover into her marriage bed. After committing their immorality, they realized to their horror that they were stuck together. The husband came home, found them, turned around and walked out. The fused couple began to scream. Neighbors heard them and took them to a nearby clinic. The personnel at the clinic are trained in modern medicine, but they could not separate the couple. They died that way. (Because I was so shocked by the story, I didn't have the presence of mind to ask how long it took them to die. Doctors and other medical personnel regularly distinguish between and acknowledge naturally caused disease which they treat the same way we do and conditions caused by other forces which they cannot treat.)

·    When it comes time to name a baby, the spirits of the ancestors are contacted to discern the correct name for the child. The child will start crying and cannot be comforted by any means. The names of various ancestors will be spoken over the child until a certain name is uttered that causes the child to immediately begin laughing. (Several of the men in the van concurred that this was practiced in their tribe, also. There are 43 major tribes in Kenya with various clan groups under each of these.)

·    In some tribes, if twins are the firstborn, it is a bad omen and they are both to be destroyed. In other tribes it is fine if the firstborn are twins, but if they are second born it is bad and they are killed.

·    Sometimes when a person dies, a cow owned by the family will shed tears.

·    No matter where a person dies they are to be buried in their native village. Otherwise, the spirit of the dead person will be restless and cause problems in the area where he died.

·    Sometimes, a dead person "refuses" to go, that is, the dead body of the person cannot be physically moved. So the relatives begin upbraiding the person and speak to the body saying things like, "What are you doing? You are shaming us! You need to go!" Sometimes they must even resort to physically punching the body until it finally relents and allows them to remove it.

·    There is a man in the city of Kitale (where Julius Mbgaya and some of these men pastor) who has a monkey named Salaam. If someone wants to inquire of the spirits about some matter, they enter a building, Salaam listens to their request, nods his head in an understanding way, takes their money and goes behind a curtain. Then from behind the curtain gourds come fly-ing out and stack one on top of the other and in various voices give you the answer to your request. The pastor who told the story said that if we went their right now, Salaam would say to me, "Steve, I saw you coming back from Pokot in a van with those Africans and they were talking about me."

·    Three weeks prior to my trip, the police went into the bush area where we went on our mis-sion trip that day and took some cows they found grazing. An old man came to the police compound and said, "Give me back my cows or something bad will happen." They said, "Get out of here old man!" The old man turned and left without saying another word. That eve-ning, about a thousand wild boars came rushing down upon the compound. The police ran to their cars to flee and their vehicles would not start. Into the midst of this chaos walked the old man who calmly said, "Give me back my cows." The police officers gave him his cows and some money. The old man said, "Your cars will start now." The terrified police got into their cars and fled.

·    There is a spiritualist minister in Kitale who can walk through a wall and appear somewhere else in the city.

·    More than one story was told of a man who would sit on a mat of cloth or reeds which would levitate and take him wherever he wanted to go.

·    One pastor told of a noise he heard at night. He got up to investigate and shined his flashlight out by the outhouse. He saw a man who suddenly levitated before him, went up to the roof-top, and then flew away.

·    There was a man who lived two houses down from where Abraham lived when he was a boy. The man would regularly get drunk in his house and make a lot of noise. Abraham and others heard the voices of spirits in the hills nearby who said we are going to drive him away. So the spirits came descending down on the house and tormented the man. Abraham and others could hear the voices move from the hills to the house. The man went running out of the house and was never heard from again.

·    A man got into a taxi van in the coastal city of Mombasa and said to the driver, "Hey, I've heard that there are people in this city who can turn into animals." The taxi driver pulled up his pant leg and said, "Like this?" and revealed the leg of a goat.

·    A man from Nairobi driving into Mombasa saw a small flock of unattended goats and thought he would help himself to them and sell them. So he herded them into his van and headed back towards Nairobi. Suddenly he felt an involuntary chill go up his spine. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw nine old hags sitting in the van. One of them said, "Did you think you could just steal us off the streets? You'd better return us right now!" road He did an immediate U-turn in the road and sped back towards Mombasa. He got out of the van, opened the sliding side door, and out scampered nine goats.

·    Pastor John of the Pokot tribe said if you want to contact the spirit of one of your dead relatives for advice, you go to that mountain (he pointed to a particular mountain). There are some old men there to whom you give some money and go into a little hut. Soon a spirit comes to you and in the voice of your loved one calls you by name and gives you advice about situations in your life.

·    Bishop Julius and his team have gone into neighboring Uganda several times to do crusades and have had much fruit in doing so. But on one occasion none of the sound equipment would work and when Julius went ahead and preached, no one received Christ. The team prayed and the Lord revealed to Julius that charms had been placed under the stage they were using. So they removed the amulets, destroyed them, and went on with the crusade. The sound equipment now worked, they saw people come to Christ, and a little boy healed of deafness. The medicine man who placed the charms found himself trapped in his own house. Apparently the spirits had turned on him. He asked Julius through a messenger to come and release him from his house. Julius said he wouldn't come unless the man was willing to come to the crusade and confess what he had done. He wouldn't do it. (I wish I would have fol-lowed up with the logical question, "Whatever happened to the medicine man?")

This "baptism" of stories has had a profound effect on me and I am still processing the implications of it all. When I got to my room that evening, I wrote down the details of the stories I just related as best as I could remember them. Then I wrote the following observation:
"Where I have been ignorant is that I previously thought of these kinds of stories as isolated incidents-episodic in nature. That is because this is the way they were presented to me in times past. I read of a famous deliverance that occurred in the Philippines in the 1950's or the exorcism of Emily Rose in the late 1960's. But the fact of the matter is that these things are systemic-they regularly occur from birth to death and at all stages of life in between. Everyone knows about them-Christians and non-Christians alike. The West chalks all of this up to legend, myth, superstition, exaggeration, or psychological manipulation. But, in fact, this culture had self-consciously cultivated a life of interaction with the supernatural-both divine and demonic. The West is by no means devoid of the demonic, but it tends to present itself in more subtle forms to us-rationalism, humanism, natu-ralism, atheism. The scriptures declare that "...the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one," 1 John 3:19b. So in the same way that the African Chris-tians must self-consciously combat a tightly knit matrix of overt demonic activity that has been entrenched in the cultural psyche for centuries, so we Christians in the West must actively resist the deadening influence of the aforementioned "isms" which shut us off from recognizing both the divine and the demonic in our midst."

As we came to the end of that unforgettable van ride, I said to pastor Simone, "So, you guys wake up in the morning, praise the Lord, pray, read the Scripture, and then go about your day. You aren't constantly fearful about someone giving you "the evil eye." You just do what the Lord is telling you to do and if the demonic comes your way you deal with it." Pastor Simone replied, "That's right. We go about our business and deal with things when they come up. BUT, I am always staying connected. Even when I am sitting here in the van talking and laughing, there is a part of me that is constantly connecting with the Lord." That strikes me as a universally good word for all Christians-no matter where we live or the nature the challenges we face.

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