Walking Through Open Doors!

I’m so excited to share what has been happening lately with us here in Thailand! God told us it would be easy and fun, and he would open the doors. Well He’s done just that. A month ago we came back to Chiang Mai and enrolled in language school. One of the students just happens to be the leader of the “Call to All” YWAM base here. We hit it off and have become fast friends with him and his family. They even invited us to enjoy Thanksgiving with them!

Thanksgiving Dinner

We also went back to the church we had gone to only 3 times before leaving for Moldova and other places. Pastor Sidney of Kingdom Life Church welcomed us back warmly and a week later asked us to teach about healing and pray for the sick in his church! God gave us instant favor with this pastor, whom we’ve been told has the fastest growing Thai church
congregation in the city. It’s less than 2 years old, but has about 400 people (which is a “huge” church among the Thai). The healing service went very well - God showed up and many were healed!

Worship at Kingdom Life Church

We noticed that Pastor Sidney didn’t have a ministry team though. So we offered to train one up for him. He responded immediately with, “Yes! When can you start?” Stunned, we booked it two weeks out and quickly wrote a simple healing ministry training manual, which Pastor Sidney skillfully translated into Thai. Last week after Sunday service was our first training session with all his Life Group leaders (about 25 people) and yesterday was our final session with activation.
Here is a paragraph in Thai from our manual - for your reading

นี่เป็นรายการบางส่วนที่ทําให้เราเห็นอัตลักษณ์ของเราในพระคริสต์ เมื่อคุณเข้าเฝ้า พระเจ้าด้วยการอธิษฐาน คุณสามารถอธิษฐานด้วยค วามมั่นใจ อย่าพูดว่า "ฉันเป็น ใคร?" เหมือนกับว่า คุณด้อยกว่าผู้เชื่ออื่นในโลกนี้ เราไม่ด้อยกว่าผู้เชื่อคนใดซึ่งเคยมี ชีวิตอยู่ เราเทุกคน ป็นผู้ร่วมรับพระสัญญาของพระเจ้า การเป็นคริสเตียนไม่ใช่เรื่อง ความดีหรือการกระทําของเรา เราไม่ได้ทําอะไรจนมีฤทธิ์เดชในการรักษา โรค เราได้รับ เปล่า ๆ จากพระเจ้า และเราให้เปล่า ๆ การเป็นคริสเตียนก็คือ สิ่งที่พระเจ้าได้ทรงทํา เพื่อเราในพระเยซูคริสต์

Our New Training Manual

Activation went extremely well. We modeled a prayer in front of them (Jesus graciously healed a lady with level 10 neck pain!), then divided them into groups of 3 or 4, each with someone to pray for who was in pain. Everyone got some level of healing! The most dramatic was an old man that hobbled to church on crutches for an hour and stayed late to receive prayer from this group getting trained. I saw him walking out of the church

carrying his crutches under his arms so I quickly got his picture! He had been hit by a car and had sharp pains in his left hip and leg. After his group prayed for him, all his pain left!
All the Life Group leaders are now excited to activate their people into healing the sick! Pastor Sidney is super excited too. He announced at the end of the training, “After you activate your groups, your people will activate the whole church!”

God also opened the door for us to minister in 3 other churches about the Holy Spirit and healing! One was in the tribal mountains at a Presbyterian church that knew nothing about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

If you didn’t already see the little 1 min. video of our trip, you can see it at
brianandlorena.blogspot.com.

I think probably 95% of thechurch were baptized in the Holy Spirit - maybe about 100 people. (There’s only 300 in the whole village!). The pastor of this church was hungry to learn more and found a Spirit filled pastor in the city on facebook, named Pastor Gampon! Pastor Gampon’s wife had just met us and by God’s favor, they invited us to go with them along with some members of their church to this mountain village. It was such a privilege to bring the Holy Spirit and healing to this beautiful tribe! The joy of the Lord came, many were healed, and some delivered from demons.

This lady was bound by an evil sprit that made her mute for 16 years. Jesus set her free and released her tongue. Her first words were, “Praise the Lord” (in her language)!

As if this wasn’t exciting enough, the next morning I went outside my door and found myself greeted with elephants in our yard (check out the video!) and a bamboo stick filled with sticky rice! This raw rice is first put inside a hollow piece of bamboo, which is soaked in water all night. In the morning it   gets roasted on a bbq grill, and out comes a delicious breakfast of sticky rice!

The day after we got down from the mountain we went to City Gate Church, where Pastor

This church has also been experiencing supernatural growth this past year and has asked us to train a ministry team for them as well. We’ll do that in January. As you can imagine from these pictures, all our ideas and plans for collecting testimonies went out the window when the Holy Spirit started taking everyone out so quickly! Haha! We heard a few testimonies though, as they started to sit up from their encounters. Many healings...!

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers.

We love you all so much and cheer you on in your families and ministries as well! I miss you guys in the Healing Rooms and being there with you. I love hearing your reports and testimonies - keep them coming! Thursday we head we head to Vietnam for a week. Stay posted!

Much love and blessings, Lorena and Brian

More news from Thailand and Africa

Dear Friends and Family, How are you?  Lorena and I are doing great.  Things are going amazingly well here in Thailand. It has been especially fun for me, Brian, to get back into teaching seminars and preaching!  Even though less than one percent of the Thai people are Christians, the Holy Spirit is really moving in the churches.  Pastors are telling us that they have never seen so many people coming to the Lord as in this past year.  "They are more open now than ever before!"  One of our goals is to get more Christians involved in praying for the sick.  The Lord has been opening doors in this area.  Several churches have asked us to teach on healing and pray for their sick. God has been faithful to heal so many and we have enjoyed activating many believers in the healing ministry here.  Preaching at Kingdom Life Church, Chiang Mai This week we head out to the city of Hanoi in Vietnam!   We wanted to show you what's going on in Mozambique as well.  Below are pictures from last weekends seminars, December 5th - 8th, starting on the top left and going down.  Pastor Tanueque's Seminar in the province of Nampula,  Pastor Zito's Seminar in the province of Zambezia (x2), and Pastor Mario and Pastor Mateus' combined seminar in the province of Tete. Thank you for all of your prayers and support!   See more news at brianandlorena.blogspot.com

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Healing Training Manual

We are very excited that our "Healing Training Manual" was translated into Thai.  We started teaching a two part series on healing at an amazing church here in Chiang Mai.  

Page one of the Thai version

Mozambique Last Weekend

Things are still going great in Mozambique!  We have four seminar leaders who go out several times a month to disciple the churches and their leaders.

Pastor Zito in the province of Zambezia, Dec. 5-8

Pastor Mario and Pastor Mateus in Province Tete, Dec 5-8

Pastor Tanueque in the Province of Nampula, Dec. 5-8

Creative Recycling Ideas

Happy Thanksgiving from Thailand

Open Doors

While in Pattaya, Lorena was able to teach a children's ministry seminar. The next day she took some of the students to a neighborhood where some missionaries had been gathering the kids for English lessons and medical attention. Lorena taught the children "the Wordless Book" (a simple explanation of the gospel through 5 colors). Most raised their hands to accept Jesus!

Lorena and I are excited by the open doors for children's ministry here in Thailand. Lorena learned that English speaking foreigners have an open door to go into the public schools and teach morals or English using the Bible.  It appears that these lessons can be taught in English and translated into Thai.  The government is very eager to teach their people English in order to improve their economy.

After Pattaya, we had the opportunity to go to the beach for a few days!  On Monday we start language school full-time back in Chiang Mai (about an hour flight from here). 

Lorena took this shot at sunset

Again thanks for all your prayers!  If you are interested in joining our Prayer Team, please contact Teresa Muller at Teresamuller7@gmail.com.

Blessings,

Brian and Lorena

You can donate to Transforming Lives Ministry with your PayPal account or with a credit or debit card by clicking below

We made it to Thailand!

We've been spending our time learning Thai language and culture. Having 5 tones is challenging, but not impossible. Good street food is everywhere. In fact, food is so important to the Thai, that it's part of their normal greeting, "What are you eating?" or "What are you going to eat?" We've pictured some of the more interesting foods we've found below!

God has already begun bringing us amazing contacts, as He said He would. We've found amazing friendly missionaries to fellowship with, a good Thai church, a wonderful bi-lingual Thai pastor, and lots of friendly Thai people all around to practice the language with.

We leave soon for a few weeks to minister in Moldova with a team from Redding. Please join us in prayer for this poor nation that is hungry for God and the Evangelical Pentecostal churches that will be gathering for us.

If you are interested in joining our Prayer Team, please contact Teresa Muller at Teresamuller7@gmail.com.

Scorpion on a stick!

Learning the Thai language. 

Scary looking fruit, but actually delicious on the inside!

Hmm, baby octopus?

How about some crocodile?

Don't know how to rotate picture in Google :(

OK, now we found something we can't pass up - fresh fruit juice!

Thank you everyone who came to our send off parties in Redding and Orange County! We appreciate your friendships, prayers, and support so much.

Blessings,

Brian and Lorena

Support Address:

Transforming Lives Ministry 

1908 S El Camino Reald

San Clemente, CA 92672

Trip to Moldova

We just had a wonderful time in the country of Moldova.  We went with a fantastic team but only made a video of what Lorena and I were involved in.

You can see the video at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQgkeSt8BZs

A Sign of Good Things to Come!

“You’re late!”  the lady behind the ticket counter said.  We thought arriving two hours early was good enough, but the only seats left on the plane were by the emergency door that would cost us each $100. more or we'd have to sit  separated from each other and be in the middle, in-between people.  Brian likes isle seats, so after we got our boarding passes, he prayed that we'd get better seats without paying another $200. I said they were already assigned, but he said, "God is outside of time!"  I took my seat in-between a mother and her large grown son.  Before take-off however, the son left!  He took one of the $100. seats!  Brian took his seat between an older couple.  Looking incredulously at Brian, they said they were told no one was sitting between them.  Brian offered to exchange seats with one of them so they could be next to each other, but that was not what they wanted either.  Feeling very awkward, Brian prayed silently again for a miracle.  “Lord, will you please open up a better seat for us?”  Then the man next to Brian told the stewardess that his movie jack didn't work.  So she moved him to a $100. seat!  I soon found that my headset jack was also broken, so the stewardess moved me also to a $100. seat!  It gets even better.  The mother who was next to me also left!  We don't know where she went.  So Brian took the entire row where I was and laid down to sleep, while I had one of the most spacious seats on the entire plane, next to the emergency door!!!  Father God not only answered Brian’s prayer for an isle seat, he gave us the most perfect extravagant seats!  We believe this is sign of good things to come!

More Than Survivors

On March 15th, 2019, the deadliest tropical cyclone in the Southwest Indian Ocean hit the district of Buzi, Mozambique, where our dear friends and beloved  Pastor Jacob and his wife Cecilia live.  Unaware that the category 3 cyclone was heading their way, they shockingly woke up to knee high water in their bedroom.  Confused, they opened their front door.  A wall of water gushed in, quickly filling their home to waste deep.  Cecilia and Jacob grabbed their children, but nothing else.  All was left behind as the wind and torential floods destroyed their cinder block home, ripping off their tin roof with gusts of 175 mph winds.  "Grab the trees!"  Cecelia and Jacob shouted to their four children as they gripped a child in each of their hands.  The family struggled through rapid currents of ocean water pouring into their village streets, which was quickly rising up to their shoulders.  None of them knew how to swim. Seeing the gravity of the situation, Jacob yelled over the storm to Cecelia, "Do you have faith in God?!"  "Yes!" She screamed back, as the water was now reaching their necks.  They continued in the dark with their children, grabbing any standing tree trunk they could see to stable them as they fought against the current.  "There it is!  Now climb to the roof top!"  Jacob instructed his family as they approached the strong government building in the center of town.  Others they recognized joined them as they too lost their homes with nowhere else to go.  Soon the roof top filled with drenched terrified villagers.  Here they spent the night in the storm with no shelter over their heads.  Rain and wind continued the next day with no food or water in sight. The second rainy day passed, again with no sign of relief. By day three the entire town was under water with just a few tree tops and roofs of a few tall buildings in sight.

"A boat is coming!" a villager exclaimed.  Soon all who were on that rooftop for 3 days without nourishment were rescued to Guara Guara.  There they joined others who were also rescued as well, many from scattered tree tops.

Surrounded by discouraged, desparate new neighbors, Pastor Jacob and Cecelia felt God's compassion and love for their people.  They began sharing the hope of salvation with those in Guara Guara and healing the sick in Jesus' name. By the end of three weeks, the waters receded enough for everyone to return to their villages, but this family now left behind a church of 30 new believers birthed out of this cyclone catastophe!  Today they visit this new church regularly, one of many they have planted in this district of Buzi.  "All things to work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to His purpose" Romans 8:28.  With Jesus we are more than mere survivors!
Picture of them with motorcycle

With washed out roads making bike travel difficult and newly planted churches far away, we saw the need to purchase this motorcycle for Jacob and Cecelia.

About Cecilia and Jacob:
Cecilia is a gifted Bible teacher, regularly conducting women's seminars for Iris Global churches throughout the province of Sofala.
Pastor Jacob and Cecilia pastor their own church and serve as district pastors for Buzi. They also continue to actively plant new churches, and oversee their many established churches.  Pastor Jacob also serves on the commission for the province and teaches seminars as part of our pastoral discipleship team for Central Mozambique.
Below is their church which we built while we were in Mozambique, with the "Church in a Day" project.  The cyclone destoyed this roof, but missionaries there now helped them restore it once again.  Thank you to all who have prayed for Mozambique and donated to her restoration. 

New Prayer Cards

We have new prayer cards.  If you would like one please send us your address.  You can email me at pastorbrianwood@gmail.com

We have our tickets to Thailand!

While all of our seminars and evangelistic outreaches are going great in Mozambique, we strongly feel the Lord leading us to move to Asia.  It may seem like a lot, but our plan is to continue overseeing our teams in Africa and personally conduct pastoral training seminars throughout Southeast Asia.  We also have a desire to minister to the people of Thailand.  We have paid the rent for the first month on a one bedroom flat in Northern Thailand, which is just a half a mile from the language school where we will be attending in September. 

With all of these changes we have several prayer requests. 

Finish paper work and sell our vehicle  

We still have a vehicle in Mozambique that we need to sell.  It’s a long story with corruption in the customs department, but a pastor friend is working on getting us the correct paperwork for the vehicle so we can sell it. This has been going on for quite a while, so please pray this comes to an end and our truck sells!  Our plan is to use the money to get a retirement visa for Thailand, which will require a $25,000.00 deposit in a Thai bank.  After  leaving it in their bank for 3 months, we can use it to live on!  This is by far the easiest way for us to have visas and freedom to minister wherever God leads us.  

Pray for Caleb and Nate

Our boys are attending Shasta College, Nate finishing up his welding certificates and Caleb entering into the EMT and Fire Fighting programs.  They will be living on their own for the first time, staying in our house with a few roommates.  Please pray they would have a strong relationship with the Lord. Also pray they would adjust well to working part time and going to school on their own without their parents around.  Unlike typical young people, Caleb and Nate lived most of their lives in Mozambique and have had to adjust to American life in general, learning things others are raised with and used to.  They are doing well, but we covet your prayers on this new upcoming challenge of their being on their own with their parents living far away in Thailand.  Thank you!

 Memorial

From Lorena:

For those of you that don’t already know, my mom passed away March 22^nd.  Taking care of her these past 18 months has been an unexpected privilege.  Leaving my mom at the end of each furlough was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, thinking I might not ever see her again.  I’m so thankful for this time we had together!  We had a wonderful memorial for her two weeks ago, gathering the entire family from all parts of the world.  We rejoice with her, as she stated many times, “I’m ready to go!”  We are blessed to carry on our family’s legacy, leaving once again for the mission field – to a new country and without children for the first time!

if you would like to support our ministry you can send checks to 

Transforming Lives Ministry

1908 S El Camino Real

San Clemente, CA 92672

Please Pray for Mozambique

See the latest update on the devastation from Cyclone Idai.  Believe it or not, the Cyclone hit Zambezia over a week ago, went out to sea and then returned and hit the province of Sofala in Mozambique.  Please pray for the people, especially in Central Mozambique!  We were able to send one of our pastors who lives in Beira, Sofala funds to buy supplies for himself and other before the Cyclone hit there.  We also send a few hundred dollars to Pastor Zito after the Cyclone hit Zambezia.  Zito's house was completely destroyed.

Pastor Zito and Pastor Joao are two of our seminar teachers.

Go to the following link for a video update.

https://www.facebook.com/erictawnya.weaver/videos/2296578170561688/

Evangelism Mozambique Style

We have a fantastic praise report!  As many of you know, we have been praying that we could find people from the States to carry four video projectors we bought here in America to Mozambique.  Two were taken recently by a wonderful missionary couple to our base in Dondo. They were then transported by bus to two or our seminar teachers, Pastor Mario in Zambezia and Pastor Tanueque in Nampula!  

Pastor Mario, the first to receive a projector, was able to buy local speakers, lights and cords to begin holding nightly evangelistic outreaches during each of his training seminars.  The video projectors already have a micro SD slot where a 16G chip can be inserted which contains the Jesus film in several languages!  The screen is two sheets which have been sewn together and hung on a large bamboo pole.  

Last weekend, Pastor Mario used the projector for the first time. Pictured above, one of these churches brought out their piano, dancing and singing before the movie began.  Mozambicans love music, so this helped attract the huge crowd that gathered in this soccer field.  

After the film, Pastor Mario explained the gospel and invited people to follow Jesus.  Many gave their lives to Him that night.  With the help of 5 local churches invited to this event, these new converts were warmly encouraged to join a fellowship of believers.  

What excites us about this ministry is that it is all done by locals.  No one has a vehicle; only public transportation is used.  There is no expensive generator.  About one dollar is given to a neighbor who has electricity and a long extension cord is run to their house.  

The final two projectors are arriving in Mozambique this week with a visitor that we mailed the projectors to.  Soon all four of our seminar teams will have evangelism equipment, which means the Jesus Film will be shown about 12 times a month in the “bush bush”.  We are thrilled to see the Mozambicans carrying the Gospel out to their own people and discipling them with minimal missionary involvement.  Our goal as missionaries is always to evangelize and disciple a people group to the point where they are equipped and trained well enough to carry on without us.  Our hearts are full of joy as we see this happening more and more in Mozambique.  Our role now is to consistently pray for these teams, continue writing discipleship booklets as needed, cast vision, encourage, and provide minimal funds for their seminars with necessary accountability.  

God is directing us towards Asia once again.  In these next six months we will be preparing to move to northern Thailand.  As Jesus reveals more of His plan to us, we will reveal it to you!  

Thank you for your continued prayers and support.  

Much love,

Brian and Lorena

End of Year Update

In 2018 we continued to oversee discipleship and leadership training programs in seven of the ten provinces of Mozambique.   The Lord has blessed our ministry and last year we held over 100 seminars and distributed close to 20,000 discipleship books.  Brian wrote a new book, Foundations 3, which they began to use and will primarily teach this year.  In 2019 we will start a new evangelism program that will combine with our regular Mozambican training seminars.  We were able to purchase three video projectors and have already shipped two to Mozambique.  With these, the seminars will include evangelistic film showings in the evenings for their prospective communities.  The Jesus Film is now available in most of the African heart languages along with 5 follow up discipleship films.  These are powerful, especially when followed up with an evangelistic message and a miraculous healing service!   

In 2018 we were also able to spend a month in India with Linda Kaahanui and Jeanne Jesse, conducting pastoral training seminars with an emphasis on reaching the illiterate (94% of all village women).  The Lord moved miraculously in the area of healing as well.  Some of the amazing testimonies are posted on our blog site, if you haven’t already read them.  http://brianandlorena.blogspot.com/ 

While we will continue to oversee our seminar program in Africa, our plan is to shift our emphasis to Asia, centering our ministry in Thailand by the end of this coming summer.  From Thailand it will be quick and inexpensive to conduct training seminars throughout Southeast Asia. Lorena also feels led to develop children’s ministry programs in the refugee camps.  (Northern Thailand currently has 9 refugee camps with about 98,000 people.)  

For the first time in over 30 years, we will be going oversees without any children.  Our three oldest kids are married and the final two that are at home with us, Caleb and Nate, will stay in America and continue their college and career training. Caleb will remain in college, initially pursuing an AA in firefighting and Nate will finish his welding certificate program.  

Prayer Requests

• Lorena continues to care for her mom.  Please pray for her, as she is nearing her last days now.  We ask for extra grace and peace.
• Pray for this evangelism program and for us to find someone to take two more projectors to Africa.  
• Pray for Caleb and Nate.  Moving back to America has been a huge change for them.  They have spent close to ten years in Africa and life in America is a major adjustment.  Please pray for their spiritual life and their transition here in the States. 
• Especially pray for our plans to move to Thailand and our future ministry in Asia. 

Praise Reports

• At the end of 2018 funds came in to buy three projectors, sound equipment, and three micro SD card duplicators. 
• All of the seminar teachers are doing well, and their ministries continue to grow.
• Everyone in our family is healthy and we look forward to all that God is going to do in 2019.

Seminar Testimonies from Mozambican pastors and church members

• Pastor Calala, Zambezia Province:  “I am very thankful for these seminars in our province.  They are having a great impact on all the leadership in this province of Zambezia.  The leaders are changing in their spiritual lives, the youth that are attending are growing spiritually.  For this we say thank you for the presence of God and raising up these men to come teach us…
• Joao Mandala, Mozambican pastor of the mother church in Dondo, Mozambique: The other day I was sleeping and had a dream.  I was shown Pastor Brian and Mama Lorena with their discipleship books.  I saw a lot of people reading them.  God told me they were reading these books because He is the One who put in Brian’s heart to write them this way - filled with scriptures, rather than mere ideas. I saw many people learning the Bible through these books, because most of the people can’t afford a Bible.”  
• Pastor Mateus, Commission leader of the Sofala Province and seminar teacher in 3 provinces: “The churches are now stronger.  They can preach, give their testimonies…Many before couldn’t do this…These seminars are helping the churches greatly.  Thank you to those in America who are helping us here.  Without these seminars, the churches will weaken. Praise be to God, He is helping us…”
• Almeida Jose Manuel, “I thank God for the seminar we had…I learned that when someone is angry, you need to forgive them.  I used to get very angry.  Now I feel delivered.  I will love my wife, my sons, my nephews.  Those who have nothing, I will love.  A blind person often comes to my home, begging. I wouldn’t give him anything.  I didn’t know this was a sin.  Now I know I should give to people in need.  Starting today, I will offer food to people who don’t have anything…  I have 5 churches.  They all need to hear these seminars.  They need to learn to love.  Then the churches will grow. I am so thankful for this seminar.”
• District of Malema, “I am happy because I learned about God, how Jesus died for our sins.  I learned what one must do to be saved.  I learned many things, like love. I learned how to become a real Christian. I learned I must separate from sin…love each other…”
• Artur Joao, chief of village, “I’ve never been to a seminar before, or heard these teachings before, but I came and am very happy.  I learned that I must love my neighbor as myself.”  After being asked if he would like to see more seminars like this in his district, he said, “Yes, you must take these seminars to the far distances where they have never heard this before!"