Luanda August/September 2023

 

In August and September, Evangelist Randy Roberts was the lead evangelist for two Gospel campaigns with CfaN in Luanda, Angola. Trained and mentored by Daniel Kolenda, Randy is a Bootcamp graduate and has preached at many CfaN Gospel Campaigns. He was joined in Angola by Peter Vandenberg, who greatly stirred the hearts of local church leaders in the Fire Conferences. Randy shared this wonderful report with us!

 

On my first night in Luanda, I was at a banquet with some of the top leaders of Angola, both of the church and the government. Some were not convinced that God still works miracles. But I asked them to look around the room at the different gathered there. As they looked around, they all agreed it was truly a miracle that they were together.

 

You see, Angola was locked in civil war for three decades! The division in the country has been monumental and a major stumbling block for their advancement. We could see how God was using these campaigns to bring the country and the Body of Christ back together. 

 

We saw God perform so many miracles to cause the meetings to happen that I could write a book. We were told “No, that is impossible and will never happen in Angola” countless times and yet every time God intervened on our behalf. He sent someone to fix the problem every time. He used bank managers, taxi drivers, pastors, hotel concierges, members of parliament, generals and even the president himself to work things out on our behalf. 

Our arrival to Luanda couldn’t have gone much better. There were scores of people welcoming us. We were able to do multiple TV interviews to promote the campaigns. Then we had a dinner for leaders who had helped us over many months. It was very well attended. All the “right” people were there, including multiple members of parliament, ambassadors and almost every major church leader in the country. Things were going great.

 

Then we got to the field the first night and the crowd was not what I was expecting. There were about 14,000 people standing in a field that could fit one million. 

 

My mind began to race. What did we miss? What did I do wrong? What are our partners going to think? We’ve spent all this money. Oh no! All of this and more flashed through my mind. 

 

By His grace, I was able to cast those thoughts down and do what God had sent me there to do – preach the Gospel! I preached to those 14,000 like they were a million. 

 

What the crowd lacked in size it made up for in an insatiable hunger for God. In response, He began to move. There were so many miracles, we couldn’t get to them all. But as we left the field, I was still battling thoughts of my unmet expectations concerning the size of the crowd. Then the Lord began to deal with me. 

 

Albertina was 12 years old and had never taken a step but walked home that night. Was she not worth all the effort and money? What about José who was going to kill himself that night before he stumbled upon the campaign and gave his life to Jesus? Or the 4-year-old boy who had never heard or spoke who said, “Mama” for the first time? Or the countless other people who had been touched by our Lord Jesus? 

 

God wasn’t thinking about what anyone was or wasn’t going to think about me. He wasn’t thinking about the money and He certainly wasn’t thinking about my ego.

 

He was thinking about the one. He was asking me if I would care about the one as much as He did. Then He showed me that if He can’t trust me with the one, He can’t trust me with millions. 

 

I had been corrected

 

Pulling onto the FAPA field on the last night of our time in Luanda was bittersweet. I wanted to jump for joy at what God had done in the hearts of the leaders of this country, how He had begun to unify them and how He had set so many of the people free from the clutches of the enemy. On the other hand, I knew that this was my last chance to proclaim the Gospel on this field."

 

We rejoiced as we saw that the crowd had more than doubled from the previous night. Every night the hunger of the Angolan people was insatiable. God met their hunger with His power. We saw so many miracles every night that we could not get to them all. So, I just began to bring the people whose miracles had been verified on stage in a line so I could shake their hands and bless them. We didn’t have time for everyone to give their testimony so this was the least I could do. The last night was no different. After many people gave their testimony, we lined up 20-30 people onstage whose blind eyes had been opened, whose deaf ears now heard, who had their tumors disappear and many other signs of the power of God.

 

Peter Vandenberg (CfaN's Vice President) worked side-by-side with Randy Roberts, ministering to local pastors and church leaders during the Fire Conferences that accompanied the Gospel Campaigns. He shared:

 

“We held two Gospel Campaigns because this widely spread-out city had two high density residential areas, literally on opposite sides of the city. The people in each of these regions numbered in the hundreds of thousand at each location, but because of geographical and economic factors, neither region’s people could travel far to attend a campaign. So instead of them coming to the campaign, the campaign came to them.

 

Pastors and bishops repeatedly told us that they have never seen anything like this during their lives. All were deeply moved that we came to them as, in their words, “Nobody comes to help us.”

 

During the two campaigns, we recorded 103,110 decisions to follow Jesus, and through our 

follow-up system, these new believers are being channeled into hundreds of participating churches.”

 

A 55-year-old man named Joaquim had suffered from a smoking addiction for over 30 years. He was unable to go 30 minutes without smoking a cigarette. He came to the campaign on Thursday night and after we prayed, all desire for cigarettes left him. He testified on the Saturday that he had not smoked since then.

 

José was recently released from prison and had been disowned by his family and friends. He had come to such a place of despair that he spent the last of his money buying poison to kill himself. You could have heard a pin drop as he described negotiating with the shopkeeper so he could afford the poison that was meant to end his life. Then a funny thing happened on his way to eat the poison and “go to sleep”. He saw a campaign banner that was hanging over the road that led to the field. So, he thought he would go and listen before he continued with his plan of suicide. He listened to the message but didn’t pray the prayer of salvation.

 

Then we lit the barrels full of witchcraft items, and I rebuked the devil and every foul spirit. As I was doing this, he said he felt a heaviness like a thick blanket lift off him and he no longer wanted to kill himself. Instead, he wanted to burn the poison that was meant to take his life. The crowd erupted as he finished telling us how Jesus had spared his life. Then he made a decision even bigger than burning the poison – he made Jesus his Lord and Savior!

 

Adelina had a stroke three years ago and was paralyzed on her right side from her shoulder down. After the healing prayer, she came and danced with me on the platform. She didn’t even know about the crusade until her sister called her this morning and told her she needed to go.

 

Andre had a large tumor under his right arm and into his chest since 2017. A friend told him about the campaigns and that God was healing people there and he laughed it off, but said he would go anyway. He arrived just as I began to pray for the sick. As he walked onto the field, he felt the pressure in his chest dissipate. When he reached under his arm, he was shocked to find that the baseball-sized tumor that had been there for six years was gone. 

 

Milena had a tumor in her throat for several years. Her friend had told her God was healing people at “campo de FAPA”(FAPA field) and that she should go with her. She was hesitant but finally agreed to go. While she was waiting for her friend, the friend called and said she couldn’t go. Praise God that she decided to go by herself, because the strawberry-sized tumor disappeared in an instant. She wept tears of joy as she told us what Jesus had done for her. 

 

The CfaN team had the Herculean task of taking down, loading, moving and putting up the sound, stage and lights in just three days between the two campaigns.

 

 

“But our way is not that of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who believe and by this confident faith preserve the soul.” (Hebrews 10:39 Amp)

 

This could be our motto and it applies to everyone on the team. When the equipment malfunctions, the sound guys don’t shrink back. They rely on God and move forward until the problem is solved. When the trucks break down in the middle of the driest place on earth, we don’t shrink back. We trust the Lord and fix the problem. When our field permits are taken away ten – yes, ten! – different times, we ask Him what to do and press on. When it looks like we are out of money and we still need a lot, we sow a seed and continue the work – and God sends people with the resources we need or even changes the exchange rate by 50% in our favor. And after all of that and much more, when we show up to the first night and the crowd is not what we were expecting, we don’t go back to the room and cry. We move forward and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, rejoicing that God would allow us to do this work. And by doing this, by not shrinking back to destruction, we don’t just preserve our souls. We preserve the souls of those who choose Jesus – in this case, over 100,000 precious people in Luanda!