We have been blessed to be experiencing the presence of the Lord moving amongst us in power as we have been ministering in various places recently!
Canada Mission Trip
We recently returned from a month-long mission trip ministering in Canada.
We had a blessed time celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary at the House of Shiloh, one of the churches we have been connected with in Victoria, B.C., Canada.
Pastor Dan invited us to share at their anniversary service, and we realized after he invited us that it was also our 10-year anniversary of ministering in Canada!
We shared about how the Lord brought us up to Canada through divine guidance and intervention and connected us with them through a series of divine appointments.
We continued ministering in different meetings throughout the island after that initial ministry at the anniversary service, including some midweek meetings and other services.
While doing different meetings in the Victoria area, we experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit move in an awesome way! We did some house meetings on a Native Land Reservation where we experienced an unusual outpouring in a particular meeting. It was quite unexpected as it was a very hot day, and the heat was overwhelming inside the small mobile home we were to meet in, so we moved the meeting outdoors in front of the place.
There were a lot of distractions outside: acorns were falling out of the trees and pelting people, people were walking by and gawking, so it took a long time to get around to sharing, but as we shared some Holy Ghost stories and then finally began to pray over others in the meeting, the Holy Spirit fell in unexpected power, and holy laughter ripped across the meeting and people began falling over. It was completely unexpected after all the distractions, and it ended up being one of the most powerful meetings in the Victoria area the whole time: His power is made perfect in our weakness! Sometimes when we're least expecting it, the Lord shows up in the most powerful way! We had some powerful testimonies we received, including some people who said: No ministers ever make me cry, but I couldn't stop feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit the whole time! Hallelujah!
We also joined up with our friends Lance and Sarah, joining in on the guitar to do some worship with them and outreach in the town of Duncan a few times where they meet out in an open-air venue and minister to various communities in the town. We shared and gave some words of encouragement and prayed for lots of people in those areas and saw some people get significantly ministered to, including a couple who just came out from the east coast of Canada and had a powerful encounter with the Lord when we prayed for them!
We also had an awesome time ministering up island in Port Hardy Christian Fellowship where we did a number of meetings, as well as joining in on the guitar for some of the worship. Port Hardy is an isolated little port town up at the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island, “going out to the ends of the earth.”
The Holy Spirit was pouring out in all of the consecutive meetings that we did up there and we received lots of testimonies of people blessed and ministered to and lives touched and transformed:
In fact, a woman from a First Nations Tribe who got saved and set free when we were ministering there last year shared with us how she reads the Bible every day now and goes to church meetings regularly now too. It was so great to hear about fruit that sustains and remains like that!
A woman named Alex got hit by the Holy Spirit Friday night and said she has never felt anything like that in her life: she felt electricity volts from the top of her head to the tips of her feet and shared how she felt renewed and on fire for the Lord now! She had just started coming to this church a couple of weeks ago. She was being courted by Jehovah’s Witnesses just recently but now she knows after this—her eyes have been opened—that she has found her true tribe and her family.
Michael had an experience with God Sunday night and got saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit then too! Michael said the power of God hit him and he had tears and snot running down his face. He felt weak in the knees and could not stand. Eventually he managed to sit on the stage, but he said he could feel something happening on the inside of him that he couldn't explain. He shared how he now has hope for the first time in a long time.
Michael came to Tuesday night prayer afterwards and brought his girlfriend who is finding God again, after struggling with a very legalistic abusive past, because of what happened with Michael. He had anger issues and she shared how God is taking all that out of him.
There was also a fisherman who we prayed for and ministered to who surrendered his life to Christ at the very end of the last meeting. He said he was tired of resisting the Lord and surrendered his heart fully to God as we prayed for him … many tears streamed down his face as we prayed, not the thing you see every day with a tough fisherman like that! Reminded us of fishermen way down south of the other border that we experienced the same thing with some years back!
“Thanks so much for all you gave and deposited here!” wrote Pastor George.
It was also great to get out to the coast and get in a little Canadian cold-water surf! We got some fun surf with great sunny conditions in Tofino, which is Canada’s surf central destination with a number of spots to surf—we’ve had many witnessing opportunities there over the years! Also got to have a fun adventure with friends Laurie and Jodi who took us out from Port Hardy roughly 50 km in their heavy-duty truck on dirt roads out to the Island’s Northern Coast to San Josef Bay where we got in some awesome scenery and hiking, as well as a bit of surfing too in the wild and stormy conditions up there!
Back in the day we learned from our friend Lonnie Frisbee, who shared the good, the bad, and the ugly with us when we were with him for 3 1/2 years of discipleship: Learn to incorporate fun with your mission and ministry work and that way you can avoid burnout! Take your time and pace yourself and smell the roses too. He attributed burnout as one of the things that made him stumble along the way. However, the Lord picked him up and got him back on track again with full power flowing to the very end! We are regularly seeking the Lord to continue to incorporate that wisdom!
PrayerFests and House Meetings
We have done some Prayerfest-type meetings and House meetings recently in some different places:
We had a blessed one in Hemet with our old friends Jeff and Jeanette. We had a powerful refreshing time praying for one another just as we returned from Canada, which was a good way to refill our tanks after ministering and giving out on a long mission trip.
Some other missionary friends also got refreshed as well, and the wife shared afterwards that she woke up energized and praying in the Spirit the day after the meeting! They were also stoked to hear us share about Harald Bredesen, one of Jeff’s and our mutual mentors, who was a Lutheran that got filled with the Holy Spirit and became a founder and leader in the Charismatic Renewal. Unbeknownst to us, the missionary couple were going to be ministering in a Lutheran Church that very next week!
We have had other Prayerfest type meetings also, working together with our friend Lauren down on the coast in Encinitas. The Holy Spirit touched and ministered to pretty much everyone that came including ourselves, who also got some refreshing!
We were also recently sharing and ministering in Costa Mesa at a House Church Meeting with our friend John Ruttkay, who was also a mutual friend of Lonnie’s. John invited our son Patrick and Emily and me to do the worship there and we also got to see old friends like Stan, Diane and Jacob Frisbee. We were also blessed to get out to see a C.S. Lewis play recently together with John, Patrick, and Emily too after a board meeting, which was just amazing…the play was sold out with a line around the block to get in!
Speaking of Costa Mesa, it was a fun time recently sharing about the early days of the Jesus People Revival in the very church where Chuck Smith first opened the doors to Lonnie Frisbee. We shared how Lonnie not only evangelized the Hippies, which eventually led to a wave of Hippies getting saved, but how he also regularly led others into the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, equipping and empowering others to minister and reach out with the Gospel as well. This was actually one of the underlying factors and keys of the Jesus People Revival that reproduced others to reach out and minister as well, and similarly in the Vineyard movement proceeding on afterwards too. We have a few different videos on Lonnie and the Jesus People Revival, which you can check out at this link: https://www.graceworldmission.org/Jesus_ppl_revival.html
We also shared about the Reformation on an online meeting which had over 100 people on the call with our friend Meri. We also published a new video and blog on the Reformation as well as a new blog we did on America’s Roots in the English Reformation at Thanksgiving time. These are great resources to aid in understanding the history of America’s development, as it covers the Reformation’s trajectory of unleashing renewal and revival, which eventually led to the coming of the Pilgrims and the birthing of America. (You can check it out at this link: https://gwmgracenotes.blogspot.com/2023/11/americas-founding-and-its-ties-to.html)
We encourage you to like and share these videos and blogs with others as it helps in spreading the important history of our roots, especially in the light of recent statements like this by a Christian education group:
Misinformation about America’s founding is spreading across our country like wildfire. Unfortunately, that is true in the public education system as well. But America is an exceptional nation, and every citizen should know about its unique history…which is steeped in and influenced by the Christian faith…
Our recent videos on “Martin Luther’s Revelation: Foundation For Revival” and “The Reformation and Revival and America’s Roots” give important and unique perspectives of the Christian faith’s influence on this nation’s founding and development, which are important reflections during this season. You can check them out at this link: https://youtu.be/9ROTGU2dWfc or by going to our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@graceworldmission.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! We celebrated a little extra this year with a “Friendsgiving” our friend Lauren put together that turned into something of another “Prayerfest” which turned into a time of us leading some worship and praying for one another! It was a blessed time!
We pray the Lord’s richest blessings be with you in Jesus’ Name!
We greatly appreciate all your prayers and support!
Love and blessings!
Bryan and Mercedes Marleaux
Connect to Grace World Mission: https://linktr.ee/graceworldmission
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