I’ve recently published the Heaven Now Missions page on the gotoheavennow.com website. People have started to send some donations over the last few years to help with mission projects, and I’ve decided I should organize this better so as to show exactly how donations are being used. A charitable organization in the United States recently partnered with me so that donors in the United States can receive a tax receipt. If you have sent a donation before, I want to make you aware of the new ways to donate through Joshua’s Army in case you’re based in the United States and would like a tax receipt. You can find the information here.

Recent Testimonies

I’ve seen Jesus do many mighty works with dozens of people healed in the last month. After I received a word of knowledge for the manager of a pizza restaurant, she insisted that everyone who worked at the restaurant receive prayer. Everyone who had pain was healed and four people testified that they were seeing perfectly without glasses. Someone has received deliverance every week after the Wednesday night meeting. The first one was at a barbecue. I prayed for him and he fell so hard on the ground that I had to grab him and keep his head from hitting the concrete! I didn’t know he was going to fall! He later told me his back was sore for two days but it was good to be free! Multiple people who had severe pain from cancer got completely pain-free and couldn’t find pain even when pressing on the area. One was a stranger in the park. Another stranger at the park received healing for her eyes so she could both read her cell phone and a sign in the distance that she was unable to read before without glasses. A guy received prayer for pain in his back on Saturday and not only did the pain leave, but he could no longer find the steel in his back! A lady found that not only was her back healed, but she had her senses of taste and smell for the first time in 2 years since she had covid! A young missionary lady also told us how her mother was healed of cancer. Some months before she asked us to pray for her mother, who had multiple cancerous nodules. A week later she went with her mom to get tested and her heart started beating really quickly. The tests for her mom came back negative!

I spoke on a Friday night and Saturday night at the church in Brasilia that had invited me to teach a conference last November. I had really liked this church and didn’t feel notice any of the manipulation or control that so often bother me. They had experienced many miracles since I was last there. A pastor sent a prayer cloth to the hospital with a lady who was going to the church and was a nurse. She put it under the mattress of a patient who was expected to die from cancer. The patient kept getting better and better until they did tests again and found no cancer!

At the Friday night meeting, the pastor who took the offering before I spoke said “We don’t teach tithing here. We teach giving out of thanksgiving.” On Saturday, I was talking to the lead pastor who was very excited about a mission trip to a poor region of the Northeast. I will go with him if possible. He said “I don’t even want to hear the word “tithe!” They are also supporting the local rescue mission. Many churches that teach tithing do not have the same concern for the poor.

It was really encouraging to spend some time with a group that shares my values and priorities. Healing and deliverance and caring for the poor. Giving as the outflow of having received blessing in Christ, and not as the means of attaining it! I felt quite at home there. On Saturday night we prayed for everyone who had glasses. Several people were seeing much better and even perfectly without glasses! I recorded some testimonies and I added English subtitles to one of the videos so you can see it here. You can see how I was having people praying for each other and this lady was now able to read the clock at the back of the building. For some reason, the English subtitles don’t show when I embed the video on my site, so you can watch it on YouTube if you want to see the English subtitles.

Since new readers are unfamiliar with my story, today I’ll share how I became an out-of-the-box missionary! Maybe it will encourage someone else whose heart God has lit on fire for missions!

How God Lit a Passion for Missions in My Heart

I became convinced of God’s existence through a miraculous healing when my mom prayed for me. Soon after, I went to a Christian camp called Circle K and prayed the salvation prayer. My camp counselor was a guy named Mike Measley, and he was a missionary to tribes in Papua New Guinea. I decided I wanted to be a missionary too. I was 9 or 10 years old.

I vacillated about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but then I had a supernatural experience with God’s love when I was 13 and went on my first mission trip to Mexico just after turning 14. I fell in love with the people and with the lifestyle that was completely centered on Jesus and His kingdom. We went with YWAM. I decided once and for all that I wanted to be a missionary. That was all I wanted to do with my life, and it has never changed since.

I was constantly looking at YWAM literature and magazines and reading books about missions. Our church was also a missions-sending church, and one of the highlights of the year was our missions conference. I would weep and pray for the nations and talk to the missionaries. I was one of the first to arrive and the last to leave!

I started studying Spanish intensively. I got the worst grades in Spanish, but it was my favorite subject. However, I got involved in bilingual churches and bought a bilingual Bible. I was starting to preach in Spanish by the time I was 17. I went to Poland when I was 15, fell in love with the people, and started studying Polish for three hours a day.

I had completed almost all the requirements to graduate high school by the end of 11th grade, and I felt that the Lord was telling me to graduate early and work so I could go on mission trips. It wasn’t what my parents were planning on at first, but I talked to them and they agreed. I started working as a roofer and taking off for missions whenever I could, at least once a year and sometimes more. Mexico, Belize, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and more. I was reading in Russian on my second day there and had read the book of 1st John by the end of the 2-week trip. By the time I go married, I had been to a dozen countries, could get by reading my Bible in a dozen languages, and had preached in four languages.

Don’t Go Until You See Jesus!

When I was 17 or 18, Dale Mast came to our church and gave me a prophetic word. It was “Don’t go until you see Jesus!” The word frustrated me. All I wanted was to go. And although I was going on short-term missions and I believed the Lord was leading me, I wasn’t going like I wanted to go.

But I came to understand that word with time. Even though I would cry when I thought of sharing the gospel with people, I lacked boldness and was terrible at articulating the gospel message. Jesus told His disciples not to go until they received power! And that was after he had already given them power and authority and sent them to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons.

I received God’s correction at a Global Awakening conference when I was 20 years old (I think) and began to see Jesus do miracles I had only imagined. I read the gospels and cried, thinking “How was I so blind? I read this before but I never saw that Jesus healed them all because he was moved with compassion.” I felt that even though I loved Jesus and had an assurance of my salvation before, I had barely even known who Jesus was until now! I saw Jesus. I saw His love and glory through the manifestation of His power. Even though I never had a vision, this impacted me as if I’d had a vision of Jesus glorified. I saw HIm with the eyes of my heart.

This produced incredible boldness and it became easy to clearly articulate the gospel message.

How I Ended Up Outside The Camp

Jesus suffered outside the camp, and many Christian leaders and pioneers throughout history have at some time found themselves outside the camp of the religious establishment.

I was going on mission trips and preaching trips and growing, and every year I would also take off of work to go to the Voice of the Apostles and other Global Awakening events. I usually slept in the back of my truck because hotels were expensive! I slept on the floor of the airport in London on my way to Russia! I would do whatever it took. I just wanted to go!

I often struggled mentally over if I should go to the Global Awakening supernatural school, or to a YWAM discipleship training school. They were great options for many people, but I always felt like the Lord wasn’t leading me to that. (I still have a high level of appreciation for both organizations.) I felt like joining those programs would take me away from the missions the Lord was sending me on, and I didn’t have the peace to go. I was already going with signs and wonders. I wanted to take what I’d experienced at Global Awakening to others, speaking other languages.

The manifestation of God’s glory in my life got really strong during and after my second trip to Russia. But as I returned, I faced a very difficult situation that made me realize I’d been taught to relate to God through my tithe instead of through Jesus’ redemptive work. I went on the third trip to Russia in spite of very difficult circumstances, but the trip was confirmed supernaturally in several ways including a love for the people that came on me which I felt physically as a current of power flowing through my whole body from head to foot. I would be with a group of people in Russia and receive multiple words of knowledge, at times speaking out almost all the conditions and needs for healing in the room!

After returning, something clicked as I read the book of Galatians and I became convinced that the tithe issue of today was the same as the circumcision issue Galatians referred to. It wasn’t just wrong-It was a deadly error that was causing great harm to the church. The blessing or curse could only hinge on the tithe if we were justified by tithing! I had a talk with my pastors and shared multiple problems I saw. Most points weren’t answered but our pastor said they could no longer support me.

That was so hard! I’d had favor with the pastors before. I dreamed of being among the missionaries sent out by our church. My mind had told me I should do a DTS to become a missionary and be sponsored by the church, but I never had the peace of conviction that God was calling me to that. And now how would I ever receive approval? It would have been so much easier to just agree about tithing. But my conscience could never allow it!

The pastor said I would ruin my ministry. I thought “He doesn’t understand. Does he think ministry is a profession for me? Being a missionary is my life! I can’t do anything else anymore!” There had been multiple times when God’s love filled me until I was weeping loudly as I prayed for nations, and dozens of times when I felt God’s glory physically and tangibly. God’s love for people had grabbed a hold of my soul and there was no turning back, no other option. Even if I thought about or tried to do something else, I could never stay focused on it. But now I was outside the camp. I could not violate my conscience to save “my ministry.” Really, I don’t have a ministry. I just get the privilege of participating in Jesus’ ministry.

I got married in 2011 and moved to Brazil in 2012 in spite of many contrary circumstances not being able to work for the first few years. I felt even more isolated, far from my Christian friends and connections in the US, with no recognition or support as a missionary except for the encouragement of my immediate family and the pastors of a house church I’d been involved in. I passed through some really dark times and periods when I was bitter. But the Holy Spirit lifted me and established me even more in truth. I gained an aggressive faith during that time. Even in the hard times, I still prayed and saw miracles, mostly outside the church. I soon became involved in a precious Baptist church in Rio de Janeiro, but was still very much outside the camp of most of the religious establishment.

I am a Missionary!

I published my first book and started blogging in late 2015. God’s power would come on me as I wrote and the healings and miracles were increasing again. 2016 through 2019 were some of the hardest years in terms of natural circumstances, but I was becoming really strong inside and seeing an increase in miracles. My wife was kidnapped yet escaped. Our car was nearly totaled twice due to highway robbers, and we faced many other hardships.

In 2017 we rescued an elderly man, Edgar, who was being attacked in his house and tortured with knives for money. We lived in a lawless place. The police didn’t help and the guy we rescued him from threatened to kidnap our daughter. At times I felt I didn’t know if I would live or die, but I determined “As long as I live, I’ll live for Jesus.” We brought Edgar to live with us. Soon after, he stopped walking and we had to change his diapers and care for him for the last months of his life. I vomited because of the smell sometimes, but I had great joy because Jesus said that what we do for the least of these, we do for Him. I shared the need on Facebook and friends donated to help us buy diapers, food, and other necessities for Edgar.

I also taught a weekly Bible study in a group across the street for a year, and it was a joy to express the love God had planted in my heart! They said, “You talk about Jesus like you really know him!” I received a word of knowledge for healing for every new person that visited the Bible study that year, and they were all healed!

I visited the US that year and asked the pastor to agree to disagree about tithing but to pray for us as missionaries. I tried to tell him I was sharing the gospel and seeing Jesus do miracles on the street but we were facing a lot of danger and hardships and needed prayer. Much more than a tithe, I was risking my life for Jesus by taking in Edgar. But it was to no avail. They did not want the church to partner in any way with someone who didn’t believe in tithing, even if it was only prayer.

That was when I started telling people I was a missionary. I figured that nobody could say I wasn’t a missionary anymore because I was living in Brazil, preaching the gospel in Portuguese, and doing the work of a missionary. What really matter was that Jesus had sent me….and I knew it! The identity came with the call, not with the approval of the religious establishment. I was also ordained in 2017, not into a denomination but by a local pastor who recognized God’s grace and call on my life.

How The Work In Brazil Grew

In 2019 we received a prophecy that we would move to the central region of Brazil. We hadn’t even imagined this, but two weeks later a company in Goiania offered my wife a job and paid for our move and our apartment for the first few months. It was a big change and an escape from a terribly difficult time in Rio de Janeiro. I became more and more aggressive about doing the work Jesus had called me to. Too much time had already passed and I wasn’t going to wait for things to work out. I was going to find those who would receive Jesus.

I got involved in a local missions group and on the first trip to a poor neighborhood with wooden shacks and dirt streets, I saw every single person I prayed for get free from pain. It was about half of the adults present in the neighborhood. Since then I have taken every opportunity I could to see the mighty works of Jesus and become even more involved in a second missions group. I pray for people everywhere and see healing miracles, salvation, and deliverance. I don’t wait for people to give me opportunities. I find them! This led to the work supporting local rescue missions.

I have also preached at several churches in the last few years, teaching the people to minister in God’s power, and I’ve seen many miracles in that context. I have a few good pastor friends in various parts of Brazil. When I say I’m mostly outside of the religious establishment, I don’t mean out of fellowship! I have fellowship with those who are willing! Still, with the exception of the trip once in a while to preach in another part of Brazil, the deliverance, preaching, healings, and signs and wonders are almost all outside of the camp. Yet people on the other side of the world write me and tell me how the books, blog posts, and testimonies have encouraged them!

My life doesn’t quite look like I had imagined, but I am so thankful for what Jesus is doing and I know that there is much more ahead! I’m even grateful for the hard times. They helped to create an aggressive attitude that has formed the habit of praying for people everywhere.