Displaying items by tag: North America

Nichol Collins was a transgender drug dealer for twenty years, then became a Christian after a brutal attack. As a minister for the last few years, she has prayed with people on social media to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When the pandemic spread across the USA she started getting calls from people seeking spiritual help. ‘People were terrified and started saying, “Hey I heard that you pray with people to receive the Holy Spirit”, Collins explained. ‘I always clarify that I'm not giving it out. God is pouring out His Spirit in the last days on all flesh. I'm just a conduit to pray with people, kind of coach them through it. Explain it, make them more comfortable. This is a gift to anyone who asks according to Luke chapter 11:13.’ Recently, more than 120 people have been baptised.

Powerful Hurricane Laura battered the Louisiana and Texas coastline, bringing unsurvivable storm surges up to 20 feet in Louisiana and Texas with 150 mph winds. Parts of Lake Charles will be underwater that no-one has seen before. 100,000 residents are at risk of flooding. Pray for the search and rescue operations as they swing into action. The storm is complicating evacuations in the midst of a pandemic, as officials send evacuees to hotel rooms. Pray for all evacuees now in fear for the future. Some first responders in Louisiana stood outside the sheriff's office for a moment of prayer before the hurricane made landfall. Over 270,000 homes in Texas and Louisiana are without power. Pray for hospitals and the vulnerable who need electric machines to survive. People refusing to evacuate were told, ‘Write your name, address, social security number and next of kin and put it in a Ziploc bag in your pocket. Pray that it does not come to this.’

Wisconsin’s governor called in the National Guard to help quell unrest after police shot unarmed Jacob Blake in the back seven times at close range. The incident was videoed and went viral on the internet sparking nationwide demonstrations and the postponement of major sporting events as players protested against the shooting. Trump’s administration made its sympathies clear: ‘We will always stand with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line of law enforcement.’ Meanwhile Rev Al Sharpton and his National Action Network are leading a march on Washington to demand action on police brutality. He said, ‘That policeman’s life was never under threat, and yet he shot multiple times. That’s why we’re marching.’ Some say, ‘Riots are not saving Black lives, they’re destroying lives, businesses and the social fabric of cities.’ Others reply, ‘There needs to be unrest in the streets as long as there’s unrest in our lives’. See

Dr Martin Luther King Jr said we must live together as brothers or perish together as fools. His niece Dr Alveda King said, ‘We're fighting over trying to reconcile separate races when we are only one race - the human race.’ Bishop Harry Jackson said, ‘We're seeing a readiness to respond to race across racial boundaries. But what's missing is in Galatians 3:26; we say there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither bond nor free. These distinctions can be solved by coming together in Christ.’ We can pray for Christians to lead the way with answers to the ills of society. We have the Bible and the Holy Spirit to guide us. The church must find answers and right any wrongs that exist and then boldly become part of the national discussion on race relations in America. Bishop Williams added, ‘When someone needs blood, they don’t ask if it was black blood, white blood or Jewish blood; they need blood.’

Firefighters battling historic blazes in Northern California made progress towards getting the massive fires under control after temperatures cooled in the region. Lightning strikes, many of which sparked the fires, have decreased, and fire officials said they have had successes battling three blazes burning around the San Francisco Bay area as they prepare for a ‘marathon’ in the coming weeks to suppress the rest of the wildfires.

Californian firefighters are battling hundreds of wildfires across California amid the hottest temperatures ever recorded (130 °F, 54.4°C in Death Valley). The fires have burned 649,054 acres in 14 states. More than 16,700 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to fight the fires (see). In 72 hours, 10,849 lightning strikes hit California, starting 367 new fires. Rescue and firefighting resources are depleted as new fires continue to ignite. The deputy fire chief said this was not a normal situation; ‘We are doing as much as we can with the resources that we have’. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered, whole communities destroyed, and thousands more homes are threatened. Pray for firefighters and emergency teams to be protected; for co-ordinated relief accommodation for the homeless; comfort for those who have lost everything and healing for the injured. May God bring rain and cool weather into the region.

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud related to We Build the Wall, a fundraising campaign to support the building of a border wall between the US and Mexico. Federal prosecutors allege that Bannon and three others ‘orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors’ in connection with the online crowdfunding campaign that raised more than £19m. Bannon promised that 100% of the money donated would be used for the project, but the defendants allegedly used hundreds of thousands of dollars in a manner inconsistent with the organisation's public representations. The trio faked invoices and sham ‘vendor’ arrangements in a bid to hide what was really happening.

A pro-life filmmaker is claiming censorship after his documentary was removed from Amazon Prime video ‘because of poor customer reviews’ despite the film receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews. Marcus Pittman’s movie, ‘Babies are Still Murdered Here,’ goes into the deep underpinnings of major national lobbyist groups. It asks why after 46 years babies are still being murdered. Amazon categorises reviews based on keywords: some keywords were pro-life, end abortion and pro-life movement. This may be why the film was removed. Amazon has faced allegations of censorship before. Last year it pulled books describing how a relationship with Jesus Christ helped people out of same-sex attractions, saying it was in ‘violation of our content guidelines’, but did not point out which parts were objectionable.

On 1 August, demonstrators in Portland damaged property and set fire to American flags and Bibles. Again, little law enforcement presence was visible, and no arrests were made. After weeks of similar violent rioting and nightly attacks, on 4 August federal officers saw their first night of state and local law enforcement support and experienced relative peace with crowds ‘subdued.’ Activity around the courthouse continues, but violence is diminishing after an increased state and federal law presence on the ground. It will remain until the authorities determine that the courthouse and other federal properties are safe. Although crowd sizes have dwindled from the thousands in July, observers on 6 August reported many people, including some with ‘press’ written on their outer garments (indicating journalists), continuing to throw glass and plastic bottles at police officers.

California ordered a ban on indoor singing in places of worship, so a worship leader and an outreach ministry leader have proclaimed that ‘the Church has left the building.’ Sean Feucht, who recently led a crowd of nearly 1,000 in worship songs facing the ocean in Huntington Beach, said they were going out on the bridge between church and community: ‘We’re going to meet in parks. We’re not restricted to the four walls. We can still be the church even if we’re not in our buildings.’ A newspaper article supports the claim of ‘revival’ with its headline, In Huntington Beach, a revival with church at the ocean’s edge, photos of baptism, and testimony from attenders. An Instagram video post captured by this reporter shows Feucht leading the crowd at the event: see