Dale Alter has been going on mission trips to Kenya since 2005. This year, he invited his lovely wife Miki, and their Bethel Healing Rooms friend, Rick Frasure, to go with them on a two-week trip to the Maasai Mara. Reluctantly, Rick said yes; inside he was saying no, then had a wrestling match with Jesus that night, and Jesus took out the fear. He certainly is glad that Jesus won that one. This trip changed him profoundly.
The trip was planned for mid-March 2020 before anyone could have anticipated the pandemic that would make international travel shaky, to say the least. Rick said they would not have gone ahead with the trip had they not been sure God wanted them to. They had peace. They also had to press past the fears of many others. The threesome flew to Nairobi and from there to the Maasai Mara, the actual bush country, where they could see lions, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, zebras, gazelles, impalas, monkeys, hyenas, and hippos. There in the bush, they set about visiting villages, taking roads that would be classified as unpassable in the U.S. that the villagers euphemistically dub “an African massage” because of the bumpiness. They drove hundreds of miles in those conditions.
Here is Rick’s account of the trip:
The people were beautiful. We had so many opportunities to love the people.
We ministered in four churches and in several villages and connected with over 700 people, all of them Maasai. I estimate that we saw 200 miracles. The villages were small, sometimes containing only 30 people. The main town we stayed in was Aitong, with a population of 300–400 people. We visited the shops and the market and prayed for business owners all over the city. Thursday was market day. We prayed for the food market and the sellers. Their style of doing business is through bazaars. People lay things on the ground, and it’s like a giant flea market with different bazaars, one for food, one for boots, one for machetes, etc. At the same time, there were cattle, goat, and sheep auctions and trades going on. Their main source of revenue is cattle, sheep, and goats.
We had so many different encounters in Aitong. There’s not a lot of medical help available, so we would lay hands on the children, and they would feel better. Sometimes we laid hands on them simply to bless them, and we knew God was there. There was a difference after we prayed. We would lay hands on them, and God would touch them. We had interpreters but did not always understand the reactions of the people. Sometimes people would just say, “Oh, I’m healed” or nonchalantly say, “The pain is gone!” Other times their reactions were more dramatic.
The villages were amazing. People lived in mud huts. The parents have to pay for schooling. If you don’t pass exams, you cannot graduate to the next level. Students followed us to pray for them that they would be able to pass their exams. We prayed, prophesied, and loved on them with God’s love as we blessed the young people. I was blessed by the respect they gave to us as elders. That was a mark of the people—the way they honored adults and elders with great respect. Very impressive.
In one of the small mud hut villages we visited, we were received well. We simply walked to the center of the village, and the people filed in around us to hear us.
A young man’s mother asked if we would pray for her son, who was in his hut sick. This teen was bedridden. She must have thought we might not come because she went and made sure and brought him into the center of the village. He had trouble breathing. We prayed for him, and he was 50% better, he said. We knew God was healing him, so we laid hands on him again and prayed. Whatever his condition was, it left after that. It may have been pneumonia. We were not sure, but he was healed. The Lord healed the rest of the people who had headaches, malaria, and painful backs, knees, and feet. We prayed simple prayers, and Jesus healed them all.
In another village, we came across a mother holding her clearly sick and lethargic baby, who had been bitten by a poisonous spider. The women had gathered around them to give them comfort. Since there was no medic or medical help, the women gathered around mother and child for loving support as that’s all they had.
We laid hands on the baby and commanded the poison to lose all its effect. Then we went to pray for others. When we came back 15 minutes later, the child was completely changed! The women were happy and rejoicing. The child was bright-eyed and normal. At that moment, we knew if we had not come for any other reason, that was reason enough right there. It was very exciting.
Shortly after rejoicing over that baby, as we were heading to pray for the village elders under a tree, I felt pain in my back that I knew was not mine. I knew it was a word of knowledge. So I stopped where I was and saw an elderly woman. I asked her where she had pain in her back. She pointed to her lower back. I got a child to lay hands on her, but the child got scared and pulled back. An elder, realizing what I was doing, got another child, who laid his hand on the woman’s back. The name of Jesus carries power. I had the child repeat, “In Jesus’ name, pain go.” I was going to ask if there was a difference, but I did not need to say anything. The woman’s face lit up, and she jumped up and down, proof of healing. The children begin jumping up and down with her. Great fun! No translation was necessary.
An elder sitting under the tree was sick with cerebral malaria, which is the kind that affects the brain. Dale is a doctor, so he knows about these things. I laid hands on the man’s head. Later, he told us that as I laid my hand on his head, the sickness that was there left. It came out of the top of his head. That was a dramatic moment in which we saw malaria heal instantly. A lot of people had headaches and got instantly healed when we laid hands on them. We suspect they, too, had malaria as headaches are a symptom along with other symptoms they had.
Following Bethel Healing Room protocol, we would lay hands on people and have them test it out and confirm to us they were healed. Because Dale is a doctor, he recognized some of the conditions people had that were undiagnosed because they did not have doctors. People were healed of digestive issues in their stomachs and probably appendicitis in their sides and malaria in their heads. Some had pain in their chest on the right side, so I think we had three or four of those for whom we don’t know what the pain was, but only that it left. Hallelujah! We also prayed confidently for a woman who wanted prayer for infertility.
In one church, Miki was teaching the children while Dale and I preached to the older people. Maybe 30 children came to Christ in that neighborhood. Miki wanted to take them on an encounter to heaven. She had them close their eyes, lie down where they were sitting, and go to heaven. Later, they shared about the encounters they had had with Jesus. Some of them did not want to come back. Miki said, “You have to come back now,” so they obediently did rejoin us in the services.
Everywhere we went we preached against fear. One morning as we were having breakfast and talking about the fear around us, we became so filled with joy that Dale and I stood up and began to dance over fear in a dance of victory. Somebody said, “There are the dancing bears. Papa bears dancing with our heavenly Father,” and it all seemed so right.
One night after dinner we started singing “Wonderful God” by Hillsong. We forgot about ourselves and worshipped the Lord. The presence was all around us. A young man walked by and said, “Glory to God.” Miki and I stopped him as he walked by again. Dale shared some testimonies with the young pastor. He then told Dale that he had severe right-sided abdominal pain but knew if we prayed for him he would be healed. Dale put his hand on the painful area, and he and Miki prayed. A smile and a surprised expression were followed by, “The pain is gone. I am healed.”
We spent so much time encouraging businesses, especially in the tourist industry, hotels, for example, because there have been so many cancellations. We had a service at the Fairmont Resort, where we prayed for the manager and the hotel workers. When we would go and pray for hotel managers and staff, we would bless and encourage them and bring joy. Many of them love the Lord but need encouragement. We also prayed for a Muslim hardware owner, with whom we are still in touch.
We went to a service at the Happy Church, a church of 200 people who really are happy. They worship and rejoice. They spend time in His presence. We had several altar calls and words of knowledge and people getting healed. The first word of knowledge we had was Miki’s word of knowledge about a headache. A very sick young woman stood up. The power of God came on her, and she went back in her chair— instantly healed! That’s when we first saw the connection between headaches and malaria.
At the Happy Church, a young teenage woman came up to me. When I asked her what she wanted prayer for, she said she could barely make it up the hill to the church. She could barely breathe. Her heart was beating at a phenomenal rate. Here in the States, we would have called an ambulance. I had the pastor’s wife put her hand on the girl’s chest, and we prayed, but nothing happened. Then the pastor’s wife grabbed my hand and put it above the girl’s heart. It literally felt like her heart would fly out of her chest. I do not know how she was able to stand. The chest pain must have been awful. I began to pray, feeling impressed to speak “shalom” over her heart again and again, then speaking “peace,” I felt her heartbeat begin to slow down to a normal beat. It was extraordinary. Praise God! In the Happy Church, at least 150 people were healed. The people were very happy about the messages that we preached.
God really took care of us. We were 300 miles from Nairobi when the government announced it was about to close the airport down. We started for Nairobi on Monday as they were closing the airport on Wednesday. Our flights were canceled, and we had to buy new tickets, which were outrageously priced, but we did not have the money. Karen, my wife, borrowed it from a relative, and we were able to secure tickets that would take four days’ travel time to get home. We left after midnight on one of the last flights out of Nairobi. We flew to Ethiopia, where we waited 22 hours, and witnessed to people in the airport and shared Jesus with a Muslim along with his friend and told them what God is doing.
In what became a source of divine assistance, I opened my passport wallet, and there was a 20-dollar bill in there that wasn’t there earlier. It was a supernatural event of provision, a miracle. We bought coffee for the Muslims and told them about the goodness of God. I was also able to purchase bottles of sweet water. So good.
We flew from there to Canada to an almost empty airport that was closing or seemed ready to close. It felt like we were the last people on planet Earth—so crazy.
We got a flight to L.A. with only 11 people on the flight. Why they spent all that fuel must have been ordered from heaven. We had to get to the airport in San Francisco by Friday because they were closing it. Alaska Air flew us from L.A. with only 11 people again on the flight.
God had His hand on us the whole time we were there and traveling—divine protection. I was almost run over by a motorcycle in Nairobi. And then, on our way home from San Francisco at 3 a.m., we approached a car at freeway speeds at night parked in the middle of the right lane of the freeway with no lights on and no one in it. Miki who was driving, made a smooth move around it. Thank you, Lord!
Jesus did it all! We just say yes and do our best to follow. He uses what there is. I wish there was more, but He uses what we have. It was Jesus! He got us there. He got us out. He did the work. Amen.