Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Heidi Baker and Heidi and her husband Rolland have such an exciting ministry in Mozambique, Africa. And the ministry has seen 17 people raised from the dead. They have started over 5000 churches; in fact they don’t even know how many churches because they’re multiplying so rapidly. They feed daily some 2000 orphans and I heard a teaching by Heidi on the Sermon on the Mount and it’s never been so real as the teaching she gave. So Heidi, if you would just continue please.
Heidi: Oh, bless your heart. Well the poor have taught us so much; they’ve taught us so much about Jesus and His kingdom, about meekness and hunger. And we read when we look at Matthew 5:6 about hunger and thirst, Isaiah 55 “Hunger and thirst.” Why is it that the hungry and thirsty are filled? And why is it that the poor seem to run to Jesus and there’s this desperation in their heart. Like in the dump we’ve never seen a person ever say no to salvation; we’ve never said when we found somebody when we say “Do you need the Lord? Do you need to know Jesus? Do you need to meet the Father?” Never has one person said “No, I’m full, I’m not hungry, I don’t care.” They run to Him because they’re scavenging in the garbage and when you offer them life, and you offer them the beauty of who He is they run and their filled. And that’s a spiritual principal in that “Those that are hungry and thirsty for Him they’ll be filled.” Those that…it says “Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.” I look at these people, oh I love this story. This little girl named Helena she had her leg burned off in a fire in a Kanisu hut, it’s like a straw hut in Africa. Because her leg was burned off her grandmother said “We cannot use her, we don’t want to feed her she’s got one leg.” So she told her brothers “Go out there and kill her.”
Sid: Hm.
Heidi: So they took these big rocks and they threw them at her head and they thought that Helena was dead, because they were ordered by grandmother to kill this girl with one leg burned up in a fire. A man walked by the field, it’s like a good Samaritan story, he just walked by this field and saw this girl who was motionless and bleeding there in the field, but he picked her up with her one leg and he took her to the hospital and he dropped her off there. Months and months later this little girl was discharged but she was like 11, 12 years old. And she had nowhere to go, she couldn’t go home they tried to kill her, what was she to do. So she goes to the street like 100’s of other kids that we pick up. And she goes to the street and she sells her body, her one legged body so that she has something to eat. And I found this little girl, I’ll never forget that night. You know the police were shooting and they shot another street child and I was holding him bleeding in my arms. Here comes Helena one legged prostitute, 12 years old. And I looked her in the eyes and I just see the beauty of Jesus. I mean I see Him because “Whatever you do for the least of these you do to Me,” and I looked and I saw Him looking back at me. And I said “Helena your loved, your beautiful and Jesus loves you and you’re so precious and so beautiful.” And I said “Come home and live with me, I always have enough room, you’re always welcome come.” And she said “Jesus loves me, He forgave me?” Oh, she was so touched, she started crying. She met Him and she said “I have to go tell my brothers, I have to go tell my family, I have to go tell them that Jesus loves them too.”
Sid: Wait, her brother are the ones that were stoning her to death.”
Heidi: (Laughing) “Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.” She was so full of mercy, she showed me what mercy is. She showed me what love is, she taught me more her first day of salvation than many, many famous preachers every taught it was beautiful. And she now lives with her family again and she’s led them all to the Lord. It’s so precious she’s a… oh, I got to marry her. She’s been now 9 years, she lived with us for about 4 years. I just did her wedding a couple of months ago. And it was the most glorious occasion; there she was in a white dress and her family was there. And she was radiating with the love of God like nothing I’d ever seen.
Sid: Heidi, what is it like to pull a street kid out of that environment, first of all what is their environment really like? Describe to me what the average street kid in the dump what his life or her life is.
Heidi: Well the kids on the street they just live in cardboard boxes and they live under little broken down buildings, under doorways. And they get beaten up by the police, they get shot at sometimes.
Sid: Why would the police beat them up?
Heidi: They beat them up because they don’t want them living in the city, they’d like to clean up the city. And so thy beat them up and also they shot at them when the steal things. These kids aren’t nice, we’re not saying that they’re nice little sweet angels, they rob and steal and rape and pillage. But it’s just that Jesus makes the difference when they meet Him they change. But their life is hell, there life is hell, they steal to survive, they sell their bodies little 10 year old girls selling their bodies, little boys selling their bodies for a Coke-Cola, dying of AIDS, malaria, disease, it’s just hellish. And Jesus took us to Mozambique, He didn’t say “Start with the big pastor people you know. Bring in a revival in the university.” He said, “Sit with the poor.”
Sid: Wait a second, you mean He did tell you to go to Mozambique and get your pictures plastered all over the place. And rent a tent and have guaranteed a 100,000 people so that you could come back to the states and say “I reached 100,000 people.”
Heidi: (Laughing)
Sid: You mean that’s not His style with you.
Heidi: No not with us, no. (Laughing)
Sid: (Laughing)
Heidi: I’m not really a poster child. He said, “Sit on the street corner and love the one in front of you.” That’s what He said “Sit on the street corner and love the one in front of you and don’t just love them with words, take them home, take them all home.” He said “I died that there would always be enough.”
Sid: Now you said something to me that bothered me a little bit, me now. And that is you put your hands on these children with lice and worms and who knows what, doesn’t this bother you?
Heidi: No, I think you know Jesus talks about fellowshipping in His suffering, if you don’t touch people. And either we say “Oh, you’re always healed of everything.” No, we get lice and we get scabies and we get sick. We see huge miracles but we also get sick, we get food poisoning, we get all kinds of stuff as we touch the poor. I lay my hands on people with leprosy, I don’t get leprosy that’s a mercy of God, but you know it’s about toughing, it’s about loving, it’s about caring. It’s not about removing yourself and having a nice little sanitized church service. It’s about living in the dirt with the broken and bringing the pure heart of Jesus to the dying.
Sid: Heidi, tell me about one of these, just pick one of them, one of these street kids that got caught up in the heavenlies and said things that they had no way of even knowing.
Heidi: Oh, I love telling about that. There’s this little guy whose with us now in the north, his name’s Arsenial. He’s a half cast child which is especially hard and I found him scavenging in the garbage dump. I mean imagine scavenging in the garbage dump of some of the poorest of the whole world. It’s not like scavenging in Laguna Beach garbage. You’re finding the worst of the worst and here’s this little kid he doesn’t know how old he is. He has the huge bloated belly and he’s just covered in every kind of disease and sore. And we take him home and we just love on him and one day we are there in the dirt, we don’t even have a cement floor at this time. And we are in a tent by the way, but a tent in the dirt with lots of orphans. So we’re there and he’s crying and he’s just crying and sobbing in the dirt. And I said “What’s going on Arsenial? What’s going on?” I mean I let him there for a couple of hours crying and he couldn’t talk. He couldn’t walk, he couldn’t talk, and so we after about 3 hours we just carry him back to the dorm. And give him a hug and put him to bed. The next day he comes running to me just running, and this little boy looks like the light of the world, I mean the light coming off his face was incredible, I mean he was beaming. His eyes were flickering and he was just so happy. And I said “Arsenial, Arsenial what happened to you?” He said “I saw Jesus!” “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” He said “I saw Him!” And I said “What did He look like?” He said “He’s beautiful, He’s beautiful.” I said “What did He say and why were you crying?” He said “Well I was crying, and I was crying for hours and hours and I was crying for all of the sins of all the people in Mozambique.” And he said, this little boy doesn’t know how old he is but he at the time was maybe 8, maybe 8 years old. And he is crying for 3 hours over the sins of the people of Mozambique. And Jesus appears to him and Jesus appears to him and He said “I will forgive all who come to me.” That’s what Jesus told this little boy.
Sid: By curiosity, what’s going on with this little boy today?
Heidi: Now we have… Rolland and I live part of the time in the south and part in the north. And we moved him to the north in Pamba and he’s living with us, with our little group there and he is sharing the gospel. He’s sings on outreach, we go into the bush bush, we’re…
Sid: Oh we’re out of time.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth