I got involved serving in a healing ministry with Steve Stewart, and on a trip to India, I was looking forward to the opportunity to see something really powerful. On the flight over I told God, “You know how analytical I am. You created me this way. So I want more than just believing people were healed. I want to see the blind see, the deaf hear, and maybe the dead raised.”

One morning Steve and I left the medical clinic, and walked down a street of mostly empty little houses. Steve, through a translator, called out in a loud voice that they were taken captive by the devil, and we were here to set them free! “Does anyone need healing?” About twenty people, mostly women, slowly gathered around us.

Steve repeated the invitation, and a woman stepped forward with an injured knee. Steve stood about a foot from her face, looked straight into her eyes, and announced, “Jesus is going to heal you right now.” I was standing right beside him until that moment, but that was too much for me. How could he know that? I physically took a step back to let him handle this on his own. I didn’t want to associate myself with that outrageous claim. He prayed and she was healed. I was back in to pray for the next one, a sore neck. She also said she was healed.

The next woman was blind. Steve said, “Jesus is going to heal you right now.” I couldn’t take it, and actually stepped back again. He started to pray for her. It was somewhat chaotic. Steve would pray for her, the translator would translate. The woman would respond with the progress, like, “I can see shadows,” and some man beside her was frantically talking the whole time. Finally she said, “I can see your glasses.” She was healed. The man was now holding up fingers in front of her face: two, then three.

We found out later from the translator that he was her husband. At first, he was desperately trying to explain to Steve that this was impossible: she’s blind! Then he was trying to verify that she was healed, but she responded with, “I was blind and now I see. Stop bothering me!” I was back in, and together with Jesus we healed several more blind people.

That evening the village square was filled with people we’d invited during the day. After the preaching, our team split up to pray for people. Two of us, with a translator, soon had a line-up of several dozen expectant villagers. People were getting healed as fast as we could pray for them. Sore backs, knees. I put my hand on one young man’s head and rebuked his fever. I could feel his head cool off instantly. The most surprising one was a completely deaf man that could now hear.

Later that week I asked Steve to take me to a place where they had never seen foreigners. The leader of the church movement we were working with drove us about an hour to one of their churches. We walked into what looked like a three car garage. No furniture, not even chairs. Inside there was a woman holding a very young boy. I asked what she was doing here. The leader asked her and then told me, she likes it here. I had him ask why. Because the pastor raised her child from the dead yesterday. I asked, “this child?” so many times that they started laughing at me.

The boy had died. They took him to the hospital where they verified the death. And they brought him back to the pastor for the funeral. (The heat there means funerals must be performed immediately.) The pastor, however, wanted to go to Steve’s meeting, so he prayed for the boy to come back to life. Wow. Now I’m lost. I asked the leader on the way back to the car, “You have a lot of great things going on. If I was able to visit all of the 500 churches today, where would this story rank?” He looked equally confused at my question, “Number one. Raised from the dead!”

On the flight home, I was thanking God for the amazing things he let me experience. As I recounted the highlights, I had this wonderful realization that he had exactly answered my prayer: I saw the blind see, the deaf hear and maybe the dead raised. God is so intimate and personal. His power is wrapped in his love. I had this feeling like I could never doubt him again.