HOMELESS MAN HEALED

John Waddoups tells how he and his 16 year old daughter prayed for healing for Phil the Flute a local homeless man.

A few weeks ago I was reading the Goodnews magazine when I came across an article about the Mother of Mercy group feeding and praying with homeless people. I thought I could never do that! But when I went to early morning Mass the next day, the gospel reading was about Jesus sending out the seventy two in pairs. At the end of Mass I asked the Lord how did he want me to evangelise that day. It came to me that I should show God’s love to someone, and Phil the Flute a local homeless man, came to my mind. The idea came to me that I should buy him a cup of coffee as it was a cold February day and have a chat with him.

I was meeting my youngest daughter, Grace, who’s 16, for lunch and I mentioned to her what I was thinking of doing. She thought it was a great idea, so before we went to eat we went to look for Phil. When we met him he was on a crutch and could hardly stand. He told us he had got drunk the week before, tripped over his dog and fell down a flight of steps. His leg was swollen from thigh to toes and he could not bend his knee. He said he had damaged his knee ligaments and had been to the doctors. I bought him a coffee and we chatted for a while then I went to go.

But my daughter had other ideas and asked if we could pray for him. He said, “Yes” and that he had rededicated his life to Christ at the local house church two days before. I thought I had done my bit by buying him coffee and I hadn’t reckoned to be praying with him for healing. To be honest I felt a bit uncomfortable laying my hands on a stranger, so I just prayed for protection and left the praying to my daughter. She asked if she could lay her hands on him and he said “yes.” Later she told me that as she prayed she could feel her hands getting very hot. She prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill him and heal his leg. I just prayed in tongues, aimed at his leg, but at a safe distance.

Afterwards we said our goodbyes and went off to lunch. Next day Grace rang me in tears of joy. Phil the Flute had apparently got up at his church and told them that two people – a man and a young girl – had prayed with him in the street and his leg was healed. To prove this, he even did squats to show everyone. As a result the house church invited my daughter and I to go out on the streets with them and minister to the homeless. Has God got a sense of humour or what?

DO YOU WANT PERPETUAL ADORATION IN YOUR PARISH?

Dear Goodnews, I have been involved in the CCR for almost 30 years. For most of this time I have been a parishioner at St Dunstan’s in Kingsheath, Birmingham. In 1995, wanting to deepen my prayer life, I asked our parish priest at the time, if we could start adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in our Church. He agreed as long as we organised it.

This ended up with us inviting a priest from America to come and preach in the parish about Perpetual Adoration. He didn’t charge us anything and came one weekend and preached at all the Sunday Masses about the benefits of Perpetual Adoration. He had the most wonderful charism in preaching about this, and so many people signed, even for the night slots, that we were able to fulfil the 168 hours a week we needed to start it. As well as inspiring people to sign up, the priest also helped us set up a co-ordinating team and gave us practical instructions on how to run it, once it had started. This was all really useful.

It has been a marvellous blessing over the years to all those who have participated and the people who do it, love it. We have done this now for almost 15 years. Over the years some people on the rota have died or moved away, however, and it has been more difficult to fill the night slots, although we still pray from 8 am to 11pm/midnight every day, and on Thursday we pray through the night too.

We would like to invite a Perpetual Adoration promoter priest to come back and inspire our parish again, as I know that when people hear the message the response is amazing. We contacted a priest called Fr Victor Warkulwitz in the USA, and he is prepared to come back to us for a refresher, if another parish, who hasn’t had a Perpetual Adoration preacher would be interested in having him to share the message there. Are there any Goodnews readers in parishes where there is a group that would like to have Perpetual Adoration? It is important to have the backing of the parish priest of course. If so either contact me on 0121 449 2821 or write direct to Fr Victor at Our Lady of Fatima Rectory, 2933 Street Road, Bensalem, PA 19020 or email vpw@webtv.net tel 001 215 244 9211

Yours in the Lord, Pat Nolan