Author,
Compelled by Love
Co-Founder,
Iris Ministries (with her husband, Rolland, since 1980)
Missionary to the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong and London
Started missions work in Mozambique in 1995
Iris Ministries has founded 5,000 churches in Mozambique and neighboring countries; Oversee 7,000 churches, a national Bible College and they care for over 5,000 children
Guest Bio
Heidi Baker: Intimacy for Miracles
By Christy Biswell
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– BEATITUDES
Since moving to Mozambique in 1995, and giving away everything they had, Heidi and Rolland Baker have learned to depend on God for everything.
“If God does not show up, we are dead,” says Heidi.
Living among the poor has allowed Heidi to see firsthand how when they embrace the life of the Beatitudes, they are truly blessed.
“The Beatitudes are God’s recipe for revival. They are a portrait and description of Jesus. When we walk as Jesus walked, we will be blessed,” shares Heidi.
She believes God is calling a generation forward to be “laid-down lovers for Him, to walk in the ways He walked, and to follow His Sermon on the Mount as their instructions for their Christian walk.”
Heidi says there is something about the poor that delights the heart of God. The reason God breaks forth in Mozambique in great power is because the people are poor in spirit.
“I believe Jesus meant that poor in spirit is a posturing of the heart where one is wholly given, fully yielded, completely desperate, and totally dependent on God alone.”
Heidi shares one of many occasions in which God showed up right on time. It was a 110-degree Christmas Day. There were hundreds of children that were awaiting a Christmas party at their center. These children included girls who had sold their bodies, bandits, rascals, and children from the village. All had all been invited. The challenge was that there were so many children, but only a limited amount of toy bags available. So, Heidi began to give the presents out first to those children who had never received a present before. Finally, it came down to the older girls, but all that was left were bags with stuffed animals in them.
Heidi asked the girls, “What would you like, sweetheart?”
And the girl replied, “Beads.”
Heidi’s friend and co-worker said “There is nothing in the bags but old stuffed dogs.”
Heidi asked her friend to check the bags again. When the lady reached her hand into the bag of stuffed animals she started screaming, “Beads! There are beads in the bag!”
All of the girls got beautiful, bright beads for Christmas.
“God really is God, and He is much better than Santa Claus,” says Heidi.
OPEN MY EYES
Heidi received a prophetic word by a man named Randy Clark.
She was told “the blind will see, the crippled will walk, the dead will be raised from the dead and the poor would hear the good news of Jesus Christ.”
After she returned to the mission field in Mozambique she began praying for the blind but not getting good results. Until about a year later, when a blind beggar lady came to church. Heidi was thrilled to pray for her because she wasn’t going to give up on the word that she had received from the Lord. As she prayed for the lady, her eyes began to turn from white to gray and then to brown. The next day she prayed for another woman who was blind since the age of eight. This lady received her sight too. On the third day, Heidi prayed for yet another woman who was blind from birth and she received her sight. All three of these women were named Mama Aida. In Mozambique, Heidi’s name is also Mama Aida. Through these healings God opened Heidi’s eyes to see how the Bride in the West is blind, poor, and thirsty for God’s Word.
Although she had worked with the poorest of the poor she says,” I could not understand and I could not see that people in the Western world were poor and starving too, that they were starving for the things of God. And then God opened my eyes.”
FOOD MIRACULOUSLY MULTIPLIED
In 1995, Heidi arrived in Mozambique, the poorest country in the world, with her family. The government offered them a horribly dilapidated and neglected "orphanage." After many years of brutal civil war, thousands of children had been left as orphans, displaced and abandoned.
There were 80 children and God poured down His love and provided food day by day. A church was planted and hundreds began to turn to the Lord. The former communist directors of the government orphanage were furious ever since Heidi and her husband took over since their extreme corruption and thievery had been stopped. Scheming together with an equally corrupt faction of the government, they concocted accusations and issued a legal decree against Iris Ministries that forbade prayer and worship, Christian singing, and all forms of "unapproved" food and clothes distribution and medical assistance.
Since Heidi and the children did not obey the new rules, they had 48 hours to leave the property. Heidi was told there was a contract out on her life. So, they evacuated to their office in the capital city of Maputo. The children gathered in the dining room/church began to sing praise and worship songs at the tops of their lungs. They were beaten and told they could not worship God. One by one, they began to walk the 20 miles to the city office. Reunited, Heidi, Rolland and the orphans called out to God in total desperation.
They had lost everything and there was no place for them to go and no food to eat. A friend from the American Embassy came with chili and rice for the Bakers and their 2 children. They prayed over the pots of food and told the 80+ children to sit down. Everyone ate and was full! God has rewarded their faith, and now their property in Pemba is over seven times what was lost in 1997.
“Government officials who once persecuted us and beat our children are now thankful for us staying in the country,” says Heidi.
MISSIONS IN HER BLOOD
Heidi was called to the mission field when she was 16 and living on an Indian Reservation as an American Field student where she was led to the Lord by a Navajo preacher. Several months later she was taken up in a vision for several hours and heard the Lord tell her to be a minister and missionary to Africa, Asia and England. Heidi met her husband Rolland at a small charismatic church in Southern California and married six months later. They left for the mission field two weeks after they were married, with simple instructions from the Lord, one way tickets and thirty dollars in their pockets. They spent 12 years in Asia and saw thousands come to Jesus.
After meeting Jackie Pullinger-To and working with her ministry to drug addicts in Hong Kong, their hearts were increasingly broken for the poor and unwanted. In 1992 they left to do their PhDs at Kings' College, University of London.
ROLLAND’S HEALTH
Rolland left Mozambique for the United States last November for prayer, treatment and rest. During this time he has been under the care of several doctors and has been meeting with counselors.
His physician states, “Rolland Baker is currently under my care for a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which has caused some short-term memory loss due the intense ministry and administrative responsibilities he has overseen for many years. Heidi, staff and board members of Iris Ministries will assume Rolland’s responsibilities until further notice.”
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