Stefanie, Kelson, Juan: Firecamp Testimonies

I met some incredible people at Firecamp September 2024 in Curitiba, Brazil.

Sometimes you don’t know until after some time which people will really catch the fire and go. There were a few there I profoundly felt a call to the nations on and I prayed specifically for them about that: 

Stefanie Mendes from Rio was one and I kept getting the Isaiah passage, “arise and shine for your light has come…” (Is 60:1) She lived in the UK and her English was quite good. I asked her about the school of evangelism because she SO is clearly marked for preaching the gospel. She reminds me quite a bit of the Latvian Grace Peremot I met at the border evangelism time. They have the same “wild and free” heart of love for Jesus and people. I hope she stays connected to CfaN, because I think it could be a place where she can grow and be accepted among others like herself!

Kelson is an extremely outgoing, extroverted, front-row-cheering-you-on kind of guy. During the deliverance night, I felt like God wanted me to go pray for an impartation for him. When I did, he fell backwards and his body went crazy bouncing up and down all over the floor and he looked like he was getting electrocuted. Two Firecampers jumped in and started holding him down, yelling deliverance phrases in Portuguese. Sometimes people are only used to demonic manifestations and they get scared something isn’t the Holy Spirit… but they can be just as dramatic! I shooed them away and asked the Holy Spirit to deposit new gifts and activate existing ones for Kelson. 

Interestingly, he had very similar physical manifestations to when I prayed for another Brazilian named Mateus a few years ago. I’ve lost count of the number of countries God’s sent Mateus to preach the gospel in since that prayer time in May 2021! I pray God does the same with Kelson – set him on fire with your love for the world, Lord! 

Juan Victor Dias Fernandes ended up in my coaching group and being my WONDERFUL translator. He came through Dunamis Farm, and when I found that out on the last day, his style of carrying himself and preaching made sense! I really feel he’s called to leadership and I was giving him way more information that I normally would have for any translator or student… by the end of the second day on the streets, he was able to identify what students needed to do differently in their preaching, and he incorporated the feedback everyone else had received into his preaching! 

Juan was able to naturally step out in his spiritual gifts – especially words of knowledge and believing for healing. On the first day, there was an elderly man who stopped to listen to Gabrielle preach but started shuffling away at the end. I felt like God wanted to heal him and told Juan to go after him and ask him about the message as well as if he needed healing. The man tested his hearing without his hearing aids and it was greatly improved! Hallelujah! He was one of those people who are just fun to watch minister because they enjoy it so much. I don’t know where, when, or how, but I sense the call to the nations on his life, too. Jesus, may you train him up and send him out to flourish and multiply!

Juan sent me this testimony:

During Firecamp we learned that evangelism is a lifestyle, not just an event.

One morning during breakfast, one of the waitresses came to our table and I felt I had a word for her. I asked if I could talk to her for 5 minutes whenever she was available and she said yes. I asked her about her relationship with God and how she was feeling about God. She was a little confused about the question so I decided to be specific about what I heard from the Holy Spirit.

I said “I believe maybe something happened in your life that hurt you and made you question God or even blame Him, and I just wanna tell you that whatever it was, it wasn’t God’s fault, He actually sees you and cares about your pain, and He wants to reveal himself to you as a good father.”

When I said that she immediately started crying like a baby so I asked her why, and she told me that she lost her father during covid, and he was the most amazing person she knew, and she felt it wasn’t fair that God allowed such a good person like her dad to die like that, and since then she’s been away from God and blames Him for it.

But that morning, just minutes before breakfast she said she was missing her dad and she questioned God “why did You take him away from me?” And a few minutes later she received a word from me saying that it wasn’t God’s fault, and that He sees her pain and cares about her, and He wants to reveal Himself as a good father for her.

That morning I told her about God as a father and what do we do to join his family as his children. I preached the gospel and she gave her life to Jesus and she said that she was feeling like a weight came out of her chest.

Evangelism is a lifestyle! No matter where you are, you can always be a light to the world. We don’t need to wait until the next event to share the gospel, we can do it anywhere, all the time! This is one of the lessons from Firecamp that impacted me the most and now I’m sharing the gospel to everyone, from uber drivers to complete strangers in the street and it’s helping me to set an example to the people at my church and the outreach team, and it’s been awesome!