Testimonies

Prayer counseling has been life changing! It has not only improved my relationship with how I see God, but also my relationships with others. I love how the Holy Spirit transforms hearts and lives.
- Jonathan Dobowey

Things truly are NEW and BETTER. Thank you, Pastor Andy, and so many others who prayed fervently on our behalf and who gave wise counsel. And most of all, thank you Father for your faithfulness and for your good plan for our lives– a plan to prosper and not to harm.

The prayer counseling class has been a huge asset for me personally in my everyday life.

It has helped me better understand and deal with my strengths and weaknesses and how they effect my relationships at home, at work, in women’s ministries and most of all with Christ.

-Kathleen Sogge, River of Life Women’s  Ministry Director

Andy Leenstra is presently on staff assisting us in prayer counseling and training a team.   This fall alone the ministry has saved five marriages I know of.  One couple whose situation appeared hopeless met with the team through the fall and recently had an incredible testimony of healing and restoration in one of our services.  We live in a broken society.  Divorce is running over 50%. With the ministry of prayer counseling I can offer people hope.  We have built a ministry center just for this ministry.  We have people coming to our church who would not come other wise.  I am seeing people restored and healed!

-Pastor Denny Curran, River of Life

It has been an incredible privilege to be involved in Prayer Counseling! To sit under Andy and glean from what the Lord has taught him…. I am so thankful for this ministry being a place where we can bring people to find healing and wholeness.

-Rita Hoekstra

I sat contemplating this morning about where our lives were just 18 years ago and where we are today.  I am confident of this, without your investment in two young people – two adults would have most likely wandered for some time filled with brokenness and pain – searching for fulfillment and peace never looking in the right places, connected to that train wreck would have been two young girls who would have been raised in a broken home.  Learning life’s tragic lesson of divorce should not be the experience of a child and when children experience trauma like that we all know the difficulties that they face later in life.
I express quite often thankfulness to God for your ministry and your involvement in our lives and the lives of others.  I so desire someday to see your ministry fully grasped by the church to bring healing to hurting generations and turn the tide of the battle, I do not think that the enemy should have so many victories and we so many defeats.  I want to see us take more territory and see the restoration of broken marriages and severed relationships to the place that the Father wants us to experience.  The phrase “On earth as it is in heaven” is not an appeasing statement but a Promise to those who – will believe, will pursue, and will grab hold of it.  “On earth as it is in heaven” has to be fought for by a few and released to the multitude, for there are those who cannot fight for the ground that they need but are capable to hold the ground that they are given. The Lord showed me that you are a person who can fight and take hold of “on earth as it is in heaven” so others can live. Your ministry is one that is hard but can bring the most valuable rewards.  The ground is always rock hard and the seed is hard to plant and the rains never seem to come and few choose to rise to the challenge of it all, but when you allow the Holy Spirit to work, the grounds soften, the seed becomes buried, the rains come in due season and eventually the fruit appears in its time.
Thank You for loving us when we felt unlovable. Thank You for believing in us when we could not believe. Thank You for seeing when we were blind. Thank You for listening when we could not hear.