Pete and Sarah Portal head up Africa’s first 24-7 Prayer Boiler Room community in Manenberg, a township of Cape Town, South Africa. On Thursday last week, they witnessed a miracle.

Here’s Pete’s report…

Every Thursday we take a walk through Manenberg and pray for the community, right there in the streets. This week we set out as we always do, joined by two friends for their first experience of a prayer walk.

Soon into our journey we encountered a group warning us to get off the streets. The township has a number of violent gangs and there were reports that shootings had broken out between members. We made our way to a near by house-tuck shop as a place of refuge and prayed a blessing as we walked, declaring God’s abiding peace in the community.

As word got to us that the violence had subsided, we made our way back out into the streets. 

As we walked, an elderly man on crutches approached us. We stopped to talk to him and asked him his story.

He explained to us that he had fallen from his rooftop whilst up there working and had broken his hip. Though he had undergone surgery following the accident, he was still in an incredible amount of pain and was completely unable to walk without the aid of crutches, with no use of the leg below the fracture. Even with the assistance of a crutch, movement was very slow and extremely uncomfortable for him.

We asked if we could pray and he allowed us to. So we stood with him there, in the streets of Manenberg, and prayed for him. We prayed a blessing of healing over his leg and we prayed that he would come to know God in his life. There, in that place that had an hour before been touched by such violence and conflict, we prayed for God’s abundant blessing.

And it came.

As we prayed, the man began to cry. He started to move, stretching out his leg in front of us. Weeping, he stretched it further; freely and comfortably and totally without restriction. He told us that as we had prayed, the pain had been completely released from his body. 

Through tears, in that moment, he accepted Jesus into his life.

Find out more about Pete and Sarah’s work with 24-7 Prayer in the video below