Michael Ross runs a construction company but he also has the heart to be an evangelist. Is it possible to support your ministry through your business? Listen to Michael’s testimony today to find out.
Mike Ross received Jesus as Lord and Savior in 1984 in Santa Rosa, California. He received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit later in 1992, in Anchorage, Alaska. Afterwards, the Lord called Michael to evangelism in rescue missions, prisons, on the streets, churches and missionary work to nearly 40 countries. He graduated from San Jacinto School of Biblical Theology in 1997. Starting in 2009, Michael began large healing Crusades and launching International Victory Bible Institute (IVBI) Bible Schools in Africa and India. Presently he resides with his family in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
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Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Michael Ross runs a construction company, but he also has the heart to be an evangelist. Is it possible to support your ministry through your business? Listen to Michael’s testimony today to find out
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome to
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited to tell people about Jesus. And today I have a special guest. His name is Michael Ross, and he’s been very involved in doing evangelism and planting Bible schools, brother, Michael, thank you so much for joining me today.
Michael Ross (01:11):
Thank you for the invitation Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:13):
Tell me a little bit about how you got started doing evangelism.
Michael Ross (01:19):
Well, what happened was I got saved in 1984 when I was a pot-smoking car racing punk and Northern California. And then I went on this journey of studying the Bible with my dad and we ended up becoming total heretics. And that’s another story. But in 1992, I ended up at a Rodney Howard-Brown conference in Anchorage, Alaska, cause we were living in Alaska at that time. And for the first time I saw the move of the Holy spirit and first I thought, Oh, that’s just being emotional. You know? So but I saw those that really abandoned themselves and surrendered in worship would be the same ones that would be on the floor, laughing uncontrollably a short time later. And so I started worshiping like that. And so I ended up getting filled with the Holy spirit Rican recommitting my life to Christ. And for the first time I got mentors that started to really mentor me and the things of kingdom of God, because like I say, my dad and I, we, we were heretics.
Michael Ross (02:24):
We were like the apostle Paul before he got converted to know we were, we were those kinds of guys, guys, you didn’t want to meet, but so you had an encounter with the Holy spirit I did. And once I had the counter with the Holy spirit, right after that, I cooked up with the evangelist of the church and I the local rescue mission opened up for me. And I started to speaking of the rescue mission and the prison opened up for me. But six months later I started speaking in prisons around Alaska, but actually just to go back a step when I got filled the Holy spirit and I was on the floor, I had this vision and in the vision, I was down a hallway with Jesus. He opened a door to my right and I walked in and there was thousands of people for me to speak to and I thought, wow, that’s, that’s crazy. You know? And so I started doing evangelism and I started going out with the guy’s name was Joe Malkay and we’d go into different parts of Alaska doing revivals in different native villages. And we saw some amazing, amazing things, but that’s how I got started in evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:25):
And then what has God done since then? I know you’ve gone to Africa quite a bit and done a lot of crusades over there. What, what doors and opportunities has got open for you?
Michael Ross (03:37):
Well, I stayed up in Alaska for about eight years doing a lot of different kinds of evangelism. Then I ended up moving down to Southern California and I ended up reading of a book, a Chris magazine where talked about Mike Francine and how he’s doing big crusades and overseas. And I didn’t know anybody that was doing that. I mean, that was that’s a, California is like a lost in space kind of area. You know, it’s not like Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s evangelist everywhere, it’s missionaries everywhere. And so I, but I, but I saw that and I said, wow, that’s me. That’s, that’s the vision that I had. And so I didn’t know anybody who was doing it though. So I finally just decided maybe, maybe I just gotta go and do it myself. You know, if I could just find somebody to follow that’s like Mike Francine that’d be great, but I couldn’t find anybody. So I just started doing a class called Saturday soul Wayne, which was a relative to Tommy Barnett’s Saturday soul-winning and we would do a carry the cross outreach in front of a Knottsberry farm and Disneyland. I built these two eight foot crosses and then we would do street dramas and we would do what we call the spiritual interview. We would interview in people in a mall with about 10 questions that ended up, gimme some of those questions
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:48):
That you’d ask people in the spiritual interview,
Michael Ross (04:50):
You know, like do you, who do you consider Buddha and Muhammad and, and Jesus to be spiritual people, you know? And then it, it, it asks you all these questions. Do you consider yourself to be spiritually? And it gets down to the question of, if you die today, do you know where you’d go? And so we called it the spiritual interview. I still have it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:09):
And so you’re, you’re opening up a conversation about spiritual things and that, then that gives you the opportunity to, to share the gospel. Because of course many people in California probably think they’re they’re spiritual, but not religious.
Michael Ross (05:22):
Right. A lot of new agers. Yeah. And then we also did door to door evangelism. We did, I took this, I took the team down to the rescue mission. I took him to home. Depot is now a good moment for a short testimony, go for it. So I’m, I’m I take him down to to the home Depot and I’m going to set up my barbecue with my 15 event growing evangelists disciples, you know, and I got permission from the general manager assistant manager of the week before. So he would come out there and we’re gonna, we’re gonna cook up Carnegie Assata. And there’s like 150 Hispanics that are waiting for work. So this, this, Hey, here we are. This is our outreach. And so we start setting up and this guy from the HR and home home Depot comes out and says, Hey, you can’t do this outreach here.
Michael Ross (06:08):
You’re contributing to these, these illegal aliens, you know? And so I thought, Oh my God, what am I doing here? You know, this is, this is not working out here. But somebody said, Hey, let’s just go to the sidewalk. I mean, it’s public property that can’t kick us off. So we moved, we moved everything to the sidewalk and we started the Carney side of the barbecue and put on our tables, rice and beans and guacamole and so forth. We went up to try and assemble the people or the Hispanics, Hey, we got free food for you. You know? And the, and the police came and I thought, Oh, this is not going, not going good. But they went to the other side of the parking lot. So, okay. So we went on with the, we went on with the outreach and I have the Hispanic pastor from my church stand up and preach Jesus.
Michael Ross (06:53):
And we had about, Oh, I’m on the, we had about 70, 70, 80 Hispanics there, you know, and we, he preached Jesus like a, like a passionate, mad dog, you know, did a great job in Espanol. And then we passed out these new, new Testament, Espanol Bibles and let them to Jesus. And so about that time, you know, and they’d all eaten and everything, it actually went great. Considering the bad start, the, the police came over to me and he says who’s in charge of this. And I said, I am. And he says, Hey, you know, I’ve been stalling on your behalf, but really you can’t do your outreach here. I said, well, thank you so much. So we’re done now. Thank you. But anyway, so that was one of my outrageous acts actually in my book there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:37):
Wow, you’ve got a great book here. It’s called miracle memories, 42 supernatural stories from my life and ministry. And so I really liked the format of this book. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to copy it one of my future books, but you’ve got a story of what God has done in different parts of the world. And then you have a miracle moment with a little application from the story. And so I’m taking this idea and I’m going one of my next books. I’m just going to go through and collect all the stories from, from the 20 years of evangelism that we’ve done. And, and there’s great stories. And I find that when I go preach at churches, people like the stories, they love hearing the stories of what God has done the testimonies. And then I’m just going to do a little teaching from, from each one of them. And so I liked, I liked your book so much. I’m copying it, but I’m not copying your stories. I’m using my own stories, but I love the form. It’s great. So, so tell us some of the, the miracle memories that you have in your book.
Michael Ross (08:38):
Well, I’ll tell you another memory that happened when I was in Anchorage, Alaska. I went to preach and do Advancial the first house with this guy named Joe Malkay, who was a full-time evangelist. And he was training me, discipling me. And then I started to do some of my own stuff. So I went out with this team, my church, and we went out to a place called Bethel Alaska. And this is way back about 1996, you know, and actually what I had been studying the word, you know, and, and really became a heretic. But actually all that Bible study really helped me because now when I stood up to preach, I understood so much of the word of God, you know, from all that years of study, even though we went off into heresy, so I had to make some corrections and so forth.
Michael Ross (09:21):
But so when I stood up to preach, actually the anointing really fell on me and the authority, the presence of Holy spirit flowed through me. And so when, when we were in Bethel, Alaska, it was about, we were doing like a week long of meetings, you know, nightly meetings. And that night it was a blizzard. I mean, it was a horizontal blizzard in Bethel, Alaska. So on the West coast of Alaska. And, but nevertheless about 150 native Alaskans, the village is probably 95% native Alaskans showed up to my meeting, you know? And so I’m sitting on the front row and they’re doing the worship and I’m saying, Lord, what do you want me to preach on? And usually I have time to prepare beforehand to ask the Holy spirit what he would like me to say. But in this case, I was short on time, whatever, whatever the circumstances. And he says, I want you to preach on forgiveness.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
And I said, but Lord,
Michael Ross (10:12):
I talked about forgiveness at least a little bit last night. He said, I want you to pre-con preach on forgiveness. And I was arguing with God, if you can believe that I’m the front row before I’m supposed to speak. And so I said, I tell you what, God I’ll make you a deal. You show up in some powerful words of knowledge and healing, and then I’ll know it’s you. So he says, okay. He says, call people up forward with their problems to the lower back and with their teeth. And so I said, okay. And then it was about my time they, they introduced me. I stood up and I just said, I feel like the Holy spirit says, there’s some people out there that have problems in your lower back and people with problems with your teeth, please come forward. So four people came forward and I walked over the first one, put my hand right behind is just one hand on the lower back and just said, Lord, Jesus, you know, be healed in Jesus’ name and just put my hand there.
Michael Ross (11:06):
And the person literally, boom, when I started praying, flew backwards, like four feet and there was no catcher, you know? And they, the boom like, like almost like an angel hit him with a two by four or something. And I thought, Oh my God, I thought, wow, that’s, that’s amazing. And the people, but, but I kinda liked I’m, I’m cool about this. Like, this happens to me all the time, you know, really it didn’t at all, but anyways, so I went to the next person, I said, be healed in Jesus’ name like that. And they flew back on the ground. The second one did. And then, so I went to two people with teeth, robs, put my hands on their teeth, be healed in Jesus’ name. And the person burst out in tongues. And the last one be healed in Jesus’ name. And then he also flew back on the ground, like four feet backwards with no catcher, you know?
Michael Ross (11:51):
And obviously it was God, otherwise they might’ve been hurt, but wow, that’s, that was good. God, that was you. You’re totally got my attention here. So I preached on forgiveness and in my message, I talked about from my own life testimony about asking God for forgiveness of your sins. And then the importance of forgiving others, very, very powerful. And the third thing, forgiving yourself, which can be the hardest thing for people. So I went to each one of them carefully and told testimonies from my own life. And then afterwards I had the people stand up and I let them do a prayer with those three areas of forgiveness. And about the time I was done with the third prayer, the presence of the Holy spirit fell in that native Alaskan church. And the whole place went wild and I stepped back, Oh my God, this is, this is crazy because people were shaking uncontrollably.
Michael Ross (12:45):
People were going into trances. People fell on the ground. People were crying. People were laughing and not just a few people. I mean the whole place went wild and I’m like, Oh my God. And I looked at my team members and they looked at me, Whoa, this, this is just God, this has nothing to do with us. This is just God. And so as a matter of fact, after that meeting the next day, a girl testified how she’d wanted to heaven and told soul story and people testified of healings and miracles. And I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to get back to the local rescue mission and Anchorage, Alaska, it’s going to be a blowout, but it wasn’t. It was like the same regular meeting, you know, because it was the hunger of the people that was really polling on God. Those people were hungry. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:29):
That’s interesting. There there’s different responses in different places because the ground is different. Sometimes you’re, you’re busy planting seeds. Sometimes you’re wander watering the seed. You’re watering the seed. Sometimes you get to reap the harvest. Sometimes though you got to go out with a plow and dig up big stones out of the hearts of people. So every place you go there, there’s a different response. And that’s one of the things to, to know that that sometimes you can have a great success in one area and then other areas that you’re just working really hard and nothing is happening, but it’s all part of, of bringing in the harvest. One of the things I really like about you is that you are a by vocational evangelist, you love doing evangelism love, going to Africa and preaching the gospel, but you also have your own construction company.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:26):
And you’re doing projects here in the United States. In fact, a lot of the support that you need in order to, to do crusades and do ministries comes from your business. So there’s different paradigms that people have for doing evangelism. And one paradigm is to just fundraise and ask for money, but that’s not the only way of doing evangelism. You can also be a successful evangelist and have a job and earn money in, in some way. So talk to me a little bit about how that works and, and why you decided to do business that way.
Michael Ross (15:11):
Well, I would say Daniel that from the beginning I was a businessman and I’ve grown tremendously in my own faith by running a company. And I’ve been an entrepreneur now for over 30 years. And so when you have to believe God for more jobs and money to make payroll and all that kind of stuff, and you have to be accountable before God to pay your ties and your offerings that, that builds tremendous faith as a, as a human being and as a businessman. So I’ve grown so much through having my own business that I probably couldn’t have learned if I just tried to go into full-time evangelism, you know, under a past pastor or a church or something like that. So I really thank God for how that’s that’s come about. And I would say that now my business is doing far better than ever before my business doubled.
Michael Ross (16:03):
Last year, I bought a siding company two and a half years ago. And my income literally doubled from 2019 to 2020. And so and, and it’s, it’s, it’s good because as a businessman, I can always fall back on my company and not be have to feel like I’m need to beg for money or, or have to do more fundraising. And that puts a certain ease in my heart. And just to say something else about it was which be, God would tell me over, I’ve gone 18 times to East Africa in the last 11 years. And so he would tell me, son, I want you to do a crusade in a city, say like Machakos Kenya. And I said, okay, Lord. And then he would help me set the dates. And then I would call my team on the other side of the ocean and we’d set it up.
Michael Ross (16:51):
And now I might not even have the money to do that, but I’m just, the father says you’re doing a in Machakos, these are the dates. And now I’m just going to believe God for the money. I mean, you have to do the same thing as similar way, but so many times what would happen was like maybe a week or two before I was supposed to go, I still didn’t have the money, but I was still believing in God. And so sure enough, a job would come say a $10,000 paint project or something and sure enough. And I’m like, Oh my goodness, I don’t know how I’m gonna get this done on time, but it would get done on time. I would get the check. I’d put the money in the bag and boom, I had the money to go. That happened so many times, but other times I left and there was one time in particular, I left, I was supposed to do cruise two crusades one in India and one in Africa.
Michael Ross (17:41):
And I was supposed to pay for a Bible school graduation. And when I left, I had $5 in my pocket. So I said, I’m not going to freak out about this. I’m not going to get into fear. I’m just going to speak in tongues and stay in the spirit and just trust God somehow some way, this is all going to get paid for and got on the plane and left. And I had two people coming with me on that trip, and I didn’t want to tell them because I didn’t want them to be discouraged. But nevertheless, I got there and the money started rolling in from my company back in California. And the funds came, some friends found out about it and they helped me. And so in the end I paid for everything. But so thank God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:19):
What a, what a miracle that sometimes it takes a lot of faith to be an evangelist and to step out in faith. And, and we’ve seen God provide time and time again, sometimes from sources that you would never expect and you’re trusting us, Hey, God, I pray for the money in God provides because evangelism is close to his heart. And so what, what percentage of your ministry is supported by your own company and your own efforts? Is it,
Michael Ross (18:48):
Well, I’d say over the last 11 years, when I’ve gone these 18 times to Africa, and some of those times I went four times a year as a short-term evangelist, I would go for typically about two and a half to three weeks. And I would honestly I’d have to trust God to run my company while I was gone and believe God that it’s all gonna work out. And none of my customers are going to get really mad and my employees are going to be able to handle it and so forth. So there, there again was some faith to believe God for that. But I would say about probably 90 to 95% of every, all the crusades I would do. And sometimes I would drop 15,000 per crusade. Sometimes 20,000 would come straight out of my company. And so sometimes I would drop as much as 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a year on these crusades I was doing to reach people for Jesus. And so that was, that’s been an honor and privilege.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:39):
Thank God for providing for you that way. It’s sometimes tough to, to solve a problem for someone in Oklahoma, when you’re on the telephone in the middle of Africa, you got call back and I’m sure you guys still deal with customers and run all the details and make sure people are showing up to do the work that you hired them to do. And yeah, it’s been crazy at times. Wow. And then in addition to doing the crusades, you’ve also been planting Bible schools affiliated with victory Bible Institute. So, so [inaudible] international victory Bible institutes which was the Bible school started by pastor Billy Joe Doherty out of victory, which is my home church. And it’s amazing. They have, I think over 2000 Bible schools now in different parts of the world, how many of those Bible schools have, have you been able to plant?
Michael Ross (20:33):
Well, we have about 12 going right now. And what happened was I went and did this crusade in Katua Kenya. And then we went and did another crusade, a place called Machakos and the spirit of God began to speak to me. Son, these people have tremendous hunger for God, but their depth of understanding is only about an inch deep. It’s a mile wide, but it’s only about an inch deep. And so I realized after a couple of trips to Kenya that nine out of 10 pastors had no Bible training whatsoever. So they would, they would go to a scripture in the Bible and, and read a scripture and then they’d go off in an exhortation because they couldn’t link scripture to scripture, to scripture to make a powerful message. So except for Holy spirit, for example, so they just go off on an exhortation cause they didn’t understand, you know, so the spirit of God’s began to speak to me.
Michael Ross (21:23):
He said, son, I want you to start launch Bible schools here in East Africa. So I went ahead and took a course that Ron Stafford’s wife, Jill Stafford was doing at victory called how to launch an international victory Bible school. I took the course. I probably was not a very good student cause at that time I was flying back and forth to California running my company and missing classes. But anyways, I took the course. And then when I, next time I went to Kenya, I cast the vision with the Bishop I was working with.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:51):
I think what qualifies you as a good student in that course is if you actually plant a Bible, right? So, so I think you get an a plus or now having planted 12 Bible schools. True, true. So you went back to Africa with the Bishop there and cast the vision
Michael Ross (22:09):
Cast division to him and his three overseers that represented about a hundred churches. And they said, great, let’s do it later. He told me, he thought I was crazy, but anyways, so he, we went for it and that was about September. And we were going to start the Bible schools in January. So had a good friend of mine, Russell Abbott, who was a New Zealand or who knows now living in Rwanda, he came and helped me. And we launched the first Bible school. And in the end we had 76 students graduate that year. And it was a smashing success. The students thought this was like the most important, greatest thing they’d done in their life. And you know, we, we made it as free of charge as possible. We wanted to specially reach rural pastors and pastors that didn’t have any means and they would come to class and you know, their callers would be all wore out, you know, cause they don’t really have any good shirts.
Michael Ross (23:00):
They’d have a blue shirt on and red pants. This kind of thing is that really have any money. But nevertheless we’d given the Bible schools 27 courses, 15 hours per course. And it was just, it was just amazing. And these 76 students went off to launch churches, become evangelist, become a missionaries. And the fruit was just there and I’m like, Oh my goodness, this is great Lord. This is, this is a great idea you add. And so since then we’ve had like 3,500 students, you know what you’re doing? Yeah. We’ve had like 3,500 students graduate our Bible.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:30):
Wow. That’s amazing. 3,500.
Michael Ross (23:32):
Yeah. So I usually go every November with a whole box of certificates and we pass out these certificates and because they look so good and I have them printed here. And they’re on American paper, which is a big thing for that. They actually are received by many of the local universities as accreditation schools, even though there it’s not. So anyways, that’s kind of a little blessing because students say, well, when can you accredit the school? And I said, well, it’s quite a, quite a difficult process, but what happens is the paper they, we give them ends up being received anyways as a credit. Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:11):
Talk to me about being bi-vocational in the, in the faith it takes to do that. What advice would you give to other evangelists who they have a job, but they have a heart for evangelism. How should they get started?
Michael Ross (24:28):
Well, I would say they just first thing is to follow the Holy spirit, you know, and realize that Paul was a tentmaker, he was making money and he was very concerned that people might accuse him of fleecing the flock and taking the people’s money. So that’s one of the reasons he’s he goes into this long argument about it in the book of Corinthians about why he’s, you know, making tents and he didn’t ask anything from their church. So anyway, so I think it’s a, it’s a great star to have your own job or your own business and to start saving money, whatever it may be. And if anything, just accompany evangelists like Daniel and go with him overseas and experience it. And that’s a great place to start is find somebody that’s really doing it successfully and go with them, you know, get discipled, see how it’s done and that that’s only going to cost you.
Michael Ross (25:19):
You can do that for Daniel. Can probably get you somewhere or I could get you somewhere for probably $2,000. You know, I would probably go back to Africa again, you know? So and then a person could get great training skills and do a hands-on ministry. I’ll tell you what Daniel, one of the most greatest things is a little bit diversion from your question, but is when I take people with me and I send them out to the streets, you know, or to prisons, and this has happened, I probably had at least six or seven come with me. They come back weeping and crying. I mean, they lead 50 or a hundred, 200 people to Jesus and it’s like mind blowing for them, you know? And they come back weeping and crying. Like their whole life has been transformed and they see their call and their destiny before them. And now they’re actually doing this stuff, not just hearing about other preachers going out and doing this stuff, but they’re doing this stuff themselves. And so that’s very thrilling. That’s one of the greatest joys I get is releasing other people to help them find their destiny and evangelism and maybe it’s pastoring, you know, but it’s doing the stuff. So, yeah, that’s a great,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:24):
Great place to start. Go, go with someone else. Who’s doing a crusade, learn from them and you’ll find that God will start to open up doors for you to do crusades and into be involved in evangelism. All right. We’re almost finished here, brother, Michael, but give me one more, really good story out of your book, miracle memories. What, what’s something really memorable that God’s done?
Michael Ross (26:47):
I, I had so many great stories, but I think one of the ones that’s really stunning that really rocked my world as well, was my first trip to Kenya, which was, I had gone to Mozambique and hung out with Heidi and Roland Baker with Randy Clark and had a great time there was chosen to be one of the leaders. And that was a great, great rising to a new level spiritual level because the truth is, if you go on mission trips, you’re going to go to the next level. I mean, I, I hear that from people all the time, you know, they, they go on a mission trip, you know, wow. It was so exciting, you know, this, this, this, and this happened to me. And I think to myself, they’ve only gone to one or two mission trips. I’ve gone, you know, to 40 or 50, you know? And so anyways, a little diversion, but anyways, so we, so the second trip was that I had the, with this guy named Chris Walsh and I met Chris Walsh and of course, you know,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:37):
Yeah. We’ve had them on the show before. So if you’re listening and go back and listen to the interview with Chris Walsh on the evangelism podcast, it was a great interview. He has a real heart for the first nations people up in Canada,
Michael Ross (27:49):
Right? So Chris was going to do this crusade with a certain Bishop in Kenya. And and I was all excited cause I just got back from Mozambique and I said, well, I’ll go and I’ll just be here. I’ll just assist you. And he said, great, let’s go. So we set the date and it came to pass that Chris could not come up with any money for the trip or for anything, for a plane ticket or anything. And he, every, every week he was I’m believing God, I’m believing God, but still no money came for him, but I had the money. So finally I was praying. I said, Lord, I don’t think this is going to go anywhere. I mean, Krista’s symphony money, this, this whole thing, Cindy canceled. And he says, yeah. And I felt my spirit something’s going to happen here. So four days before we were supposed to go, Chris calls me up, says, look, Mike, I still don’t have any money and I’m canceling.
Michael Ross (28:35):
But the Bishop has asked me if you’ll come. And because they’ve already promised to these pastors in a place called [inaudible], which was a large witchcraft area that a white man and [inaudible] is coming to preach to them. And so I said, well, let me ask, ask the Lord. And so I prayed after I got off the phone, I said, Lord looked up to heaven and what do you think about this? And he says to me, you’re going to Africa. Wow. So I call up the airline and I said, Hey, you know that ticket, I was talking to you about a couple of weeks ago to Nairobi Kenya. What’s the price on that anyways? And she’s, she looks it up. She says, well, Mr. Ross, it’s still $1,200. And I said, wow, cool. I thought maybe a doubled or tripled with four days, four days notice a sure.
Michael Ross (29:18):
And I, and maybe it was seen three days. I kind of forget. But anyway, so I said book the ticket. And so I, so I went on three days notice and I didn’t know this Bishop from, from a shoe, you know he could have been the, the, the Kenyan mafia for all I knew, you know? So I just, and I talked to him on the phone for about 30 seconds. That was it. And supposedly he was suspicious. So I flew to Nairobi, praying in, you know, trying to stay in the spirit now. I mean, here, I’m going to Nairobi. I don’t know anybody. And and I get off the plane and, and go outside and here’s some guys holding my hold, a sign with my name on it. And I thought, well, that’s a good start. And the Holy spirit spoke to me on the way over there. He said, son, you’re one of my lions. And I said, well, that’s nice of you. That’s cool, Lord. I’m excited about that. So they took me to the hotel and got there Kenya, Kenya’s a good place
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:09):
To be a lion because they’ve got lots of zebras to, for lions to eat.
Michael Ross (30:15):
So I get there, I go to my hotel room and what’s above my bed, a picture of a lion. And so I thought, wow, this is a good start. It’s actually working out some something, you know? So I ended up flying to Eldoret Kenya where the Bishop is, what this Bishop was. And he turned out to be like the Billy Graham of, of Kenya. He liked knew everybody. And he was a nice, really sweet man and full of the love of Jesus. And, and he was an amazing evangelist. And so we went ahead and we did a couple of radio shows and stuff like that. And then we went off to [inaudible]. Now this K2 area of [inaudible] was kind of a semi-arid area. And they hadn’t sinned seen rain in some five years. So we thought, Hey, we’re going to bring the gospel because we know it’s their devotion to witchcraft.
Michael Ross (30:57):
It’s stopping the blessing of rain for Africa, which for them is like life, life, and death. And so we went there and I thought, well, maybe we’re going to have a showdown with a witch doctor, something like that. But we didn’t, we just drove into town and started raining. And so it started raining and we had people doing the Jesus video project at schools, and we were doing street evangelism. The whole team was brought team of about 25 people, you know, Kenyans. And a two is a very poor area. I mean, very sad, but young girls would sell themselves for a bottle of Coke. I mean, that’s, that’s how, how bleak the places, you know, and the cows were skin and bones and they were going through the trash looking for food. And so the rain came though, and that was exciting.
Michael Ross (31:41):
And so the Bishop’s going to do his is meeting that evening and he has me do the pastors conference in the morning. And so it’s raining all day and we say, w so we got together. We said, look, it’s great that it’s raining, but it’s going to rain our crusade. So we prayed this prayer Lord, make the rain stop. And then at the end of the crusade make it poor. And so we prayed this bold prayer and the rain stopped and the Bishop went out there and about 2000 people showed up, you know, small crusade. He preached Jesus, you know, and I gave a short testimony. And as soon as he was done preaching, it started pouring rain and all the Kenyans ran back to their homes. And so it rained all night rained in the morning, did the pastor’s conference. It was raining and then the afternoon it stopped. And so Bishop and I came back there to do the evening crusade, about 4,000 people shows up typical African crusades. They double every night. And so we’ve preached Jesus and all that stuff. And as soon as he was done, started pouring rain and Rained all night long rain.
Michael Ross (32:42):
I did the pastors conference. Rain stopped, came out there the third day, the rain stopped. 8,000 people came, you know, and we did the, we did preaching the Jesus and I got to preach some, you know, for the first time in my, my crusade, first time I ever got to preach in a crusade, actually it was fulfillment of the vision I’d seen as when I first got in the Holy first, got filled the Holy spirit that all these people were there, you know? And so as soon as we were done, it started pouring, raining. I’m telling you the truth. It was weird three nights and three nights in a row, the rain stopped for the crusade. And then otherwise it was pouring rain. All the Kenyans ran back to their home. And by the fourth day I looked on the ground, I could see grass growing and it was incredible. It’s really incredible. And so the, the fourth night we had people bring their items of witchcraft and we burned them on the stage publicly. So it was very powerful first crusade for me. And it gave me kind of a reputation that I was kind of an Elijah or something like that, you know, in Kenya. And then the next crusade, I came back to seam with also witchcraft area Machakos. And I said to Bishop, I said, Hey, Bishop what exactly happened in that Machakos crusade? He said, Brother, Mike, you haven’t heard half of the Story. He said, they had so much rain. They had an overabundance of crops. Wow. And I’m like, wow, that was amazing. So that was, that just really rocked my world, changed my life, gave me a whole new vision, built my faith in everything else.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:09):
Crusade brought physical blessings as well as spiritual blessings.
Michael Ross (34:14):
Absolutely. And I don’t know how many got saved, but we had, we had a great, wow,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:18):
Great. Well, if you’re enjoying listening to Michael’s story, I encourage you to go to Amazon, find miracle memories by Michael Ross, just type in miracle. Memory’s Michael Ross. And you’ll be able to find his book and, and see all the stories from what God has done in his ministry around the world. Brother, Michael, thank you so much for being with me today.
Michael Ross (34:39):
Hey, thanks so much, Daniel. I enjoyed it. God bless you. You too.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:42):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. If you want coaching and how to be a more effective evangelists, get in touch with me@kingministries.com. And could you do me a favor? Go find the evangelism podcast with Daniel King on iTunes and leave us a review. Your positive review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find us. God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (35:12):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.
