Prayer Summit Video Clips Available

Emily Vandonk stopped going to church when she was a teenager and had a high-powered — and she thought fulfilling — career in accounting as an adult.

But then she came down with a serious case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that put her in bed for three years, Vandonk says on one of five new videos that have been posted on the web site of the recently completed Christian Reformed Church Prayer Summit 2015.

In a video shown on Tuesday night of the summit, which ran April 13-15, Vandonk says she sought the help of a renowned medical specialist, hoping the physician could cure her debilitating condition.

But the doctor couldn’t help and finally told her she would have to do her best to live with it.

“I couldn’t accept that,” says Vandonk. “I was leaving the doctor when I got a vision of a Sunday school teacher telling the story of Jesus helping people. And I thought when I get home, I’m going to try Jesus. I’ve tried everything else.”

At home, she says, she prayed for Jesus to heal her, promising that, if he did, she would serve him for the rest of her life.

Jesus touched and healed her then and there, and she has since traveled the world, bringing with her the message of healing found in Christ.

“Everywhere I went, I saw people healed in Jesus’ name and I learned that I could teach people to heal in the name of Jesus,” she says.

Vandonk is now involved in a healing prayer ministry at Journey CRC in Kitchener, Ontario, where she has been able to share stories of her broader prayer ministry, as well as to bring prayer and healing into the congregation, says Andrew Zantingh, Journey’s pastor, on the video clip.

Along with Vandonk’s story, there are other stories of summit speakers such as Ruth Veltkamp, a long-time missionary to Muslims in Nigeria who talks about prayer and forgiveness.

Veltkamp speaks about there being a great deal of religious persecution in the world today — and much of it focuses on Christians.

“We have ISIS, and not too long ago we had 21 people killed on the shore of an ocean. That picture went viral through the whole world …

“What can stop that kind of cruelty? I have found through study of the Bible and and lots of experience, that there is something that can stop that.”

She goes on to relate her own experience with persecution involving a Muslim terrorist and how through prayer and forgiveness Jesus helped to resolve it.

There is also a clip on the story of what was called the Fulton Street Revival — a prayer movement that started at a Reformed church in New York City in 1857 and touched the lives of more than one million people before it was over.

In addition, there is a video featuring commentary on prayer from a range of Calvin Theological Seminary professors and a video of summit highlights, touching on presentations by an Anglican priest, a Pentecostal theologian, a former ballerina and a Wall Street investor.