In his book "The Happiest People on Earth" Demos Shakarian reports in chapter 10 about a week-long evangelization in Haiti in 1960. It had been a personal invitation of the then feared military
dictator Francois Duvalier ("Papa Doc") as a kind of "thank you" for help after a natural disaster.
An evening event in the stadium of Port-au-Prince threatened to degenerate into a disaster of a completely different kind. About 300 voodoo priests had mixed among the 35,000 visitors, dressed in
blood red and wearing long lace hats on their heads. They began to make their rounds on the cinder track and to disturb the event with rhythmic chants. Hundreds of stadium visitors quickly joined
them.
Things were threatening to get completely out of hand and a general in charge of the event was about to deploy the military. Demos Shakarian, through an energetic intervention,
caused a delay, stood in a circle with his 25 collaborators, and they began to call on God for help ...
Suddenly a loud scream rang through the stadium. Soldiers stormed to the place from where the cry had come. One feared a bloody deed ... down on the cinder track the crowd was
swollen to thousands and had begun with rhythmic ghost dancing.
The soldiers returned with a married couple carrying a boy on their arms. A brief exchange of words with the well-known Haitian senator Bonhomme, then he hurried to the stage with the boy and his
parents and began to speak. In the beginning he could hardly cope with the noise in the stadium, but then it became calmer and his words penetrated. "A miracle has happened. This boy - I know him
personally - was blind from birth and can now see. He pointed to the nine-year-old. In fact, the reactions of a sighted person showed.
When the people understood the obvious miracle, the mood in the stadium changed. People began to praise and praise God! More and more people ran - at the invitation of
Shakarian - on the playing field, threw away their fetishes and gave their lives to Jesus. In the end there were about 10000 people, among them many voodoo priests.
The whole crusade was a complete success. Many more healings took place, and thousands more Haitians converted.
When on the penultimate day he was with his colleagues for a half-hour audience with "Papa Doc", he asked the president at the end if he could pray for the country and the
people. He immediately agreed and so it happened.
Then he asked the president if he still had a special request. "Rain!" he said, "Ask God for rain for this country." Background: It had not rained for weeks.
Quite a few people came to the final event on the last evening. Nobody wanted to go outside the door in tropical rain!
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