Sid: My guest I guess red hot is an understatement for you Michelle, her name is Michelle Perry; she’s the head of Iris Ministries Sudan. And she does not have an orphanage, they were orphans at one time but she has 77 members of her family. She picks some up off the street, others in various ways and she’s in process of building a village for them to live in. She was born with something that would cause most people to be pretty bitter. She was born with one kidney missing, one leg missing, and curvature of the spine where she’s got what you say, a couple of rods, steel rods inside. But you told me, but you’re the most joyful person, I agree with Joyce my guest coordinator. You are the most joyful person I have ever met!
Michelle: (laughing)
Sid: And I may have difficulty doing this interview if you keep that up. (laughing) But Sudan is your home.
Michelle: It is, it is it’s ahah I prayed for the last decade that God would give me the worst place that He could trust me with. And so when I was moving in Sudan…
Sid: Is that one of the worst places on the face of this earth?
Michelle: Well, actually when I moved there in 2006 it was according to one of the think tank associate of the UN it was the number one most failed state on the planet, so I said, “Yeah God I got a promotion.” (laughing)
Sid: (laughing) Aids pretty ramped there?
Michelle: Um because the borders have been closed up until recently due to the war not as much as in some parts of Africa but it’s skyrocketing now.
Sid: What’s your ultimate, the ultimate that God has for you in Sudan?
Michelle: I believe it’s to see a movement of love that literally will sweep from southern Sudan into the north and into the Arabic speaking Islamic world to carry the glory of God and to carry the love of Jesus into the darkness.
Sid: Now, I understand your kids fight to see who can go into the hospital to pray for the sick, tell me about that.
Michelle: Well, we divide them up into teams and regularly we like to take them into to pray for the sick in the sick in the hospitals because that’s what Jesus did and he prayed for the sick and they got healed. And so we take them into the hospitals and we’ve had a couple instances where more wanted to come than we had space for. (laughing) So we’ve had to say no you need to wait and be patient and I’m sorry you really can’t go today you just kind of pushed him down and so you can’t go and get your heart right with Jesus and you can go tomorrow. (laughing)
Sid: Now Michelle, you had a heart’s desire when revival was going real strong at the Toronto Airport Church you wanted to go there; why did you want to go there so bad?
Michelle: (laughing) In 2000 I read a little blurb in a little article about the Baker’s in Mozambique and I didn’t know who they were, I thought Heidi got her visitation on the floor of the Toronto Airport, I didn’t know that it was a church. So I started praying for…
Sid: So you wanted to go to the airport?
Michelle: Yeah.
Sid: Okay.
Michelle: I started praying for visitations in airports (laughing). I figure that God’s not a respecter of airports so he could meet me in Heathrow. I found out about it about a year and a half later that it was a church, and it was a move of God’s Spirit that was very precious that had been going on there and I wanted very desperately to go. But it was a timing issue and as in most things in my life I say “God if You want me to do that and it’s a desire in my heart then I put it in your hands and You make it happen at the right time.”
Sid: So the day arrived you got there, what happened?
Michelle: I found out that I got there and it was amazing because when I found out that God answered my prayer because I pray God I want everything they have, and when I got there it was like coming home, it as like normal to me because just being in God’s presence is what I’ve done for five years since I read the article and I had no clue. I didn’t know and so I got there and it was amazing to be in a corporate setting that understood about pressing in and pursuing the presence of God, and just waiting on Him and waiting.
Sid: The presence of God is very important to you.
Michelle: Oh, He’s everything, He’s everything…
Sid: So you were corporately pressing into the presence of God and what happened to you?
Michelle: Well, I just kind of got undone, I mean I was just praying and God took me up and showed me this huge table in heaven and seated around it were thousands of children, and poorest of the poor, and the blind, and the prostitutes, and the beggars, and the gang bangers, and the worst of the worst, the cast off of society. And they were all very hungry and they were all looking at me. And I thought okay, help God, and Jesus walked in and he had this huge platter of food and he put it…, and I am thinking “Whew He’s here and He’ll feed everybody.” Well, no he put the food right down in front of me and He said, “Beloved eat”, and I said, “No I can’t eat, do you see all these hungry people let’s give them the food and then you can feed me and that I’ll be okay.” And He said, “You don’t understand eat and so he was pretty stern and so I did I took a piece of bread and I ate and the minute that I ate the minute that I took a bit of this bread everybody around the table had it.” And He really used that to begin speaking to me that we can’t give away what we don’t have and we can’t impart what’s not a part of us. And so it’s so important to eat of Him and drink of Him. Now I went from eating and drinking for me to eating and drinking for a nation so it’s a lot of eating and drinking going on.
Sid: I was told that you had your own personal box of Kleenex you were crying so much.
Michelle: Yeah that happens to me sometimes when I get in God’s presence. You know, there was a Soaking in the Glory Conference, and I just had to laugh thinking this is a whole different definition of soaking, soaking through a box of Kleenex, (laughing) but God I don’t even know fully what God did except I do know He enlarged my heart, and I got a chance to experience His presence and He started to change things on the inside of me that were pivotal for the journey to come.
Sid: So you decided at that point that you were going to be involved with children and with people that had problems, and from what I understand you thought that was going to be India.
Michelle: Well, I had lived in India previously to that, I had been in India two years already and then God moved me back to the United States basically kicking and screaming, I’d worked with at risked kids for years at that point, but I was kind of tired of it and thought maybe I would get to graduate to adults. (laughing) And no I didn’t get to; in fact I’m working with more children now than I ever had and I wouldn’t trade it for the world because they’re my greatest teachers.
Sid: How did you know that it wasn’t India but Sudan?
Michelle: (laughing) Well God said, “Back overseas and so I figured I love India, I got the clothes, I know the language where I was living and it just made sense, so I was making preparations to move. In the middle of me buying a plane ticket online it’s really good to listen to God all the time He kind of interrupted me and said, “I’m so glad you love India, so do I, but can I send you to Sudan instead?
Sid: That simple?
Michelle: And I said, “God, Sudan’s in Africa that’s the wrong continent. He said, “Yes, I know where Sudan is, (laughing) and I thought well that’s very happy He knows His geography because I live there now. But I gave Him my life when I was seven years old so where I live is not respective of where He wants me to live.
Sid: Out of curiosity you went to Sudan after being told to go there did you go with someone or by yourself?
Michelle: No, well I’m really on a team of four Father, Son and Holy Spirit and me.
Sid: (laughing)
Michelle: But I was the only I mean most people would say I went alone and I rented a car, hired a car.
Sid: But you use a crutch, your there by yourself, what about the finances?
Michelle: That’s a really good question, we trust God. That’s been one of my biggest areas of having opportunity and grow in faith in the last sixteen/eighteen months since we started because we live in the second most expensive place in the world.
Sid: I want to take you back to Toronto again this experience sounds wonderful, but tell me what were you praying when you were on the floor there, what were you asking God for?
Michelle: Well, more of Him.
Sid: You know that reminds me of a song by Grace Williams and the CD that we’re offering this week, “Fire Fall.” Let’s hear “Consume Me”, and I’m believing that as you listen to it the love of God will begin to consume you.
Grace William Excerpt “Consume me”
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth