Prayer teams at work in Healing Clinic

OTTAWA - Every Monday afternoon at St. Augustine’s Parish in Ottawa, the Holy Spirit Healing Clinic opens its door to anyone who wants to pray with a team of trained volunteers.

Each week, about 10 to 15 people come to the basement parish hall and receive prayer from one of three prayer teams made up of three or four people.

“I haven’t seen too many miracles,” said Michael Crane, co-leader of the clinic. “But we have a lot of praise reports that people write up after they receive prayer and I summarize them every year. They’re thankful for what God has done.”

Some come for deliverance of spiritual oppression, others come because they need a job or a place to live, he said.

“We don’t just pray for spiritual healing. We meet people where they’re at and what they ask prayer for.”

The clinic was started by Pauline Yantha about seven years ago. She remembers one woman who was able to cancel an operation for another pacemaker after receiving prayer ministry.

“She was having severe heart pain,” Yantha said. “She was in her 60s and didn’t want another operation.

“We prayed with her and the pain stopped. The next day no pain. It totally quit. She never needed it (the pacemaker) done. She had a miracle.”

Yantha also reported people healed of back or shoulder pain.

The clinic operates like a doctor’s office. New clients fill out a registration form, which asks whether their need for prayer is physical, emotional, spiritual or other. They also sign a waiver that indicates the clinic is not offering professional or licensed therapy and is not responsible for the client’s physical or “emotional condition.”

“We never tell them to come off meds or to stop seeing their doctors,” said Pauline McGrath, a co-leader.

Usually a prayer team is made up of three people, with one person leading and the other two assisting, McGrath said. The client usually has about 25 minutes of prayer, “or more depending on the need and the line up outside.”

Before the client leaves, the lead gives them a “praise report sheet” they can fill out to describe any healing they’ve received.

“Sometimes the healing will happen while they are in the room. Sometimes it’s gradual, over a few days, or over a few weeks,” McGrath said.

One person who received healing prayer was Crane.

“I cut my thumb lengthwise in a shop class in Grade 9,” Crane said. “After prayer by Pauline Yantha, the mobility greatly improved and it fattened up, too.

“Now it’s hard to tell which thumb it was. Looking at it now and I don’t even see the scar.”

The clinic has had many more “inner healings,” or emotional healing, Yantha said. There was an instance of an older woman who had been praying for physical healing, but during prayer ministry the Holy Spirit revealed she needed to forgive someone, Yantha said. After she forgave that person, “the physical healing came with the emotional healing.”

“The clinic was set up to find the root of the problem,” Yantha said. “It isn’t that we went digging after roots. In our training, we know we’re not there to give advice, but we’re here to listen, to ask the Holy Spirit how to pray for that person, to have the Lord show as what the root was.”

Some people were not ready to deal with the roots of their problems, so the team “prayed in layers,” Yantha said. “They can always come back as often as they want with no questions asked.”

Marie-Chantale Noel has been ministering at the clinic for about four years. She had wanted to learn about healing after her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

She started praying with her mother and, although her mother’s cancer has progressed and is inoperable, she feels relief from anxiety through prayer.

“I’ve seen breakthroughs, especially for anger, unforgiveness and healing in terms of deliverance of evil spirits,” Noel said.

“I really believe that the Holy Spirit is at work,” she said. “I have no doubt about that.”

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