Iris After Hours - Episode 1 - With guest Heidi Baker

welcome to iris after hours casual conversations with inspirational speakers off the clock well i am so excited we have our inaugural shooting of our first podcast for iris media i'm your host nathan coxer with my wonderful co-host crystal and human hello and it's very fitting that our very first guest on our very first podcast is none other than the founder and leader of iris global and my spiritual mama she's literally my mother exactly pretty amazing the wonderful most generous fantastic heidi baker oh so this is so fun love you guys love you too welcome to our first podcast this is so super exciting i'm so happy you guys just came up with this concept and you're all involved and family's involved i love it yeah it's awesome yeah and you're in the country and you actually have the time to record it that's true which is a small miracle in and of itself right yeah i'm excited because i'm here for azusa now to call and oh yes it's just survival alliance and at mott tonight and it was just it just worked out so well and fantastic and can you feel in the city like we're in l.a like can you feel what's happening there's so much intensity in the city we had a meeting before we came here we were meeting with some of our team at the americana down here in glendale and there were so we no exaggeration we ran into about 50 people stopped they were treasure hunting um so they were looking for people they could pray over and prophesy over and they kept finding us so we were happy we were like okay pray over prophesy over us and so we ran and they weren't just from bethel or iris or um they were from everywhere they were from all over and they were all just hunting for treasure in glendale and so the intensity and the emotion of what the expectations just off the hook so come on i feel like something's going on yeah because lou i love what lou says lou engel who's organized all this that the azusa now thing he said we've got to fly united and he was specifically talking about all the denominations coming together now i can remember in africa like when we first started irs media like four or five years ago you had the vision of the net and all all of us coming together and all the different mission organizations coming together yeah flying united so to speak and i really i really felt that today even in the city and the people i was meeting with were from different countries and different places and i remember this is really iris personal stuff but we were praying for the network for iris like what's what is iris global what are we what are we about and i remember we all just got wrecked that's our term you know we know what it means but we just got touched by holy spirit and we fell under the table and it was just a classic you know as you do and and it was it was like the lord showed me we're just this little tiny piece of the net and here we were looking for our what are we about as a movement who are we and the lord was saying you're just that little piece and he showed me that little piece of the net but if we weren't there then some of the people that were meant to you know know god everybody needs to know god they would fall through exactly yeah there'd be a hole in the net and so our little piece our little podcast our little piece our little whatever it is we're about does matter but it really matters when we all come together so we become this network and we we care about each other and i was with people from um older denominations and different streams and we all just have to come together and say hey we love each other let's care about the poor of the earth let's care about orphans widows the loss the sick the dying let's just come together and show the world that that we love each other yeah i mean that's what it reminds me of what jesus said they'll know we are christians by our love right how can you love each other when you're not together and side by side it has and love has to look like something so i'm excited about just the energy right now people coming together does it feel significant that it's happening in california for you being from california and coming back yeah and thinking you might never come back to california and all of a sudden a hundred thousand people passionate about god or meeting in azusa does that feel significant at all or does that remind you of the jesus people movement when you were younger it today reminded me of the jesus people movement i was at the very tail end of it um so very very end kind of the last few years of it and you couldn't go anywhere without people stopping in the streets and just showing love like people would randomly if you were hungry there were a lot of drug addicts at the time a lot of people displaced homeless you know there was this whole revolution where young people in america were just freaked out by how crazy everything was was and they were just we need something real we need something more and and jesus really just crashed in and everybody shared his love and they took care of each other and that's what i felt today i felt like people were were shining there was this random girl i met her daisy sitting next to us and because people kept stopping and talking to us and hugging us and they were from everywhere they were from all over the world she was like who are you people and i went over and hugged her and she said yes who are you and i went and hugged her and she says oh you're huggers and it just like brought it just yeah we're huggers we're we we love and we're in love with people and we're loved with jesus and it was just it was powerful and for me uh when i left california um dad and i left when um we left in 1980 we got married we went to lunch once we got married when were you born kristy 1987. 87 and elisha who helped put this together was 82. and so we left in 80 and we said we're never going back you know we're never going back one more ticket one-way ticket 30. gosh and hang on what would you think if christie was going to do that i would say go for it i would say go for it yeah so you recommend this to 20 something year olds who want to be missionaries i just go one way 20 bucks i actually think you need to hear holy spirit so that makes sense but back then we thought it was evil to have anything and now my theology's shifted on that where if god's blessing you it's so you can bless more people yeah because people get hung up on that still don't we we were really hung up on it it's like we raised crystalline and elisha in the slums they were raised on top ramen it's a miracle you turned out like this i love top runners it's a comfort food for me i come over i cook it for a christmas i get healthier top ramen now i know if i get chocolate preservatives without the msg you can get it at whole foods these days okay add lemon juice fresh lemon juice and a little bit of fresh garlic there you go when we really we prayed for an egg to put in her top wrong she still has the egg yeah she loves it yeah that's an asian thing from my dad it's of course chinese you know she turned out okay i think our journey of being poorer than the poor was really awesome for us and so for your generation i say to get rid of the entitlement spirit is awesome like wow you know whether you have whether you're eating in a five star or you're eating under a bridge just be grateful for food and share that's great you know just share whatever you do just share and so because that could be a stumbling block for people can't it yeah if it's too poor or too rich two are there like what people can get either end of the spectrum can't they i know billionaires who are more passionate for jesus than anyone i know i i just met some some people in asia one guy he's a multi-billionaire he builds a hospital uh a week a hospital a week he he builds schools and hospitals he built his own massive church that's full of holy spirit full of the presence and he just has an anointing to to create wealth and and i thought wow i have so judged people and god's just ripped it out of me and i thought he's just a beautiful man of god and i'm i'm started realizing it's just a journey that we're all on and and it's not a matter of what you have or don't have whether you go to the mission field with tons of money it just matters that you go that we all go whether it's across the street or around the world that we just go whether we top ramen or filet mignon you know that we just go and we love people yeah and so we've been on this journey 36 years you tell us about the journey of getting to the place what happened to come out of that mindset where you felt like you had to have nothing i'm sure chrissy was very grateful for this transition it was after she was grown up you know we we so what happened to change well what would happened it probably happened when i was reading ephesians and my my dad i'd led my dad to the lord it was so awesome oh my gosh what does that feel like that was the best i mean he was he was ordained at 72 and you remember papo was he was just such a loving man so full of life and always taught us about a spirit of excellence and and love and kindness but he wasn't he wasn't born again and roland would always say he's more kind by nature than most people by grace he really was he just he just instilled things into me even before he was born again but um what happened when he passed away my mom started saying well one day you're gonna inherit this house and we're like we don't want we don't want you to die you know obviously you don't want your parents to die no and then when my mom passed away um i was left with this strange situation of we left laguna beach um that's where you grew up where we grew up right and we left california and i thought let me just say laguna beach for everyone laguna beach is fantastic yeah beautiful beach so pretty stunning it's right on the ocean it's private beach and it's like i left and i put judgment in my heart and so my sister and i inherited the house and so i was like oh crud this is bad like i need to sell it and give it to the poor and that's the first thing i was going to do and i heard like god just laugh at me literally he's daddy god you know he laughs at you and he said your sister lives in that house and i was like oh no i can't sell it turf around the street so yeah i can't just toss her out and we are always iris we always need money we feed the poor we feed dying kids we feed we work in famine zones and hang on you and you've never asked for money well 30 years we haven't been we're not beggars no no other people yeah they asked us this is a side note that's yeah i mean you receive offerings but you don't ever i don't like you please give please give please give but we thank people yes we we yes i mean obviously feeding 20 000 kids a day you need a bizarre amount of money educating them all all of that so exactly for those of you who don't know i mean iris global yeah i mean you you have six spaces around the world yeah and and how many countries 22 nations and also how many churches have been planted over ten thousand over ten thousand journeys just for you guys you don't know what so there was and and this would happen god spoke to me really clearly you said turn around and bless now our house my dad always said we're the poorest of the rich people you always said that to me well the poorest of the rich people on this block so like whatever but um you know our house isn't the big mansion it's it's just the normal size laguna on the anyway i was going through this conflict in my heart like what am i gonna do oh crud this is bad i don't know what to do and and all this conflict in my heart and the lord said turn around i was walking on the beach and he said turn around and bless the neighbors who are all the neighbors are all multi-millionaires and i said i don't want to i was terrible i had a bad attitude i said i don't want to i don't want it one of them made my mom move a pipe six inches and it was a hundred and eighty thousand dollars i'm like how do you bless people that do that and the lord said i want you to turn around and bless them and so i turned around and i started to bless them and god started to shift my heart wow and it's not like we're not a loose shoe that's a word we use in mozambique not a lucha bunch we don't we're not an extravagant like our offices are all simple our houses are simple the way we live is simple our salaries are low we're not a lucha bunch but judgment on people that have really affects you it's not right you know you need to bless people and where they are and their journey and what they have and and so i want to say to your generation don't be entitled um don't have that selfish spirit yeah but whatever it is god wants to bless you with just share and i want to say share more and as soon as i started blessing the wealthy the lord started allowing me to make friends with people who had resources and it wasn't making friends to get money from them even though we need bizarre amounts it was making friends just because they need friends too yeah and so god ripped judgment out of me he ripped the judgment i had for california out of me because if you judge california in your heart then you can't reach california exactly if you judge the wealthy you can't reach the wealth if you judge the poor and say they don't care you know they're just poor and they're lazy and they don't do anything and there's money welfare lazy you can't reach them gosh they don't want to be projects so i think the thing i want to say is just don't judge just stop judging stop judging and start sharing wow whether it's with your words or your resources or anything you have stop judging start sharing wow that's amazing yeah i wanted to take everyone back to that moment where [Music] you said you showed up uh you guys started out how did iris exactly start was it in indonesia when you say you took a one-way ticket after you married a man who you one date with is that really true yeah it happened yeah all right that's kind of crazy we did pray together i was um director of ministries at scc which is vanguard university now and um so we did pray together we sat and prayed but we only went to one lunch and then we had a ministry trip in hawaii where we went to a dinner but it was kind of thrown in so yeah and then when you get on a one-way ticket to indonesia indonesia yeah what happens on the other end when you're two people you're passionate about god you feel called to the nations what does that look like when you show up and like you have twenty dollars well and i mean did you have a team there already were you going to an organization was that when iris started um well ira started it used to be called rainbow because that was before the name kind of became a conflicted name which means iris means uh rainbow in greek so it is the rainbow that surrounds the throne of god and the covenant with god and it was talking about really ezekiel 1 the rainbow surrounding the throne revelation the rainbow around the throne that we would be the people that would be super close that we would be different colors so all of us are unique like crystalline and i are family we're blood we're you know this is my daughter i love her to bits um but we're different and and we're all different and so each person has a color a way to shine and so i was um in crawley uk at wyoming base a wyoming base and i was just seeking the lord and and uh was out in the forest and he told me to start iris and that it would be about everybody being who they are called to be and only when we came together again like the net like ezekiel 1 and we were all allowing ourselves to be who we were called to be unique different colors um different giftings that we would come together and god would shine through us and reflect from us and so uh 1979 the lord told me to start iris and so after we got married we we officially started it but going to indonesia it was mel tari who is an amazing still an amazing evangelist who is best man in our wedding yeah we got to get him in for a podcast absolutely but papa mel he he said uh he said come to indonesia and i'm doing a big stadium meeting and we didn't have enough money all our wedding gifts we said we don't want any gifts we just want lug well we wanted luggage and we wanted money for our tickets so we were 500 short and mel said to roland who's a he's an awesome photographer you know he's the best he just said hey i got 500 if you can do the photography for the stadium so we're like yes you know we got the money 30 bucks 500 so we got our tickets and we got off the plane and no one picked us up you know and then somehow we called and we found somebody mel knew and they drove us by american express and they said you can cash your travelers checks there we're like what okay thank you awesome so we we didn't even have we had nothing and and i'll never forget uh this stadium meeting mel mel got in there and it was full the stadium was jammed and i was 20 years old and mel just looked at me and said i think you need to speak and he gave me the mic and said you speak to the stadium wow and so so that was how i started i started in stadiums and uh wow yeah kind of the rest is it's a long journey it's an amazing journey but um but the rainbow productions yeah you started out performing as well i was i was a ballerina so i was a i was in a newport institute of the arts ballet company and had been asked to go back to luke cern ballet company and and the church had told me couldn't dance it was a sin um but then yeah another conflict so i laid down my toe shoes but then god gave it back and he said to dance for him and i so i danced around the world for maybe four years danced around the world so i would put on my point shoes and i would create dance dramas and roland would do the backdrop and all these performers from other countries so indonesia philippines hong kong they would play the other parts so we would do these productions so we're really coming back to our media roots now and then i would just share after i would just share a message and thousands people would come to know jesus so it's been awesome but we slept everywhere we slept in you know we slept literally everywhere in little tiny rooms with eight people and uh we we just yeah we ate top ramen popcorn iced tea oh elisha was kind of that was it we had iced tea and popcorn a few eggs i was curious about that because you mentioned elisha it's my older brother um i became a mom last year you're welcome yes i made you a grandma and i'm so excited that's given me a different perspective on what that must have been like having kids on the mission field and in that case you were incredibly pregnant right when you left indonesia or you weren't sure where you were going and i know there was a story where you were literally on the curb in hawaii pregnant and you guys have lived this life like just following the lord not knowing where you're getting what you need next from where your eight months pregnant and i'm thinking oh my gosh i can't even imagine so what was that even like because it was the two of you but then were you freaking out um i have it's just i just love jesus so much and i know i just knew and and and dad knew too like he was going to provide i was more worried this is really i'm really being honest here i was more worried about my mom that's kind of a funny story because my mom was she she was worried about you she she just didn't understand they weren't christians yet so so they were like how can you live like this like this lifestyle where you're so poor and you don't even know where you're gonna put your your child and you don't have a crib and you don't have any money and you don't have food and and i was so nervous that my mom was going to see how we lived that that was probably more of my concern than how elisha was going to be born or you were going to be born i knew god would provide but i just didn't know what your family was gonna think my family yeah i was like oh cause because you're a first generation you're a first generation christian born again yeah first generation born again and uh i was really nervous so that story is super cool because what led you to sit to sitting on that curb so it was a situation the situation was this church in hawaii this awesome little church in haleiwa north north coast of oahu they they had bought us insurance for 30 bucks a month oh medical insurance yeah which you have 38 dollars a month it was so cheap back then gosh wouldn't that be great if we had that again anyway yes um we were in we were in asia when elisha was um going to be born and we had this 30 a month insurance so you had to have the baby in hawaii because it's the u.s because it was hawaiian insurance because it was super cheap and you didn't get to choose your doctor or anything so i was like we had to get to hawaii and i think i was i was eight months pregnant two times this happened to us yeah you have a habit of moving countries when you're eight months pregnant yes which is not the way i would do it though you're not even supposed to be on the plane where were you born hong kong hong kong come on yeah so i was we're in international waters now yeah and we just had to get to hawaii somehow and we just had no money i can't remember how we got there so from bali you had to get to hawaii we were in we were in bali yeah and we had to get to hawaii and we just arrived in hawaii eight months pregnant and sat on the street curb at the airport and roland and i are just holding hands and we're just praying oh god oh jesus i wish i had a picture of that i could see it right now you know i might have been seven and a half months but i think i was eight i was like we had nothing oh my goodness we had nothing and we we had well we had everything because we had jesus and uh we're just like oh god so somehow again wyom back in the story we called some friends and there was this place called the crisis center now they were so sweet to us they said we know you're not in crisis well we were ironically we're like we you're not in crisis you guys um because it was really for drug addicts we weren't drug addicts thank god but we weren't jesus yeah we we were we were in crisis they were like we have a room it was like eight by ten room it was full of roaches and i still hate roaches to this day i hate them like you can stay here and they they had food from the food bank and they said you can you know counsel some people and so we were just so grateful and rolling was trying to find work and he couldn't find any work and and um i was so pregnant you know who would take me to so uh at that at eight and a half months by then and so we were in this little room and i was just dreading oh god oh god oh god my mom's gonna see and i remember going to salvation army come on um with 15 cents and um cents 15 cents and buying a blanket and that was that was it i mean we are given our life for this gospel and we trusted him and roland had applied everywhere anything 7-11 anything he could not get work and we had no money and well we didn't have none we had this 15 cents and i bought this blanket and we pulled out a drawer and we were going to put elisha in this drawer and i was worried about the roaches though you know oh my goodness and and so i had this 15 cent blanket and i just i just worshipped and i trusted jesus and we went to this church um a meeting with this and and it was first assembly in honolulu hawaii and we were in the back of the church and this guy named dick mills was prophesying and dad and i were way in the back and i mean i i had gone into labor and it was a false labor and i was like my mom's gonna see this is so bad and i thought it's gonna break the mother is the greatest fear in this situation it really was that's amazing oh my goodness because i thought they're gonna it's gonna bring disgrace you know on the gospel like we told her and she didn't god provides we told my dad god provides and yet we were in this situation and then what was so cool what happened dick mills points to us and he said you too come up stand up here and he said within one week you're going to have everything you need within one week you're going to have all you need and he didn't this guy didn't he didn't know anything you didn't know we were living in the crisis center and had a 15 cent blanket and we're going to put our firstborn in this drawer we were going to keep it open we're going to keep the you know we but i figured you could put a child in a drawer keep the door open with this blanket i had and i i somehow got one onesie at salvation army and and the guy just he just like pointed us out and he said within one week you're going to have everything you need wow and that's a miracle we believed it we just believed this prophet and so this is our journey 1982 and we just went back to the crisis center we got a call from honolulu first assembly roy sapp was the pastor he's in heaven now and he just said um we just and his his wife's name we call her sister sap bless her heart sister sapp she she didn't know us and this is where you know we're just the body where i want your generation who has more you know maybe you guys have stuff um you have a home you're in a different situation which makes me really happy i'm so thrilled about it i love it the mother's happy i love it but i i want you to remember this this heart and and this spirit of just what it meant when a lady called me um the pastor's wife called and she didn't know us from anything and she said um we want to have we want to give you a baby shower you know well they didn't know me how why they wanted to have a baby shower they don't know me and they they invite me to this beautiful house in hawaii and i'm now nine months pregnant and i i i have nothing and they don't know i have nothing or they maybe they found out i don't know and they gave me this crazy beautiful spirit-filled baby shower and they gave me things you know clothes and blankets and thing just it was so awesome and then they gave roland a job doing their media for their media department again yeah again iris media and then it started a lot longer than that it was like it was started 36 years ago you know and then they said somebody called the next day and said uh we wonder if you could do us a favor and the way they said it that's also important like how when you give to the poor i mean we were poorer than the poor um when you give to the poor don't make them feel like projects they didn't make us feel like projects they said we want to give you a party we want to have a baby shower they didn't say oh you poor thing you know you just have a blanket you always you lazy person i think we can do something maybe no they they gave us a party how beautiful is that yeah and these guys who are amazing singers african-american couple they said could you please help us and i'm like yeah what do you need we'll do it whatev sure we'd love to help they said could you please watch our house for us could you just like house it for us and uh we would we just have to go to the mainland and we we want you to just take care of our house and uh come on we said sure in hawaii in hawaii a two-bedroom condo a two-bedroom like in an apartment building jesus and the day before they asked i had already gone into labor and it was a false labor and my mom was going to come and so it was like oh jesus and they said could you please take so now i've gone into false labor i'm about to give birth to elisha so you're you're the eldest that have been your sister yeah i'm just seven months you're about to turn your parents into grandparents here right so this is significant right and your dad right and they're you know they had money and they think we're nuts yeah and they think we're crazy being christians and ministers and just crazy haven't got agreed yeah just like you people are nuts and so we walk in they get someone gives us the key we walk into this place and two-bedroom fully furnished the second room is a completely decked out incredibly beautiful nursery i go into labor and give birth to elisha the next day and my mom shows up and there's the nursery oh there oh my gosh and and she's like this is mom's mom's happy this is this is nice i've been working on this for weeks now we're just in the spirit we're just like yeah whoa and then so we gave us a a lincoln continental to drive oh my gosh please yeah so we got the job the car the nursery the house everything and we were there for like nine months before we went back and and um before we went back so we were mission pastors and dad did the media and then with you it was even crazier yeah if you can imagine hong kong no we were in bali indonesia you went back to indonesia's missionaries we were in yeah i didn't know you went back there oh yeah we went straight back to asia nine we were uh mission pastors and that church was just awesome they still support us to this day the children hawaii yeah yeah they've been supporting us for gosh we're going to visit the next time we have holidays in hawaii we've got to go visit yeah they're just yeah clayton co pastor clayton co he was in our home group back then and i love home groups i i really think everyone should have groups that they relate to and he was in our home group he's now the senior pastor and they've just supported us for 30 34 years now wow awesome relationship we still have friends from that time it's crazy so cool but we were back in indonesia and and uh you were going to be born and we were eight we were going to name you katut so it's a good thing because in we were always crystal like you should take our middle name i like that indonesia they always they they named them the name this for number one number two and we were always involved in the culture so we you're it's a good thing you were born in hong kong very good because she was almost cut [Laughter] so we were i was now eight months pregnant and the they decided they didn't want any believers in indonesia in in bali uh so all missionaries there were only three couples less than one half of one participant yep no less than one half of one percent christian at the time i've just been back it's so awesome what's happened there so i'm now eight months pregnant um elisha's out of the country they gave us 48 hours to leave gosh that's a reason so deja vu we're back to this thing i am out to here and like oh jesus and i remember so i knew what you could but yeah i had prayed for like nine months for this refrigerator it was only this big but we were so poor still we didn't have we you didn't have a car oh we did have a dragon wagon roach coach once we called it it had a hole in the floor and everything right here in the u.s um no in hawaii yeah before the before that before but we had 12 years of no car um so so we're just prayed for this fridge and we led a lot of people to the lord and finally i spoke indonesia indonesian and was really really happy there thinking we're never leaving till till we get to africa but anyway they gave us 48 hours to leave and they actually had guns at dad and um you know and we had 48 hours to leave and we had nowhere to go indonesia got like that that's crazy yeah it was intense and i was so grieving over the fact that i'd learned the language and now i have to leave and over this refrigerator that i just had just gotten it you know it was such an excitement uh to have this little fridge because we were so hot and so thirsty oh yeah cold water is it's like the best thing ever yeah so 48 hour sleeve and so then we what happened to the fridge well we gave everything to some other to some guys from singapore that had gotten a visa we just gave everything we had to them and the cheapest place we could find to get to was hong kong and rollins oh my gosh rollins parents were missionaries in hong kong he's fourth generation missionary yeah because roland's first language he spoke as a kid chinese yeah yeah so we we ended up uh we we went to the korean air we heard that because so many people were christians in korea they gave discounts to missionaries so we went to korean air and just said because that was yongi choice time yeah it was joe's time so we just went we somehow got a ticket to korea we went in the korean air office and they gave us half price just because we were missionaries we put it we didn't have money we put it on our credit card we must admit but we had 48 hours to leave we had no money so did you get credit cards we had it we had a car from roland had a job before we left for the mission field so he had credit but he didn't we didn't use it and unless it was an emergency which it was this was i qualified you're going to get it qualified you're gonna get shot yeah so so that's what we did we got on a plane and rollins parents let us stay in there in their little tiny apartment oh my gosh roman's parents were there yeah in hong kong that's how we otherwise we would have been home here yes they were missionaries there my earliest memories are from hong kong with your grandparents i don't remember them there no when how long were they there they were yeah they were there they were there the whole time but crystalline learned um she spoke perfect cantonese and wrote perfect characters almost she spoke cantonese perfectly just like english yeah and went to chinese school there was another issue though besides having to move when you're eight months pregnant again yeah it's crazy enough in itself gosh you were also incredibly sick this time right and i didn't know how sick i was morning sickness no this is the cool this is the cool thing all things work together for the good it's not just some religious term in the bible come on all things work together for the good wow to those who love the lord wow and are called according to his purpose because here i am thank you sobbing over leaving indonesia i mean i needed people to help me on the plane i'm just a mess yeah so you're broken-hearted that you because you felt cool to indonesia so you're grieving how many years have you invested in indonesia um well we've been common gone but at that time we'd been there one solid year and i was fluent in indonesia yeah and you've been there previous time too right and so you were invested i was you had to pull out yeah pull up pull pull the router and i didn't want to have to learn cantonese and i didn't want to leave the people i love yes and so totally understandable and thinking god like what are you thinking well you could do whatever you want and why is this happening to us you know like you can turn the hearts out exactly and so i'm just sobbing and crying and probably a little bit ticked at god you know like why would this happen again and i don't want to be in hong kong and i and i'm anyway got to hong kong and i was puffy like just blowing up like a balloon so they took and they had no fluid like fluid a huge amount of fluid and they took me to the hospital and that's dangerous for flying too isn't it yeah and in hong kong you see they have this socialized medicine thank god so because we didn't have these english colonies we still had that 30 dollar insurance yeah because it was still in england probably yeah so we went to the hospital and and they they tested me i had severe toxemia they said your life and your baby's life are in total danger um you could both die and had i not been kicked out of indonesia crystalline and i wouldn't be here right now because we were both at the very last they said it's so severe you you probably had 24 hours and you would have been dead both of you and oh my god unless you've left indonesia so god literally and indonesia back then in bali there was no no medical care like that yeah i i didn't even have a doctor once so yeah hong kong i was i had no doctor i had never been to a doctor since i got all right nothing i was just re you know knowing the sex of your baby not nothing and so god literally uh turned it around and i ended up learning cantonese and planting a church in hong kong and rolling translated scripture for the lisu tribe he made characters for them and i said did roland know the language when you go back was that um he he knew mandarin but i learned cantonese and uh it was just a miracle and crystalline was born healthy and god saved our lives and thank you and fourth generation in asia right born in asia my dad's side is four generations i've been born in asia three before me yeah so i ended up born so that was cool that is so cool yeah wow and you had a vision um you've talked about your years in asia you had a vision specifically that you've you've often spoken about it but um i'm just curious about the journey from asia to you felt like the lord spoke to you about asia england and africa so when did you know that it was time to move on to the next thing how did that happen was it natural was it something you had to pray through was it very obvious to you when it was time to keep going well when i was 16 i had that incredible experience you know when i was i was in this little tiny pentecostal church where i was living on that indian reservation where i became a born-again christian and i was in this little pentecostal church and my hands were lifted and god literally just descended on me i mean his glory just came and i was well you so you felt he literally felt god oh oh i felt him i i everything changed in my life i couldn't hear two pianos one on the right one on the left loud preacher couldn't hear him i was in a vision with with the lord i heard the audible external voice of god for the only time in my whole life i've been 40 years ministering and i've never only heard the audible external voice and he said you're called to be a minister and a missionary to go to africa asia and england and then jesus said you're to be married to me kissed my left hand oil ran down my arm my hands were lifted up i was in this white light they told me i was there three hours i didn't twitch i just was just frozen there for three hours on my knees oh wow there was just so much glory so i always knew one day we would go to england one day we would go to africa one day we would go to asia and so when when i was dating i would say if anybody i would date i would be i'm going to africa asia and england i'm a minister and a missionary and so when i met roland he just said that sounds great that sounds wonderful i i love missions i'm a missionary background myself that's awesome he was the first one who really got it you know so probably why we amazing yeah way down so so what happened was we were in asia for 12 years and um you were four and a half and we knew it was it was time to to move but um i was actually pretty sick i had an immune disorder and i couldn't read well and i i was really sick you know you'd well it was i overworked i didn't know daddy god i didn't know daddy god i didn't know abba daddy at all i just i knew how to work really hard i knew how to serve god uh but i but i was just driven you know i was driven and pushed and and and i was striving i i had a lot of striving i thought i was doing it all you know again if if you were holy to be poor we would be poorer than the poor you're right yeah you know i had judgments on me towards the western church just a lot of stuff but i was doing the best yeah you know i could and roland was doing the best he could and we were when you were called by god and you're being called being yeah everything within us was obedient but we didn't you know we didn't know what we know now about daddy god we didn't know what we know now about that's why i'm so happy they have a house you know i'm so happy you have a house i i want everybody to have a house you know i want everybody to have a house i want everybody to have food i want the poor of the earth to have food in a house and so we didn't we just didn't know that you know all so many things so we were there and i heard the lord say it's time to get your phd well what what's that about education huh i i know a lot of christians have judgment towards education um but seriously god said it's time to get your phd come on and he told me where to go and they'd never had a woman uh graduate it's king's college university of london in systematic theology never had a woman graduate from that from that program because you had to be ordained and um you know it's a it's number one in my field and in the world at the time and so it was really hard to get in there and i was like god oh god uh if you want me to go then you're gonna get me in so i just applied miraculously i got in um and so it was time to go to england and i always thought it would be africa first then asia then england but instead it turned out asia england africa and then obviously the lord said the nations but that's a whole other topic so we were in england for three years and then crystalline had a perfect british accent from cantonese it was beautiful yeah so she went from cantonese to a very popular complain about that yeah i lost that the worst thing that's happened to us [Laughter] beautiful heidi you're gonna you're gonna rush off you're preaching with at todd white's conference tonight yeah at the moment another hot spot here in in los angeles but before we go to revival history we're gonna come back and we're gonna definitely do another podcast with you to finish this story off because it's just incredible but um what so much has changed since these early days what we're talking about i'm just interested to know what's the same jesus what hasn't changed jesus jesus jesus i'm so in love with jesus he's my everything i want to radiate him i want everybody to know him and i know my daddy i know i'm daddy's girl and i'm i'm in love with him in love with my family love with roland i'm so blessed i feel like i feel like a rich a rich mama you know because i have family and i i feel just so grateful i just feel so grateful and been 20 years in mozambique yeah and now to 96 nations preaching this glorious gospel you know just sharing the love of god and seeing multiplication around the world so jesus and uh i love yielding my life to holy spirit just saying here i am you know use me i'm a little mama i don't you've totally i don't have any you've totally told me that great talent but i i could say hey take what i have and multiply you know if if i always kind of saw myself maybe i had the one talent maybe one and a half at best but i didn't bury it like whatever i had wow i was like take it multiply it you know whatever whatever you give me lord i want to multiply it so my life now as i travel a third of my time around the world is is really for multiplication you know it's it's so we can go out there and and just see other people find out what what it's like to know daddy god that every orphan can come home to the father and that every single person's created in the image of god and so right now i just want i want at this stage in life it's i want multiplication i want all all the people listening all the people just just that know jesus to to know how easy it is to live your life for him even if it's the hardest thing you can imagine it's easy because he's worthy you know you said um i just in you're just reminding me of something that you said and it's about being yielded to whatever the lord's calling you to and um you are known as someone who's taken in orphans hundreds and thousands of them irises cared for them um in mozambique but you said when the lord called you to africa before that you never even taught at sunday school yeah and yet how many orphans and children have been taken care of and brought in and that's just an example i feel like of someone who just said yes yeah um i just and it wasn't the natural thing for you you've never done that before and that's what you're known for today um yeah i never you know i never thought i'd ever work with kids i mean i thought i have my two and that's great so that started in africa yeah because the lord told me to stop preaching in the big meetings in my 20s and move in with the poor and learn about the kingdom of god so did that for 20 years um living with the poorest people on the planet living in in the slums and working in the garbage dumps and just the streets and and all that that's a missions training school yeah yeah 20-year mission stream yeah and then actually longer than that in it now but but um when we got to mozambique we're thinking okay now i have my phd maybe i should be teaching uh in university or something and the lord said i want you to go sit on the street corner and so i asked roland dad if i could go to mozambique ahead of him because he was still working on working on his thesis and he said yeah go ahead so i went a few months before crystalline and election and uh rolling and i got there i had enough money for three days of food and i was i had nowhere to live again sitting on a street corner this street corner theme comes back and back again i'm sitting on a street corner was it a one-minute ticket this time oh yeah oh yeah and i was sitting on the street corner and i've got you bought me one of them sometimes yeah i should go for it sit in there and and i don't have anywhere to sleep i've got this truck i call lazarus i have nowhere to sleep they're shooting at people right because if they just finished the civil war yeah we need to pray right now because there's all kinds of war going on in the middle of the country right now yeah we need to really pray for peace thank you for peace in mozambique and i'm sitting there and it was just it was crazy and this lady runs up to me throws keys in my hand i was i i had three days at this baptist bible college they said i could stay for three days so i'm like oh lord it's the last day and i have nowhere to sleep and i'm thinking i'm gonna sleep in my truck this is not safe oh jesus um and i see all these starving kids just they're in shredded rags like we still see them at home two-thirds of our life you know every day there they are shredded rags and these kids at the time bloated bellies shredded rags i'm sitting on the street corner and and daddy god says i want you to learn about the kingdom from the children they want to they're going to teach you about the kingdom you learn from the poor now you're going to learn from the children and i said i don't do children and he said you do now you do now so that's how we started caring for kids and um this little missionary i knew she was a missionary because she had a bun flowered skirt and tennis shoes you know and she's running your normal outfit yay i don't i can just be me so she's running after me and she just throws some keys same thing like those guys in um hawaii yeah yeah with the lightning you do me a favor so she throws keys in my hands and she says can you do me a favor can you watch my house so it's revisited and i said sure yeah sure she didn't even know me but she knew i was i wanted a wannabe missionary and you know i've been there three days she didn't know i had no money no food nowhere to sleep and she said she because the baptist said three days in their bible school and my it was my third day i had to leave i had nowhere to go i had this truck my my kombucha evil my fuel was almost an empty and she said and eat the food or the rats are going to get it seriously do me a favor and eat my food she said that you've got no food that's crazy and i found this this in this mozambican kid named lazarus and uh he said i think i know where she lives she didn't give me her address and there were no street signs i just had keys and you didn't know she's so prophetic she didn't oh my god because we have keys to the kingdom you know we we have keys we have access to daddy's house but we don't always know how to get there and we're not meant to have nothing we're meant to have provision for the poor provision for children like if my goal for crystalline wouldn't be that she would she would have nothing that my goal for her would be that she would have a house that she would have um food that that zoe would have food that that brock would have food that they would have what they need daddy god has everything we need he gave us keys but we just don't know we don't always know how to get there and so this lady gave me these keys and we went round in this roundabout this is also prophetic and my fuel gauge is like almost it's on red red i have no money my fuel gauge is on red red there's no street signs and i have to find this house because i have nowhere to sleep i have nowhere to sleep and i have no food and my and it's now at the very and we're going round about we went around this round about like four times and finally lazarus i knew about 20 words of portuguese he knew about 20 words of english and finally he's just like la la and he just points and he found the house and i was so exhausted i walked up the stairs i hadn't slept because they were shooting in the streets and and my alarm on my truck was going off all the time so i was exhausted i was shaky tired we get up i didn't even want the food so many people want to be hungry for god but they're just tired they just need to sleep they just need to rest they just need to know you know you can just rest you don't need to always do this or do that or even eat eat eat we we know we had to eat jesus drink jesus be with jesus we've got to you know but sometimes we just need to rest we need to soak we need so i just fell asleep and when i woke up the next day my appetite came back and i was able to eat you know the food that the rats couldn't get and um we've been now 20 years in muslim beacon and god has provided every step of the way there's famine right now um so my heart's really broken um we we we haven't been beggars we don't beg we don't want to beg now but we do want people to be aware that children are dying of starvation well we're very very important in central mosul people are eating poison mushrooms um and and i just think it's time that thousands of people care you know on a on a consistent basis for the poor of the earth wherever whether it's iris or somewhere else we're not beggars we're not begging we're not saying give or we die but there are kids who do die if if the western world the eastern world doesn't care we believe in sustainability you know we believe in that yes we should make this whole work sustainable we have farms we have a big farm but the the rain didn't come yeah right there right now our bases there are kids that are hungry they're if they don't get an education with iris they don't get school at all if they don't get food the ones in the center of the nation right now they literally die and it's a slow painful death and i just want to say that daddy god cares and i think most people if they knew they would actually care too yeah and it's not like it doesn't cost a bomb to feed a a child it's it's like you know a dollar a day feeds a child a dollar fifty educates a child and feeds a child a day i don't i used to think i couldn't say that i couldn't say that out loud because that would wreck us that would mean we couldn't give our testimony that we never asked whatever but it's like hang it i want to say we need to care we need to care for the kids in the sex trade industry in asia yeah we need we have bases in asia you know we're rescuing kids out of the sex trade industry and i think um your generation cares i think your generation cares i know i i know that god cares and it was like mother teresa said it's not that god doesn't care it's that it's that the body doesn't see you know that they don't have eyes to see so i i want to say you know open your eyes there are children that are starving right now and and there are also widows and there are people crawling on their hands and knees and they need food they need education they need water and they need jesus but the people i'm talking about right now in iris in some of our churches they have met jesus they are believers they want to work but there's no work right now they want to grow their own food they planted but there's no crop so i say i i want to do like a benefit concert do where people um united pursuit were brock brock's one of the leads in that her husband amazing singer um julie myers i know i believe jake hamilton will come i mean some of these awesome guys bands i want to do some kind of like a benefit concert to feed the children and just say hey but you know on a monthly basis too not just once but but on a monthly basis feed educate one child you know just do something that that matters yeah and they do know jesus you know but they they need food and they need education yeah and daddy cares um do we you know that's what i do do we and it's not it's not a huge thing yeah and i don't think you have to give up your starbucks to feed a child usually but sometimes you might like if it's if it's 50 to feed an educated child per month um and that means you don't go out to dinner um twice a week once a week whatever then actually i think that's okay you know i feel the holy spirit on that like that's great right why is it that but i believe god can provide for both yeah you know what i'm saying i don't think it's that we don't need to be locked into entitlement i don't think but i do think that if it's one or the other then we should choose caring for for a really hungry kid sending them to school it's more blessed to give it is and it's not begging like i'm i'm just saying maybe people just don't know and so they don't know exactly and and we are in a bit of a bubble in the west i mean yeah we we have our western blinders on yeah i was just at americana there's fountains going i love them i love the fountains music fountains uh you know stores everywhere it's not that i don't like that i think it's wonderful that people prosper exactly i'm happy and blessed that people prosper yeah i just think we need to share yeah and we need to see what god sees and he doesn't want a child being sold for sex he doesn't want a child to go to bed starving hungry um like when you you you have kids you have zoey like i would do anything to make sure you were fed i would do anything i would i would sell anything do anything give anything and so these these kids are in front of us i i've held dying kids in my arms and so i'm really passionate about this that that love has to look like something it can't just be jabbering it can't just be words it actually has to be um sharing you know if it's water wells it has to be water wells if it's just just caring for one child just educating one child or or taking care of one widow mama or one pastor you know training one pastor that'll care for many um i think i think daddy god is really passionate about it so yeah that's really on my heart and i think there's more information if you guys are listening um out there in podcast land that our website at the iris global yeah dot org so iris global dot org this one is youtube channel yeah yeah and they can come visit any almost not every base but 36 spaces they can probably visit 30 of them yeah and um just come out there and see but uh just be a part you know and and pray for us yes we need prayer and pray for rain right now that that rain would come to mozambique to malawi where there's where there's drought last year we had floods this year it's it's drought so just pray and and believe god that we'll be able to keep reaching you know the unreached people groups and get out there and pray for protection and peace yeah yeah yeah we had a few people submit questions that they were interested in hearing so i'm just gonna ask you one of those really quick um what would you go back if you could go back in time what would you tell your five-year-old self my five-year-old self i would say heidi is a five-year-old i would say jesus is alive and he loves you and he has a plan for your life that's gonna be so exciting that you should you should be the happiest girl on the planet yes good things in store good things in store i mean i love my life i love my life come on yeah that's awesome all right heidi would you just release a blessing over everyone listening yeah i know oh shake it up wow lord i just thank you jesus um just for time family time and just telling stories and just being real i thank you god that i could just um i could just share my heart about these kids because my heart's broken god and i i thank you that you just could give me a brave heart because i see them lord i see their their little bloated bellies and i see their sunken in eyes and i know you're saying give them something to eat so i thank you jesus that you care and i thank you that you care about the church in the west that needs fresh bread and the eating crumbs that fall from your table and i just ask you to give them fresh food to give them your presents to give them your your presence god to give them bread and and wine from your side lord to let them know who you are and daddy to let them know the beauty of your love and holy spirit to just let them yield to you and know you're their comforter so just hold them and rock them in your arms and be with them and thank you that we could just be real and share just just share our lives god we love you so much jesus yes bless them god amen wow wow thank you thank you so much heidi thank you for hmm it's cool for being a mama in the natural and in the spirit yes thank you for that love being here yeah and thank you to all of our listeners we'd love to hear any comments or questions that you're interested in us asking any future guests you can leave them at our comment section in the iris global youtube channel and until next time ciao this podcast is presented by iris global for more information or to support the work of iris global please visit us online at irisglobal.org

Channel: Iris Global

Views: 43,535

Rating: 4.8544397 out of 5

Keywords: Heidi Baker, Rolland Baker, Iris Global, Iris, Iris Ministries, Africa, Mozambique, Floods, Relief, poor, orphan, love, stop for one, stop for the one, iris after hours, podcast, famine, relief, encouraging, holy spirit

Id: S12kmqSvA9c

Length: 73min 0sec (4380 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2016