Katy Tosh, Director of Christ the Healer Ministries, is excited about bringing this conference to Middle Georgia.

"I met Nigel about three years ago in North Carolina at a Healing Winds Conference sponsored by the Order of St. Luke. I had listened to him on tapes and loved him and wanted to bring him here and share him with Christ the Healer Ministries and the Middle Georgia area. He has a profound gift of healing and an incredible belief system. His sister was miraculously healed of dystonia, an incurable disease. This brought Nigel into the healing prayer realm. Nigel is 53 and from England. He moved to the US in the 70s, and he started a healing ministry and retreat center in Connecticut. He became so well known that he was called by the Episcopal Bishop of the Albany, New York diocese to come and run the Greenwich, NY Spiritual Life Center," Katy said.

The conference, costing $25 per person, will start at 6 p.m. on Friday evening, continue from 9 to 12 noon on Saturday and end on Saturday afternoon at 4:45 p.m. A service of communion and healing will bring the conference to a close. You can register by emailing info@christthehealer. us or calling 474- 9793. Attendees can pay at the door when they enter in the Christian Life Center at Martha Bowman.

Bringing healing conferences and speakers to the area is just one part of Katy's job as Director of Christ the Healer Ministries, an interdenominational ministry dedicated to praying for spiritual, physical, emotional, and generational healing.

Individual Prayer Appointments

The prayer ministry offers individual prayer appointments, where a prayer team of two will pray with an individual for 1-1/2 hours at the initial session.

Katy described an individual prayer session, "We spend the first half of the session listening to our clients telling their stories. We ask the Lord for His love to flow through us to our clients because ONLY His love heals. We ask the Holy Spirit to come and to bring our clients into his presence. We are Christian people of prayer. It is important that people know that we are not therapists or counselors because we refrain from giving advice. We rely on the Counselor, the Spirit of Truth, to guide our prayer sessions. The spirit and the soul are so tightly linked to the physical. People might come thinking they need a physical healing, and in actuality they are healed of a heart wound, they experienced an emotional healing. A lot of people hear about our prayer ministry by word of mouth. Pastors, friends, physicians, or a person who's been here can refer them. Our biggest advocates are people who have come for prayer and have met the Lord here and have been healed. They go out and tell others."

Katy's own introduction into healing prayer began about 10 years ago when her spiritual advisor, Dan Edwards, an Episcopalian priest, recommended that she read the writings of Agnes Sanford and Frances MacNutt, because events in her life were paralleling what had gone on in their lives.

"After reading their books on healing prayer, I realized that I wanted what they had. I found that Agnes Sanford died in the late 70s, but that Frances MacNutt and his wife, Judith, were very much alive and had founded Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida. After meeting with them, I decided to go to Jacksonville to attend their School of Healing Prayer. I graduated from the School of Healing Prayer a year and a half later. For about six years now, I have traveled every few months to Jacksonville to assist as a volunteer in their prayer ministry. About five years ago, I felt led by the Lord to bring what the MacNutt's are doing in Jacksonville to Macon. I talked to different priests and pastors about it, prayed and fasted, and it became clear to me that we were supposed to bring this healing ministry to Macon. We started Christ the Healer Ministries two years ago this January," Katy said.

The ministry operates primarily out of Martha Bowman United Methodist Church. The individual prayer sessions are held in the prayer room there.

Prayer Ministry Training

Christ the Healer Ministries also offers three levels of prayer ministry training, using the Schools of Healing Prayer curriculum developed by Frances and Judith MacNutt. The training takes places in Sunday school rooms at Martha Bowman. Each level of The Schools of Healing Prayer cost $125 per person, which covers the cost of the materials for five days of training. Discounts are given for groups and families.

"We've trained 12 people to be prayer ministers. We are just completing a Level Two School of Healing prayer this month. Each level takes four to five days, eight hours each day. At the end of the training, we have a prayer practicum and the prayer ministers practice praying for one another for the concerns that they have themselves. One of our prayer methods is called the Healing of Memories or Inner Healing. Within this process, we ask Jesus to come and go back in the person's life and go into a memory where there is a trauma or hurt and just be there with the person. The Lord always shows up; He will go into that memory and heal the child within," Katy said.

"All healing is a mystery. We on earth will never understand fully because God himself is a mystery. God always does the healing. Our calling is to pray fervently without ceasing. We are just God's instrument on this earth. We pray with a lot of people who have cancer. Part of the process is to ask the person to go back and review his or her life. We have found that bitterness and unforgiveness are the biggest blocks keeping a person from being healed. We believe that there are spiritual roots to most physical ailments and once the spiritual is healed, the physical quickly follows. The Lord said to lay hands on the sick. I believe that when we pray and when we lay hands on, something always happens. We just have to trust and believe for healing because the Lord calls us to pray right up until a person draws their last breath. We are supposed to love a person into the Lord's hands," Katy explained.

Katy went on to say that past involvement in the occult often blocks healing as do generational predispositions to cancer, addictions, and other diseases.

"Our job is to pray to cut off that generational negative predisposition. We have a Generational Eucharist service, a communion service, where people will place on the altar a generational family tree that they have filled out. We then take the family tree forms outside and burn them, symbolically cutting the person free from the generational inheritances," Katy added.

Soaking Prayer Evenings

Another prayer opportunity offered by Christ the Healer Ministries are soaking prayer evenings. Individuals can come and listen to quiet spirit-filled music. Participants write their prayer concerns on index cards. The prayer ministers look at the index cards and pray quietly for the particpant's concerns. "The environment is one of intimacy, safety, and quietness, as we're seeking the presence of the Lord to heal. Everything is done in a very gently loving manner. We're very sensitive to and respectful of our client's feelings and wishes. We always ask when they first come to us, "Is it OK to lay hands on you? " Katy said.

All individual prayer appointments and Soaking Prayer Evenings are free. The prayer ministry operates totally from donations.

For more information about Healing Prayer Conference on January 11-12, or about Christ the Healer Ministries, call the ministry at 474-9793.