Healing Rooms offers hope for body and soul
The news struck her like a semi-truck at night, flinging Jeri Mainer into a pit of darkness, causing her life to spin out of control.
It’s cancer, the doctor said. A rare form of soft-tissue sarcoma. So serious that she may not live through the end of the year.
Mainer, an insurance agent and single mother of two, grew despondent. “I was desperate to live,” she said. “I grasped at anything I could find to give me hope.”
In search of solace, the Spokane Valley resident turned to Healing Rooms Ministries, a prayer center near downtown Spokane for those seeking to be whole again.
Every month, as many as 800 to 1,000 people gather at this building on East First Avenue. Many are wracked with pain – migraines, back aches, chronic soreness in their arms, legs and other body parts. Others suffer from mental illness, drug addiction or depression. While some need moral support to get through a divorce or the death of a loved one, others – especially those on the brink of death – pray for a miracle.
Mainer, 48, wasn’t expecting one when she first visited the Healing Rooms in June 2001. Unlike the TV faith healing shows that depict people in wheelchairs suddenly able to walk again, Mainer’s cancer didn’t miraculously disappear. Nor did she avoid the agony of six weeklong chemotherapy sessions and 58 radiation treatments at the University of Washington Medical Center.
What she did find, however, was a powerful spiritual experience – one that shook her to the core and changed the course of her life.
“We can have great doctors, but if we don’t have that spiritual belief in healing, it’s a much more difficult road,” Mainer said. “You have to find peace. You have to believe. Or else you feel like you’re walking alone.”
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Just like a clinic, people who come to the Healing Rooms sign their names on a list and wait in the lobby. But unlike the doctor’s office, you can’t make an appointment. Nor can you choose the people who will pray over you. It’s also free – those seeking help simply write down what they need prayer for and wait their turn.
Mainer was breathless that June morning, the first time she came for prayer. Linda Collins, a member of the ministry team, took her hand and led her into one of the nine small prayer rooms.
“Lord, please put this protective shield around Jeri as she goes for her first round of chemotherapy,” Collins implored, placing her hands on Mainer’s shoulders.
Mainer burst into tears. She fell to the ground and couldn’t move, she recalled. All she could do was cry. As Collins continued to pray over her for the next two hours, Mainer felt a deep connection to this woman who seemed to understand her desperate plea for hope.
“She spoke God’s word into me,” Mainer recalled. “It was as clear as day. God was going to come to me with his healing.”
Mainer and others who say they have experienced God’s presence in the Healing Rooms have quickly spread the word. Since it was founded in Spokane six years ago by the Rev. Cal Pierce, a former real estate developer from California, Healing Rooms Ministries has launched more than 400 other healing rooms throughout the United States and in 25 countries.
When it opened, the ministry was a tiny operation inside the Rookery Building downtown, drawing fewer than 150 people each month. Today, Healing Rooms Ministries has a 5,000-square-foot building of its own and a staff of 30 employees and 140 volunteers from nearly 60 area churches. While the vast majority are evangelical Christians, a number of Catholics and mainline Protestants also volunteer or seek help. Every Wednesday through Saturday, the place is packed with people – some waiting to be prayed for and others gathered in the “war room,” where intercessors call upon God to bless the ministry, the city of Spokane and the nations of the world.
“We are a temple of the Holy Spirit,” said Pierce. “It’s just our hands. Jesus is the real healer.”
Believers who regularly come to the Healing Rooms react in different ways when they’re “touched by the Holy Spirit.” While some are quiet and remain on their feet, others collapse backward and appear to lose control of their bodies. They laugh and cry. They moan. Many fall into a religious ecstasy, twitching their heads or writhing on the floor. Some speak in tongues, uttering nonsensical words or sounds. The effects of these prayer sessions vary. While Mainer wasn’t immediately cured of her cancer, there are others who claim they were healed on the spot – that their illness or problem miraculously went away.
Katherine Wheeler of Odessa believes a miracle happened two years ago when she received prayer during a Healing Rooms conference. Stricken with ulcerative colitis, a chronic illness related to Crohn’s disease, Wheeler was reduced to skin and bones when she arrived that day in a wheelchair.
“I felt a tremendous amount of love,” said Wheeler, recalling that feeling of warmth that washed over her after the prayers. When she left the conference, she was able to walk on her own. Within several weeks, she had gained more than 10 pounds and was able to care for her six children again.
“I attribute it all to God,” said Wheeler, whose husband, Gus, volunteers once a week at the ministry.
Although they believe in the power of prayer, Pierce and others at the Healing Rooms encourage people to follow doctors’ orders and continue medical treatment. Healing is a process of restoration, according to Pierce. It often takes time and a change of lifestyle, he said.
“There’s a difference between healing and a miracle,” he said. “We go beyond the symptoms and to the heart. People sometimes think only of physical healing, but half of what we do involves the emotional and spiritual.”
Pierce’s vision for the Healing Rooms began in 1996, when he and his wife, Michelle, still lived in Redding, Calif. The couple had actually planned to buy an RV and retire when Cal Pierce suddenly felt God’s call during a service at their Assembly of God church.
Pierce found himself overcome with “waves of fire” that made him aware of God’s presence, he said. The experience inspired him to read and learn everything he could about healing and on John G. Lake, the late faith healer who established his headquarters nearly a century ago in Spokane.
Without ever setting foot in Washington state, Pierce and his wife sold everything they owned in 1998 and moved to Spokane. A year later, the Healing Rooms Ministries was born.
No one is asked to pay for the prayers they receive at the Healing Rooms, but many choose to contribute. In fact, about half of the ministry’s annual budget of nearly $800,000 comes from donors. The Pierces draw their salary – about $50,000 annually – from honorariums at speaking engagements throughout the country. The ministry also hosts conferences and sells books and DVDs, which helps support the work of other local Christian ministries including Youth for Christ and Truth Ministries for the homeless.
“All kinds of miracles happen here, not just the physical kind,” said 73-year-old Jacci McKee, a ministry team member for six years. “Hearts are mended. Relationships are reconciled. … Through (the Healing Rooms), God wants to show his love to the world.”
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On a recent afternoon at the Healing Rooms, 22-year-old Lydia Gibson did her homework while waiting her turn. “I’m back for seconds,” she said, explaining how she packed a sack lunch and had already received prayer earlier in the day.
Gibson comes here regularly to get help for all sorts of problems – from PMS and her tendency to overeat, to drug addiction and promiscuity.
She was 18 when her godparents first brought her to the Healing Rooms. At the time, Gibson said, she had been struggling with alcoholism, witchcraft, bisexuality and a host of other “ailments.”
“My lifestyle has changed, but I’m still a work in progress,” said Gibson, a student at Spokane Falls Community College. “Jesus Christ is setting me free. I’d be dead without God’s forgiveness.”
When it was her turn to receive prayer, Gibson was accompanied by a ministry team made up of Shirley Johnson and Angie Davis.
“What would you like from the Lord?” Johnson asked the young woman as she held her hands.
“I feel really empty, and I would like to be full,” replied Gibson.
“Are you spending time with the Lord?” the older woman inquired.
“I pray and read the Word.”
“Do you have friends?”
“I’m a loner.”
After being anointed with oil, and in the middle of a prayer, Gibson shook and fell backward, but was caught by Davis. The young woman started to cry. “I’m not skinny,” she wept. “I don’t dress like they do. I didn’t grow up with two parents.”
Davis and Johnson continued to pray over her, sometimes in tongues, asking God to give her grace. “Keep this young lady in the palm of your hands, Lord,” they cried. “May God give you new vision, new encouragement and friends.”
After the 20-minute session, Gibson hugged the two women. “I feel so free,” she said, smiling and wiping away her tears.
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Near the lobby where people wait for prayer is the “wall of healing,” a space covered with written testimonies.
“My hearing aids were removed!”
“I can walk without pain.”
“No prostate cancer! Praise Jesus!”
It was on this wall where Mainer first saw the words she needed to hear: “By Jesus’ stripes, I am healed of sarcoma.” It became her mantra. She made a sign with the words and posted it in the hospital room whenever she went in for treatment.
In May 2002, Mainer’s oncologist told her she was cancer-free.
While her experience at the Healing Rooms didn’t cure her overnight, it empowered her as she fought to live.
It spurred her to start praying again and attend services at Zion Lutheran Church in Spokane Valley, another place that has fostered her spiritual growth.
The Healing Rooms also restored her faith in God and taught her some lessons – how fragile life can be, how faith can give you strength.
“We tend to think we’re in control of things in our life, but it’s never in our hands,” said Mainer, who still travels to Seattle every six months to ensure the sarcoma doesn’t return.
“In moments of desperation, we can count on God’s word. … I would’ve been completely lost without prayer.”