In 2023, when Anna and I were in South Carolina fundraising, we had the great blessing of visiting many churches and seeing some of the different ministries churches were utilizing to reach out and bless those in their congregations and communities. One ministry that caught my attention was that of healing prayer ministry happening around the Diocese. Just before we finished our fundraising and were sent to Cambodia, Prince George Winyah invited Anna and me to come and receive a night of healing prayer in preparation for our ministry. The experience was very impactful and led us to feel closer to the people of PGW who were choosing to invest intentional time in sending us out into the world to share the Gospel of Christ. That experience has stuck with me even to this day!
At the start of the year, I took a role with our church here in Cambodia to lead and grow our student dorm ministries. As I got to know the dorm leaders and visited with the students, one thing became very clear. These students are going to church; they are attending Bible studies; they are learning the Gospel. But they are not experiencing the Gospel in the way that Christ loves us. I spent a lot of time praying for the Lord to direct me in how to help the students and dorm leaders grow closer to one another and to see the Gospels as not simply stories about Jesus, but as an example for Jesus teaching us how to live our lives and engage with one another.
That memory of being prayed over kept coming to my mind.
After some time, I reached out to the Rev. Dr. Sandi Kerner, our Diocese’s Canon for Healing Prayer, to learn more about healing prayer to see if it was a ministry that would bless our young people and help them grow closer to one another. After one zoom call, the answer for how to help these students grow deeper not only in their faith in Christ, but also in their love for one another became painfully obvious. I needed to teach them how to pray together and give them opportunities to do so! After Sandi so generously got me started, I began to warm the dorm leaders up to the idea of praying with one another and with the students and what that would look like. I began adapting the teaching into short and manageable lessons focusing on questions and answers that challenged the students to think deeper than the pages of the Bible text. Questions like who is impacted by illness? How does physical illness lead to spiritual and emotional sickness? How does the well-being or lack thereof of one member of the body/family impact those around them? After doing one lesson, the dorm leaders were awestruck at the new way of thinking about Jesus’ miracles from the four Gospels. One of them even said, “our students need these lessons in their lives.”
I continued to adapt the lessons and prayed for the Lord to use them to open the eyes of the students and dorm leaders to see how prayer was not something we just do, but it’s something that changes us. It draws us closer to God and to each other.
And something amazing happened! After the second lesson, which looked at Jesus healing a demon-possessed man, a demon-possessed girl reached out to the church for help in exorcising the demon from her body and spirit. The family had long been seeking ways to help their daughter with no luck and finally reached out to one of our pastors for help. The students were amazed; here they were learning about Jesus working miracles, and now there was an opportunity to put their learning to practical use!
Long story short, that girl was prayed over by the pastor and some of the students in the dorm and ultimately healed of the demons and other things that had been done to her. This miracle led to the baptism of the girl and her entire family, and also to the family getting rid of every idol inside their house. Amazing!
After they shared this with me, I did not want to stop the momentum, so I asked them to take the lessons a step further. I challenged them: let’s do a prayer night where we bring all three of our dorms and students together and give them an opportunity to learn about how to pray together and then give them a chance to do it right there.
The dorm leaders were keen to give it a try. After a few weeks of planning and praying for the LORD to do something mighty, we came to the night of prayer on August 10. I taught about the miracle from Luke 13:10-17 where Jesus heals a woman with a broken spirit. I explained that in our lives, many things happen that cause us to live with our backs bent over because of the weight/burden we carry from our life experiences. But Jesus sees the things we carry and he wants to heal us and set us free from carrying those things. When Jesus touched and prayed for the woman, she was miraculously healed and this is the example we are going to try tonight.
The students split into groups of three and I challenged them: one person speak and share your burdens with your group and trust that they will receive your words. For the other two, listen to the burdens of your friend. After sharing and listening, I challenged them to lay hands on one another and then to actually pray right there, not simply share and then go about their lives.
What I saw was incredible! Very quickly 41 students were sharing deep parts of their lives with each other, things that culturally are not normal to share with one another, and they were doing so while laying hands on one another. I was able to see the demeanor of the students changing right before my eyes. Truly it was a testament to God about healing prayer and of laying our hands on one another with intentional prayer. Please pray for me as I continue to work with our student dorms in helping the students commit to praying together and growing in their relationship with Jesus and one another. Pray also for us to find a new leader to hopefully plant a new student dorm in 2026.
We are so blessed to be a part of the ADOSC through resources, prayer, and financial support. Here in Cambodia, resources are limited and with Christianity not being the norm, it can be challenging to teach and bring Christian customs to the people of Cambodia. Ministries like our Diocesan Healing Prayer Ministry go a long way toward blessing people around the world! We are thankful and honored to be a part of, and play a role in, the global Anglican Church here and abroad in South East Asia and how our Diocese is blessing the Anglican Church of Cambodia.
To continue living in Cambodia and blessing the local Anglican church here, we are dependent upon faithful support from churches and partners like many of you to sustain our ministry in Cambodia. If you would like to support our ministry or hear more about our life in Cambodia, we would love to connect with you! You can reach us via email at anthonypelloni@sams-usa.org or by searching for us at the SAMS website: https://give.samsusa.org/missionary/anthony-and-anna-pelloni
By Anthony Pelloni, SAMS Missionary, Cambodia
This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 Jubilate Deo.
