Krugersdorp prayer day connects US women with family land and 21-year-old vision for Africa

“You cannot make this stuff up. So, how can we not then have a great expectation for God to do a mighty thing?

So, said Vareena Swihart of Dayton Ohio, USA after telling me an extraordinary life story that has presently led her to travel to South Africa to attend the Speak Jesus national prayer day in Krugersdorp on Saturday.

She said her husband, Steve, will be flying in on Friday night to be at the prayer day on Saturday and then he will fly back to the US on Sunday.

“It’s that big a deal to us,” she said, explaining why her businessman husband would take on a round trip of  27 000km for just two days to be at a prayer event in SA.

The Swihart’s connection with Saturday’s prayer event is spiritually deep and personal but before we get to that part of this testimony it is important to touch on some key God moments in Vareena’s life.

Vareena was the third of 8 children who were all born in Krugersdorp and raised in a Christian family on a farm in Muldersdrift. She was baptised at the age of seven and at the age of 18 she went to study in the US, where she has lived for 34 years — 32 of them married to Steve. They have three children.

At the age of 30, on May 27 2000, while Vareema was running on a treadmill she renewed her surrender to Jesus Christ and she heard a voice telling her she must be baptised in the Holy Spirit – something she had not heard of before.

The next day the leaders of a local church which became their family church came to her home and led her in the baptism of the Spirit and everything in her life changed from that time as she began to pursue the Lord and His Word with renewed passion.

During a time of worship at a healing service on September 21 2001 she found herself immersed in God’s glorious presence in a way she had never known before or experienced since. Without anybody praying or laying on hands, blind eyes opened, deaf ears heard and her husband was healed of fertility problems.

Four days later, on September 25 2001 she was earnestly seeking God’s will for her life when she experienced His weighty presence on her to the extent that she could not even move. And God said: “My daughter, I have a work for you to do. But you will have to forsake everything. And I knew that there would be a very deep and high price to it.”

And then she had an open vision in which she saw the continent of Africa like a physical object in the room.

“It was pitch, pitch black. Dark. And then He showed me the southern tip of South Africa. He showed me spots of light and these spots of light started increasing. More and more and more spots of light.

“And then suddenly these spots of light connected and they formed rivers of light and they flowed all the way up to the equator.  

“So then the Lord spoke to me and He said: ‘New name’ and He spoke a victory and He gave me Isaiah 62, Isaiah 65, and Revelation 2:17.

“So after that, I told the world [about the vision]. I’ve been doing it for 21 years.”

Vareena said in her calling in the ministry of prophetic intercession she has shared her Africa vision experience with many people, including many senior Christian leaders, around the world.

“I could say that from the moment it [the vision] happened, it was literally just seared into the essence of my being – and it’s ever been before me,” she said.

Vareena commissioned an Australian prophetic artist to capture the image in a flag. But that is another story whose beginnings goes back to a time in December 2002 as she was visiting SA and driving down a Krugersdorp hill with her entrepreneur father who pointed out a piece of vacant land that he said was for sale.

She said God immediately told her that her father would buy that piece of land but that she must give him a specific amount of money to help him purchase the land to make sure it is always used for the Lord’s purposes.

That night in the family kitchen her father said he had something to discuss with her. To his surprise, she replied: “ Oh dad, I already know what you’re going to tell me. God said, you’re going to buy that property. And He told me to give you this [Vareena did not disclose the number in our conversation] amount of dollars to sow into the property, to help you buy it, to make sure it’s always used for God’s purposes.”

Her parents bought the property in 2002, and influenced by a trip to the US in 2001 during which they were deeply moved by a visit to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, they decided to build a 24/7 house of prayer on the land.

At the official opening of the house of prayer on December 16 2005, which she attended, a South African flag was raised, together with the flag she had had made by a prophetic artist, depicting streams of light flowing from the south of Africa to the equator.

For years the building was left open for people to come in and pray and worship at any hour. In about 2014, her father leased the building to the Base Church, which is still there. The piece of land near the intersection of the N14 and R28 where the church stands is part of the stretch of open land which is the venue for the Speak Jesus prayer day.

The prayer day venue is on land made up of properties owned by 20 different people. In addition to the church land which is at the entrance to the venue, Vareena’s family owns several portions of the prayer venue land, including the hill where a 10m high cross was planted by the prayer day team last Saturday. But when God woke Vareena up at home at 3am on July 23 and told her she must attend the prayer day in Krugersdorp, she had no idea that the journey would take her back to family land she had helped to buy.

She heard about the prayer day when her sister, Giselle, sent her a WhatsApp voice note of Angus Buchan talking about the planned prayer day. It was late when she received the message and so she planned to listen to it the next day. But after God woke her at 3am and told her she had to go to the event she immediately booked her flight to SA – even before she told her husband about it.

At the time, neither Vareena nor Giselle, who had alerted her to the prayer meeting, knew it had any connection with their family land. Vareena contacted her brother in Pretoria, who manages the family’s prperty, and told her about the prayer meeting and invited him to join her there. He replied that he already knew about the prayer day “because it is on our property”.

Vareena joined a team of 3 000 intercessors that has been praying for the Speak Jesus prayer day – and learned about a documentary that was made in which Krugersdorp is called “Devils Dorp”. She also learned of Angus Buchan’s call for the town to receive a new name after the prayer day – “Jesus Dorp”.

She believes that the prayer day is connected with the Africa vision that has been burning in her heart for 21 years. She recalls God’s words to her about a new name for Africa – “Victory”. In her extensive research in which she looked to see if others had similar prophetic revelation about Africa’s destiny she came across a number of such instances.

And Vareena, who pays much attention to dates, believes that it is significant that the national prayer day is on September 24, Heritage Day. The day after the prayer event, September 25 it will be the 21st anniversary of the day God gave her the Africa open vision. It is also a special day on God’s calendar – Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, also known as the Feast of Trumpets. Is it the start of a new year for Africa? She recalls how her father used to stand on the hill on their property where a cross has been erected for the prayer day, and describe the panoramic, 360⁰ view as “the New Jerusalem”.

She said that one thing she realised a few years after she received the vision was “that Africa was first going to get dark. And now that’s literally happening with load shedding. But God revealed to me that spiritually, it would get darker, before the light would come”.

 More info about the day, what to bring and about transport and accommodation options are available on the Angus Buchan app and online at https://www.angusbuchan.co.za/speak-jesus

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