Heidi Baker

Iris Global was founded as a dedicated Christian missions organization in 1980 by Rolland and Heidi Baker. At first based in the United States, it encompassed short-term evangelism trips to the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, until in 1985 Rolland and Heidi moved to Indonesia. Eventually denied permanent missionary visas in Bali, Rolland and Heidi then moved to Hong Kong. There Iris’s activities were focused on the care and evangelism of residents of the poorest and most crowded slums. After four years Rolland and Heidi left the church they had planted to enroll in graduate theological studies at the University of London. While in England they planted another church, Believer’s Centre, and continued to work especially with homeless street-sleepers, along with university students, lawyers and businesspeople. It was a small but beautiful cross-section of the Body of Christ, and all worshiped together as close brothers and sisters in the Lord. In 1995 Rolland and Heidi came to Mozambique, Africa, where they have concentrated their ministry ever since. Their U.S. administrative offices are in Redding, California, USA, but Iris has expanded to Iris Canada, Iris UK, etc., as charities in many countries. Iris missionaries are founding new bases on mission fields around the world, and one-third of the time Rolland and Heidi travel and minister at churches and conferences wherever the Holy Spirit leads them. Upon arriving in Mozambique, the Bakers – along with a small team of Iris staff from England and South Africa – were offered charge of the Chihango center, a previously government-run children’s center forty minutes from the capital of Maputo. Conditions were bleak. Over thirty years of warfare within the nation’s borders left an enormous population of orphans, with countless others living in extreme poverty. Government aid was nearly nonexistent. At Chihango – which represented the government’s best effort to care for homeless children – food was scarce, living quarters stark and medical care all but absent. The most “incorrigible” children from street gangs were often brought there as a last resort. Physical and sexual abuse were common. A very large proportion of the children were infected with STDs. Thievery was to be expected, especially from the officials in charge. Efforts at education were insignificant. On one of Heidi’s first visits to the children’s center, she gave away an open bag of potato chips from her truck window as she prepared to leave. This began a miniature riot. Children instantly attacked one another, tearing at the bag. They bit and clawed in the dust for the last of the chips. In the mostly empty buildings, roofs had collapsed onto bare concrete floors. Chihango displayed all the most terrible realities of the developing world, but Iris had also found what it had sought, a place where it could make the greatest possible difference in the day-to-day lives of those who had lived as the unwanted. God provided more than enough food, every day – which at times required various miracles of finance, unsolicited aid from strangers and occasionally of supernatural multiplication. Upon Iris’s takeover of the center, there were about eighty children resident. Conditions began to improve quickly. A local church was planted. The spiritual response from the children and many in the community was enormously enthusiastic. Dilapidated buildings began to be renovated. God provided more than enough food, every day – which at times required various miracles of finance, unsolicited aid from strangers and occasionally of supernatural multiplication. The Iris staff began to take in more children from the streets, and after a year there were three hundred twenty at Chihango. Despite story after story of extreme neglect, most of the children began to show a remarkable joy in short order. They worshiped and prayed with all their hearts. Many were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to manifest healings, visio