Miracles are nothing new for Robin Parker she’s seen lots of them.

“We believe in divine healing,” explains Robin, whose husband, Jesse Parker, is the pastor at the Lighthouse Church in Island City.

Her clear blue eyes sparkle as she recounts story after story beginning with the couple’s own daughter, who was diagnosed at age 4 with leukemia.

“She was covered with bruises. After we layed hands on her and prayed over her, we watched as the bruises began to fade until they were completely gone,” Robin says. “She’s 28 years old now and perfectly healthy.”

Twice, she says, she has witnessed resurrection from sudden death after the church body immediately gathered around the deceased to pray for God’s intervention, while paramedics and ambulances stood by.

Then there was the baby waiting in the hospital for a life flight to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland.

Doctors worried the baby wouldn’t survive until the helicopter arrived. But, once again, faithful believers gathered in prayer and the laying on of hands (Mark 16:18).

When the helicopter arrived, Robin says, the baby was alive and well, and the life flight to Portland was canceled.

Witnessing the power of God at work in her own life and the lives of those around her, Robin says, “is an awesome thing to watch.”

And sharing the miraculous power of God with those in need of spiritual, and physical, healing is what the Lighthouse tent revival is all about.

“We are asking for a filling of the Holy Spirit,” says Robin.

“And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is delivery,” says John Boone, who has been preaching here since the big tent was set up, and the revival began.

John is a big man from Mississippi whose conviction of faith seems to be as firm as his handshake. He often visits the Island City congregation as a guest preacher, and says he is here this time for as long as God calls him.

“I want to say up front, this revival is not about people joining our church,” he says. “This is about people having a personal relationship with Jesus.”

Both Robin and John say that visitors have been frequent during the revival. They come from the surrounding neighborhoods because they hear the music. Or they come just because they’re curious as to what a revival is all about.

Others come because they are looking for that intangible missing something they haven’t been able to find elsewhere.

“Everybody’s talking about what’s going on here,” Robin says.

“We’ve had church-going people from other denominations come and find (spiritual) renewal,” says John.

“We’ve even had people who’ve maybe never been to church and are a little scared, so they park along the street and just listen and watch. And that’s okay, too,” Robin adds.

In fact, she admits the first time Jesse took her to church, before they were married, she was really scared.

“I’d heard about ‘Holy Rollers’ and I was really shy,” she says. “When I walked in that church, all I could see were exit signs.”

So if people are scared, John says with a grin, “the nice thing about the tent is there are exits everywhere.”

But the two hope people will come and stay and discover the healing power of the Spirit of God as He fills that big tent.

“There’s nothing so beautiful as watching the filling of the Holy Spirit take place in a person,” John says.

” You can see it when it happens people come in so discouraged and depressed,” he says. “You can see a hard heart crumble.”

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Mardi Ford