Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Audrey Plaster.
Audrey Plaster was a Christian teacher and prayer minister who spoke with her husband, Ron, at the Camps Farthest Out in British Columbia. The two became Christians and were baptized in the Holy Spirit in Spain in 1972. In the years that followed, Audrey learned to pray for healing and to listen carefully for what the Holy Spirit was doing in another person. In 1986, shortly after a ministry trip to Norway, she and Ron taught at the British Columbia CFO on Vancouver Island.
Audrey dated the beginning of her Christian life to 1972, when she and Ron were living in Spain. Ten days after they were saved, they went to a church where three Scriptures were read about the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask. Nobody gave them a lesson on speaking in tongues or told Audrey what was supposed to happen. She simply prayed, “I want everything.”
After the prayer group left, Audrey and Ron remained in the empty church for another hour or two. In the quiet, God began bringing things in their lives to the surface. Then Audrey began to sing. “And out of my mouth came all this praise in another language.”
Prayer for healing soon became something Audrey experienced in ordinary places, including her own home. In 1975 she and Ron prayed in their living room for a woman they did not know. They did not know what was wrong with her. Audrey later said that bone was restored in the woman’s back and that the healing was confirmed afterward by her doctors.
Ten years later Audrey needed healing herself. She had been ill for three weeks when doctors discovered an infection and told her to enter the hospital that night for a strong antibiotic. Audrey went to God. “Lord, it’s now or never.”
Then came what she described as “the still small voice right in the centre of me.” “It’s over.” “And I knew I was healed.” She slept through the night, and she said the symptoms did not return.
A few weeks before the British Columbia CFO, Audrey and Ron traveled to Norway with a ministry team of eleven people. They went with a verse from 1 Corinthians 4:20 particularly on their minds: “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.”
At one of the first services, the members of the team were sent into the congregation to pray with people. Audrey walked up an aisle and stopped beside a woman. “I put my hand out and the power of God just literally zapped through me and zapped through her.” She said the experience continued along the pew. What mattered most to Audrey about Norway, however, was not the unusual manifestations. “We saw split churches healed, we saw relationships restored.”
The trip also gave her another lesson in trusting God’s provision. Before leaving, Audrey had felt prompted to ask a woman named Sonny, whom she had known for only about half an hour, whether she and Ron could stay with her family in Oslo. Near the end of the trip, lodging arrangements for the rest of the team fell through. Suddenly nine more people needed somewhere to stay. Ron called Sonny. The answer was already waiting. “We’ve provided three houses.”
In 1986 Audrey and Ron spoke together at the British Columbia CFO on Vancouver Island. They had also been at the camp two years earlier, and Millard Beede shared the teaching that week.
Audrey taught about the kingdom of God as both present and still to come. “In the beginning, God’s kingdom was here.” She described the time between Christ’s first coming and his return as a conflict whose outcome Christians already know. “We know the end. We’re on the victory side.”
But she brought the teaching back from large ideas to a simple choice. She finished with Mary and Martha and invited the campers to choose the place Mary had chosen: sitting at the feet of Jesus. That evening Audrey also sensed that someone was carrying a deep disappointment involving a member of the family. She spoke it aloud, and four people came forward for prayer.
Audrey’s approach to praying with people was remarkably practical: begin by listening. “Give them the respect. Let them be the expert in their lives.” She did not believe the person praying needed to dominate what happened next. She kept her eyes open while she prayed because she wanted to notice what was happening in the person in front of her.
“I’ve come to expect a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. And I look for it.” Just as important was knowing when not to speak. “So I just want to say, please, please wait. Let there be silence.” Audrey had learned that prayer did not improve simply because the person praying supplied more words. Too much talking could get in the way of listening—to the person and to God. “Be careful. There is power in your words.”
It was a long way from the empty church in Spain where Audrey had not known what to ask for except, “I want everything.” What followed was not simply a collection of dramatic experiences. She learned that receiving from the Holy Spirit also meant becoming quiet enough to recognize what He was doing in someone else.
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.