When Heidi Baker and her husband Rolland arrived in Mozambique in 1995, the country was recovering from a brutal civil war. They took over a rundown orphanage in Maputo with eighty children, no funding, and a government that was suspicious of foreign missionaries.
Fasting on the Floor
During those early years, Heidi developed a rhythm that became the foundation of everything Iris Global would become: she fasted regularly, often lying face-down on the concrete floor of the orphanage, praying for hours. Sometimes she fasted for days at a time. Staff members recall stepping over her prostrate form as they went about their work.
The conditions were brutal. The orphanage had no reliable electricity or clean water. Children were malnourished. Heidi herself was frequently ill. And yet she kept fasting. She later described these seasons as the times when God downloaded the vision for what was to come — a vision so large she could not have conceived it on her own.
What Followed the Fasting
Over the following two decades, Iris Global grew from one dilapidated orphanage to a network of over ten thousand churches, multiple children's homes, Bible schools, medical clinics, and feeding programs across Mozambique and dozens of other nations. The organisation now cares for thousands of orphans and feeds many more.
Heidi traces the growth directly to those early years of fasting. She says the fast was where she learned to hear God's voice with clarity — where the vision for the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the dead to be raised was first planted in her spirit.
Healings During Fasting Seasons
Many of the most documented healings in Iris Global's history occurred during or immediately after sustained periods of fasting. Heidi has reported cases of blind people receiving sight, deaf people hearing for the first time, and paralyzed people walking — often during corporate fasting gatherings in rural Mozambican villages.
What This Means for You
Heidi Baker's story demolishes the idea that fasting is a comfortable, middle-class spiritual practice. She fasted in the dirt, while sick, while overwhelmed. The breakthroughs came not because she had the right technique but because she was willing to be emptied. If you are in a season where everything feels impossible — no resources, no support, no obvious path forward — fasting might be the discipline that clears your vision enough to see what God has already prepared.