The Sunday Mail
Pastor Chris Schaeurmann and his wife Shary of Gateway Community Church in Oregon in the US were in Zimbabwe at the end of January. They shared with Tendai Manzvanzvike God’s grace and faithfulness in raising their large family: 13 children and 40 grandchildren. Most of the children were home delivered. They also gave chilling details of how their faith in the Lord enabled them to counter forces of darkness in the haunted houses they have lived and raised the children.
Q: Why are you in Zimbabwe?
A: We have been friends with Dr (Ephiel) Mukamuri (Logos Rhema Ministries International) for about 20 years and he invited us over. We founded a school in Oregon about 23 years ago. Since Dr Mukamuri’s church is helping schools, he asked us if we could come and be of support in the experience we have of running Christian schools.
Q: And, for how long have you been a senior pastor at Gateway Community Church?
A: We have been at the church for about 38 years, but I have been a senior pastor for the past 21 years. I am a teacher, and that’s what I love to do. I like teaching people about God – things that will help them. Our church has had a lot of ministry with homeless people, alcoholics, people whose lives had been ruined.
Q: There are some unique things about your family and house. Maybe you would like to tell us about that.
A: We have six daughters and seven sons. The oldest is 42, and the youngest 15. Eight of them are married. We have 40 grandchildren; three daughters-in-law; and, five sons-in-law. And, we have seven children who could still have children, think about that (laughs). I (Shary) gave birth to all 13, and most of them were born at home. We just thought that the best place for us to have our children – at home.
Q: And Shary, how did you manage?
A: I just don’t know. We started off doing everything wrong, and then someone showed us in the Bible how to discipline our kids, and taught us about having a good relationship between husband and wife. The Bible has something to say just about everything.
Q: How do people view you?
A: Now, we are at the end of raising them. We now have a reputation of raising good kids, very active in the community. But when people first meet us, most Americans are quite horrified that we would have so many children.
Our parents are horrified that we have so many children. My (Chris) dad who believed in zero population growth had taught that to me and when we started having more kids, he was very angry, and he said “you’re going to ruin the world”, and your kids are going to be juvenile delinquents, and they are going to be poor. But we are proud, and fine.
We were poor yes, but God always got us through. There was a day when I was in-between jobs, and things were pretty tough, and we ran out of food.
There was absolutely nothing for lunch, and I didn’t have any money, and didn’t know what we were going to do. Then at noon, our neighbour came over with a box of food, not at 10 o’clock or 1 o’clock. He came over at noon. They were going on vacation, and had lots of food, and it was going to spoil, and they thought that we would probably use it. It came the day and hour we needed it. God has just been really good to us.
Q: And your faith has also been tested?
A: Yeah! At one time Shary was having a baby at home, and was almost bleeding to death. There was so much praying: “God, please stop the bleeding!” And, it stopped just like that. So, God is always there for us. He hasn’t been ahead of time. He takes care of us always.
Q: Having such a large family – was this because you were against birth control?
A: (Shary) I have read the Bible and it says that a baby is a blessing. I couldn’t come up with any reason to tell God, “no more babies”. I couldn’t find any reason to say no!
(Chris) When we got married, we agreed we were not going to have kids. I didn’t want children. I didn’t want to overpopulate the world. But God then started to talk to me and said, I want you to start to love me and I give you children. He also started to talk to Shary about it. I was scared to bring about the subject, and then I finally said to her, ‘Honey, God really wants us to love Him to decide how many kids we are going to have.’
But when we got to 12, we just said, “God, we didn’t say so many, we just thought that we might have five or six”, and we said we’re going to use birth control.
But we understand when people want to use birth control. We did have one more and then God closed the womb.
Q: Let’s move to how you have taken care of the children . . .
A: We had money growing up, but once we got married and had the children, we didn’t have that much money. In order to take care of the children, I had to learn how to receive. If someone had old shoes, old toys I just started saying yes, I would take them. I collected empty apple boxes. After collecting them, I would mark the sizes on them – boys and girls, clothes and shoes! We had rows of boxes of different sizes. It was like a store.
But if the kids wanted something, say Nike shoes, which, is a big deal, we would teach them to work in the neighbourhood – rake leaves for example, to earn some money. But once we started taking them to other countries, mostly Mexico, which is closer and not very expensive, and they saw so many children their age that did not have, they were not so willing to have Nikes.
Q: I’m trying to figure out – come sleeping time – who sleeps where and how?
A: We first lived in a two-bed-roomed apartment with six kids. We had triple bunk beds. But we felt that this was not right for the kids to be so cramped.
So, we moved into a four-bed-roomed apartment. It was two children in each bedroom. Then we moved into a bigger house – eight bed-roomed!
Q: The dilapidated and haunted house? Was it really haunted and how did you manage to live there?
A: This was in fact our third house. We had lived in other haunted houses before. The area that we live in Astoria, if you Google, has been said is the most wicked place in the world, and there are demonic things everywhere. There are lots of people that practice witchcraft. There is prostitution, gambling – every wicked thing you can imagine used to take place in Astoria.
The first house we lived in, the kids would wake up and cry all night calling out, “Monster, monster!”
We taught the kids about angels and then prayed that the angels would come and guard them. So, we did that and there was no more, monster, monster!
Q: But the third one is more peculiar than others?
A: It was not a new test, but it was worse because there was a history of people committing suicide in that house. It had been empty for some time and drug addicts and all sorts of crazy people had lived in that house. So it was really infested. The night before we moved in, somebody told us that five men ran to the house crazy with hatchets, and hacked the floors, the walls . . . Those axe marks were everywhere in the house. We got everybody around and said we needed to pray. We just said, “In the name of Jesus, we command every demonic spirit to leave this house. This is our house! This is God’s house, where we use it for God’s glory, and you have to leave.”
And that was it, for that particular time because we live in a community with lots of demonic stuff. On a regular basis, at 3 o’clock in the morning, we would get woken up and we would just sense the presence of another person and we would command them to leave in Jesus’ name.
And, they would be gone. And it happened over, and over. Our friend said he lived next door to people who had witchcraft meetings at 3 o’clock in the morning, and he thought that they were sending a curse to your house.
I had never heard this because we had always sent it back. We said that it might be a coincidence that it was happening at 3 o’clock, but that doesn’t mean for sure that they were the once doing it, until the guy who was the head of that, got the H1N1 flu virus and died, and it didn’t happen after that.
Q: So, the house is now free from the demonic activities?
A: People who walk into our house say it is the most peaceful place they have ever been. We have always prayed for angels to protect our children, our home. We ask God to take out anything that comes in. The Bible says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds . . . ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-6) So, we use spiritual weapons.
Q: How long did it take you to have peace established in the house?
A: That house was a disaster. It took about five years for it to be a really nice house. And we have been working on it for 23 years. Now, it’s gorgeous. But I think the peace of the Lord was there as soon as we commanded the demons to leave.
Q: Your message for people with whom you are sharing the story of victory against forces of darkness?
A: (Chris) Satan came to kill, steal and destroy, but Jesus came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Sometimes people attribute bad things happening to them to the Lord. The Bible says right now, Satan is the ruler of this world. It also says, one day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and Jesus will right every wrong. God has given us a sword and a shield – that’s His word.
(Shary) Jesus is Lord, and He has been so faithful to me. I almost died when I was having one of the kids. Afterwards, everyone was like, see! Now you are going to hospital. And I said, no! I have more faith that God will supply all my needs.
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