While growing up under missionary parents in the jungles of the South Philippines island of Mindanao, Carole Ward was molded with passion and fearlessness for sharing the gospel with Islamic extremists. Her grandparents had also been missionaries; they were Wycliffe Bible translators in China, where Ward’s mother was in a Communist prison camp at 12 years old.
In Mindanao, where Ward grew up, the presence of communism was paralleled with Islamic terrorism.
“We knew missionaries were being executed and imprisoned in these dangerous jungles,” Ward explained, “and my father refused to leave. He said, ‘I’m going to go home to Heaven serving rather than sitting.’ So, with four children, he was living with a price on his head for 45 years.
“I watched a man of faith and prayer and dedication reach unreached people groups,” she added. “I grew up in that environment, reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs every night before I went to bed and praying, ‘Lord, could I have the same privilege of walking in these footsteps?’”
Fast forward, years later, to an inner-city nursing job in Oklahoma, where Ward was praying a similar prayer: “Lord, send me where no one else wants to go.”
“[During that time,] I laid my body over maps on the floor, weeping for nations that have never heard the gospel,” she said. “Northern Africa, India, [the] Middle East – we have left these places to the last because they’re the most dangerous and the most difficult.”
Just a prayer warrior
In 2002, Ward was invited to southern Uganda to work in a Bible school. At that time, Ugandan dictator Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army were terrorizing northern Uganda – committing atrocities later declared by the U.N. to be the worst since Hitler.
People came to Ward, weeping and asking, “Will you come to the North, where the war is going on?”
“Why are you asking me?” Ward questioned. “I’m just a nurse and a prayer warrior.”
“Because no one else wants to come,” they replied.
“I knew that was the answer to my prayer,” Ward admitted.
It wasn’t long before Ward was driving into the war zone while talking to the Lord.
“What are you doing?” the Lord asked me.
“Well, I’m obeying You,” Ward replied.
“No, you’re not. You’re terrified. I can’t use you in fear. Fear will paralyze you,” the Lord said.
“What do I need, Lord?” she asked, to which He replied, “You don’t have enough love. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’” (1 John 4:18).
“In that car that day, … I wept and wept and felt floods of love flowing over me like waves. I’ve never had fear since then. I go into ambushes; I go through bullets. I get called to nation after nation, and God moves.”
Now a missionary
After crossing the Nile River into northern Uganda, Ward rented a small house and put out a sign: “House of Prayer, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.” For eight months, Ward prayed with some Ugandans. Then they organized a national prayer meeting where over 1,000 people prayed for 11 hours a day for 7 days.
“For seven days, we prayed, read the Word, prayed for the land,” Ward explained. “As a result, the war stopped! Sometime later, Joseph Kony’s right-hand general converted to Christianity and attended our Bible college. When he learned of the prayer gathering that we held and the specific time it happened, he testified that it was at the same time that Joseph Kony told him the demons who gave him power over the land had left him!”
For the next 10 years, Ward built upon the ministry she registered as Favor International (favorintl.org) in 2004. It grew to include Bible schools, church planting, orphan care, women’s empowerment, trauma healing, and tens of thousands coming to Christ.
“We were in the middle of the most massive revival I’ve ever seen,” Ward said. “We just kept praying, and they kept coming, and God added to the church daily. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands came to Jesus and have never stopped coming.”
While God’s work in Uganda continues, Ward has spent the past 10 years bringing the same ministry to South Sudan – and her ministry there began with an equally miraculous start.
“On the road into Sudan, the vehicle was stopped, and there came two 7-foot Dinkas [natives of South Sudan]: scarred faces, angry,” she told The Stand. “They jumped in; slammed the door. I had a few seconds to talk to the Lord – grabbed a Bible and flipped around to the guy sitting on my left and said, ‘Have you ever seen one of these before? I’m so glad you’re in the car with us today. What’s your name?’”
“J-J-Jacob,” he choked out.
“Jacob, you’re famous,” Ward replied. “You’re in this book. Do you know who Jacob was? You’ve got to know him.”
So, Ward went through Bible story after Bible story and took the Dinkas through the whole Bible.
“By the time we reached our destination – three-and-a-half hours later – both men had prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts,” Ward explained.
“Jacob, I’m going to give you this,” she told the Dinka as she handed him the Bible. “He clutched it to his chest like I’d given him a million dollars.
“You read this every day, and tell somebody every day what you read,” Ward instructed him.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Jacob, that makes you a missionary,” Ward told him. “You got into this car as a murderer, and you got out as a missionary.”
Jacob asked Ward to come to his village to share the gospel. She and a team immediately went to the village and followed the same model of ministry that Ward started in Uganda: They established houses of prayer; prayed for national repentance, revival, and restoration; multiplied indigenous believers and trained them in Bible schools; and strengthened the communities by providing education, medical care, economic and vocational programs, and trauma counseling.
“In six months, God did what took six years to do in Uganda,” she said. “Within the first week, we opened the House of Prayer because we don’t start any mission work until we’ve started prayer. That’s where the power is – the spiritual warfare. It’s a prayer movement that becomes the foundation for a missions movement.”
Today, Favor International has over 1,000 indigenous missionaries in 10 African nations, including Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Congo, Kenya, Central African Republic, Egypt, and Djibouti.
In 2024, Ward moved to Chad, a land occupied by Boko Haram terrorists, and laid the groundwork for another national ministry.
(Digital Editor's Note: This article was published first in the April 2025 print edition of The Stand. Click HERE for a free six-month complimentary subscription.)
