By Sam Eyoboka

GENERAL Overseer of Laughter Foundation Church International, Pastor Moses Gbenga Oso, fondly referred to as Daddy of One Million Babies, believes God answers prayers when it comes to having children. “In 1997, God specifically told me that I was going to start a ministry and the only thing that ministry will focus on was child bearing matters,” Oso said last week.

He spoke in Lagos ahead of the 20th anniversary of the ministry. According to him, the ministry started in March 1997 with about eight people in attendance in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

Oso …We do follow-up on our pregnant women

“So many testimonies abound. I will share a recent testimony with you: A couple came here few years ago. The woman, a hospital worker, had been married for 35 years without a child. Before she came here, she had run around and done everything possible. Eventually she came here and, as God was doing it for people, she became pregnant”, the General Overseer told Sunday Vanguard.

“By the time she delivered that baby girl, she was 59 years going to 60. If she was a man, I would have said a man can make babies at any age but for a woman at that age to have a baby was nothing but a miracle. These are some of the things we see here.

“By the time one of the women that came here had her first baby boy, she was 54. And people were surprised wondering how she was able to have a child at 54. Then she had a second child at 56. That couple still come to church with those children. A Nigerian came from the UK to get married in Nigeria and afterwards the wife joined him in UK. Years went by but no child. The lady knew about what we are doing here; and they actually got married in one of our branches in Ibadan.

“The husband was a deacon and the wife was a deaconess in their church in the UK but no child. She was always having bad dreams. Anytime she got pregnant, bad dreams will come and she’ll lose the pregnancy. At a point, she was no longer getting pregnant, so they started doing IVF. After seven IVFs without success, the wife told the husband that in Laughter Foundation, this kind of thing is dealt with easily. So she persuaded the husband to relocate to Nigeria. As difficult as it was, the husband agreed with her because, to them, having children had become a big issue.

“So the husband, who was working in an oil company in the UK, started applying for jobs in Nigeria. Luckily for them, the man got a job in Lagos, while the wife resigned from her job and they relocated to Nigeria and started attending Laughter Foundation. Within a year of attending this church, the wife got pregnant and naturally became afraid that she may lose the pregnancy. Because of the level of the challenge, I had to invite them and started praying with them”.

Continuing the testimony, Oso said he reassured the wife that miscarriages don’t happen in his church and she was able to carry the pregnancy through and travelled to London to deliver a set of triplets. “That was the first delivery in their nine years of marriage; two boys and one girl. They returned to Nigeria to do dedication after which the wife went back to the UK with the children. The husband is still here. I’ve told him to start looking for job in the UK because he has to be with his children. It’s not good for a woman to train the children without the father being around. So he’s already searching for a job in the UK. He’s here every Sunday. He’s one of our deacons. The wife calls once in a while to appreciate God for everything He has done”, the pastor stated.

“Something happened during the delivery in London. They were always calling me when the expected date of delivery (EDD) was close and the husband had taken permission from his work to be with his wife. I was praying with them. The delivery was through caesarean section (CS). After the CS, the doctor told her that she had a very big ovarian cyst inside her, as big as a baby. According to her, the doctor called the consultant to report his finding and asked if he should remove or leave it till some other time. The consultant said he should leave it. So she was discharged like that with a large ovarian cyst as big as a baby. Five or six days after her discharge from hospital, she called me that they appreciate God for what He had done but there was another big problem.

“She explained to me what the doctor found inside her after delivery. She was still feeling there’s another baby because the tummy was still big and heavy. She was telling me she didn’t want to go for another surgery. I told her that the God that gave ‘you this through prayer will do something’. So I prayed for her and asked her to be calling me every day. I was praying for her every day. I asked her to go back to the hospital after one week to check. She went back and the thing was still there. It was very big, she could see it through the scan and she came back and we continued praying.   After that first visit to the hospital, they gave her another two weeks to return so that they could   decide what to do with it but I kept telling her that God will do something about this ovarian cyst.

“By the time she went back two weeks later, they checked and the lump had disappeared. She said the doctor was shocked and referred her to a more powerful scan because he didn’t understand. She went for the scan and there was nothing there. Then the doctor told her that she was free from the ovarian cyst. That was the second miracle. So these are some of the things God does here from time to time. The reason is that this church is basically for people believing God for children, people that have gone to several places and couldn’t find solution”.

Osho exuded uncanny confidence that leaves one with the impression that childlessness is abominable and can be reversed prayerfully, or that it is a sin that cannot be dealt with  at Laughter Foundation. According to him, on several occasions, people ask him why and how such unbelievable occurrences take place in the church and his simple reply had always been that ‘it’s not that this place is better than any other; but the reason is that this is our focus.’

“Every Sunday, if other churches use three minutes to pray for people looking for children, we can use more than one hour because it is our main focus. Because we have taken time to deal with these things from time to time, it is easier for us to get solution quicker than other places”, he said.

Twins after 20 years of barrenness

“Maybe I should just give one more recent testimony. First delivery in 20 years of marriage, a set of twins; a boy and a girl, delivered in LUTH. I can continue to talk and talk about the massive things that God has been doing here. Just to tell you that God has been awesome. People come from all over the world to participate in what we are doing here and God answers them. At times I move out of the country to preach in some places and God attends to people. A couple came here about three months ago; they came from the US to attend our monthly miracle service. They came on a Saturday and travelled back the following day. When they were talking to me, they said what brought them was that their hitherto childless friends kept telling them that if they didn’t go to Laughter Foundation, there was no way they could have children.

“The woman said after listening to four residents of America who visited Nigeria and returned with outstanding testimonies, she decided they must come and see that Laughter Foundation. She also told me that she went to Canada to visit an old friend and was surprised that the old friend had a set of twins and, upon enquiry, the friend said they were products of Laughter Foundation. So we have all these things happening here and there, God answering people’s prayers, especially when it comes to having children,” he stressed.

The General Overseer, who refused to talk about his roots except to say that he was an accountant, acknowledged that he has a divine mandate to increase the world’s population in accordance with the biblical injunction to be ‘fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth’.

Monitoring pregnancies

One other thing unique to Laughter Foundation, according to the cleric who said he’s not been to Ibadan, the roots of the ministry for a while, is that “we monitor pregnant women up till the time they deliver, as in the case of the couple that had triplets”.

He continued: “They (couple) went outside the country and I kept monitoring the pregnancy. That’s what we do for all pregnant women here. The moment somebody is pregnant and she attends our pregnant women prayer meeting, which holds once in a month, we monitor them to make sure that they don’t lose the pregnancy or lose the baby during delivery nor lose the mother because I can tell you women die during delivery in this part of the world.”

At that juncture, we asked Oso if he believes in efficacy of orthodox medicine and his answer was affirmative. “Of course we ask them (people looking for children) to attend hospitals. We are not against attending hospitals. We ask pregnant women to attend the best hospitals possible while we give them prayer attention. Because of the monitoring prayer attention up till the time they deliver, we don’t lose our babies during delivery. And for the 20 years of this ministry, we have never lost a woman in the delivery room. There was a particular woman that met me with her husband who said she had been dreaming that she would die in hospital when she goes to deliver and that some people have also been telling her that she would die during delivery.

“The hospital that she was to deliver is a Christian hospital. In that hospital, they told her of a revelation that somebody would die. Of course she knew she was the one they were referring to. When she came for prayers, I prayed for her. When she was due for delivery, she said ‘Daddy, pray for me so that I won’t die.’ I asked her what was the matter and she explained everything to me. I told her that what she could rely upon is that in all the years of this church, no single woman has died during delivery. I told her she would not be the first and told the husband to call me before she goes into labour. He did and I prayed for her in the hospital so that her mind will be at rest. During delivery, I was talking with the husband and within a short time she delivered safely and came out.

‘Our pregnant women don’t die’

“When she came to give testimony, I asked her in front of the congregation that I was telling her and she didn’t want to believe me. So these are some of the things God does for us. Nobody has ever died in the delivery room and we have several and countless number of women that have gone into the delivery room. We monitor them from the start of the pregnancy to the time the baby cries after delivery. We always ask the husband to be there with the wife and I will be talking with him and he will be giving me progress report. At times, I talk to the doctors. If the delivery will be through caesarean section and the woman is refusing and the doctors are having problems talking to her, the husband will ask me to talk to her. I will talk to her that she should allow the operation to be done.

Caesarian sections are necessary for the delivery of the baby if the baby is big, and to avoid the death of the mother or the baby. In such instances, I will talk with the woman and at times the doctors talk to me. We follow up our pregnant women so that nothing bad will happen in the course of delivery and that is why, for 20 years, we’ve never had a single woman die in hospital during delivery”. .Asked how many babies had been produced in the 20 years of the church, he said there’s no way anybody could ascertain the exact figure, noting that “this place is a church for people looking for babies from other churches as well as those who are not Christians”. Oso went on, “They come and, as soon as God answers their prayers, they return to their churches. There’s no way we can pin – point that this is the number. The people we don’t know are far more than the people we know,” he said.