13 minute read
Total Restoration
by Melanie Hemry
Charles Todd listened to the joyous sound of his 2-year-old daughter, Parris, laughing. She’d climbed onto the back of one of Charles’ friends and pretended he was a jungle gym.
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Watching as they played, Charles ran his hands through his hair wondering how he’d made so many bad decisions. An entrepreneur, he had been a partner in nightclubs in Arizona. Nightclubs provided a good stream of income. However, after he and Angela had married and had Parris, he realized that the life of a nightclub owner wreaked havoc on a family.
Angela and Parris lived in the daylight. Charles’ day began at twilight.
Putting his family above his job, he’d walked away from the business. He and Angela had packed up and moved back to California. After all, he’d never had trouble finding a deal before.
Until now.
With no income, they got further in debt each day. Their cars were repossessed. Behind on taxes, the IRS and the state of Arizona seized all their bank accounts. Even after moving in with Angela’s parents, they didn’t have the money to buy diapers. What they did have was a boatload of stress as they declared bankruptcy.
Most people going through bankruptcy come out of it with no debt. Not Charles and Angela. Back taxes couldn’t be wiped out through bankruptcy. Neither could student loans.
The stress destroyed their marriage, and in 2000 they divorced. Charles felt like a failure. His parents had divorced and remarried three times each. He’d hated those experiences so much that he’d sworn that he’d never divorce.
Parris’ scream pierced the air as she fell. Her head hit the ground with a sickening crack. In the emergency room, Charles paced beside his wounded child.
He’d failed to provide for his family.
Now he’d failed to protect his daughter.
When Angela arrived at the hospital, they listened to the doctor’s report. Parris had a fractured skull. She had fluid on the brain. They weren’t sure if she was going to come out of this.
Charles and Angela looked at one another’s agonized faces. They’d lost their finances, their cars, their home and their marriage. Were they going to lose their daughter too?
Doing Things God’s Way
“Angela and I were nominal Christians,” Charles admits. “During our marriage, we’d been pew warmers. It’s amazing how all that can change when your 2-year-old child suffers a skull fracture with a questionable outcome. We got serious about seeking God.
“Together, we prayed that Parris would live and be whole. Within a couple of days, they did another CT scan. They couldn’t see a skull fracture. There was no sign of injury. She was completely healed and restored.
Though they rejoiced in their daughter’s miraculous healing, Charles and Angela still faced concerns over how they were going to pay the hospital bill. But that’s when they saw a second miracle.
“We didn’t have insurance at the time,” Charles recalls, “but the hospital never sent a bill. Ever!”
“Even after our marriage fell apart, I never believed it was over. My mother had become a powerful Christian and she was praying that our marriage would be restored. I suspect she had all her friends praying for us as well.
“That may have played a part in what happened. The week our divorce was final, we started dating. Now, Parris’ healing and the miracle of the hospital bill were two catalysts that prompted us to remarry. Two years after our divorce, on April 25, 2002, we married for the second time.
“We wanted to get it right this time, so we went to see a Christian counselor. She gave us the tools to really communicate. I thought if this marriage was going to work, we needed to do it God’s way—even in our finances. The problem was that we had no idea what that meant. We’d never been taught what the Bible says about finances.”
The Todds went online to search for who taught biblical finances, and Creflo Dollar’s name came up.
“We had no idea who he was,” says Charles, “but we decided to fly to Georgia to attend one of his meetings. We got plugged in and became partners. I ordered every teaching he offered on finances. We immersed ourselves in the Word.
“That changed our lives. It changed the way we looked at our finances. It changed what we believed about money. It got us to a place where we were tithing and giving offerings. That was a miraculous turning point.”
The IRS Comes Calling
Determined to make sure they had an income, Charles took a job with a bread company. Working in commercial real estate, Angela started a business as the marketing arm for several engineering firms. She became so busy that after Charles’ day job, he spent late afternoons and evenings helping her.
In time, Angela needed Charles’ help full time. “OK, here’s what I think we should do,” Charles said. They discussed changing the business from a marketing firm to having their own in-house people and becoming an engineering firm. On a walk one day, Angela heard the Lord confirm that decision.
Through Creflo Dollar, Charles and Angela learned about the different Believers’ Conventions that were held each year by Kenneth Copeland Ministries and started attending. They listened to teachings by Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Jesse Duplantis, Keith Moore and Bill Winston, and eventually decided to partner with each of those ministries.
Soon, the new business provided a way to buy their own small condo. Competition was so stiff that there was a lottery system to get one of the new condos. When they filled out the paperwork, more than 300 people had already applied. Only three names would be chosen to buy the condo.
Their name was the second to be called.
One day Charles got a call from the IRS. “You’ve got to take care of these taxes,” the woman said.
“I promise you that I’ll have the money to you in 30 days,” Charles replied. He had no idea how he’d do it. They prayed for the money.
Soon afterward, he realized that in the year since they’d bought their condo, real estate prices had soared. Their equity had doubled. They took out an equity loan on the property and paid off his student debts.
Charles walked into the IRS office 29 days after the call and handed the woman a sixfigure check. She stared at it as though she’d never seen anything like it.
“This is the first time in 18 years that anyone kept their word when they said they were going to make a payment,” she told Charles.
“Make a copy of the check and pin it up in your cubicle,” Charles suggested. “It will remind you that there are still people who keep their word.”
A year later, they’d outgrown their condo. Without telling Angela, Charles put down a deposit on a larger home. When he told her the news, she cried. “How can we afford to do that?” “We’ll sell the condo and put that money toward the new house,” Charles explained.
That year, while attending KCM’s West Coast Believers’ Convention in California, the Lord spoke to Angela: Don’t sell your condo, sow it. Use it to bless people who need a place to stay.
This time it was Charles who almost wept. How could they afford to do that?
There was only one answer: It would take faith.
When they moved into their new house, Charles and Angela left everything in their condo. All they took were their clothes and personal items.
There was seldom a day when the condo was vacant. Sometimes people in financial hardships lived there for a few months. Some pastors stayed there to study, pray or attend meetings. Other people getting out of the hospital after cancer treatments stayed there to rest. Charles and Angela kept it clean and did laundry for whomever stayed there.
By God’s grace, every month there was supernatural supply to take care of all their bills and those who they purposed to bless.
Taking a Stand of Faith
“In 2010, I was wearing fuzzy socks while walking down the stairs with my hands full,” Angela recalls. “On the bottom step, my foot slipped and I fell on my back. The pain was excruciating. I remembered a story I’d heard Kenneth [Copeland] tell. Something was wrong with his legs, and Gloria sat praying in the spirit over him. Someone brought him a wheelchair, but Kenneth said, ‘Healthy men walk.’ He stood and walked, and shortly thereafter he was totally healed.
“X-rays showed that my back was broken in three places. I was told that I needed surgery and would be bedridden for months. I said no and went home where I prayed in the spirit for three days.
“That’s when the Holy Spirit overtook me. When that happened, I popped up and started kicking my legs. I put on my stiletto heels and wore them to Parris’ tennis match. I was used to doing martial arts, but now that I was healed I did them in stilettos. I decided that if the devil tries to take me out, I’m only coming back stronger.”
In time, Charles and Angela bought a third home in the mountains. They had two guest houses, and a spare bedroom in their home that was almost always in use. They never knew how they would pay the bills each month, except by faith. As they tithed and gave, the money always came pouring back to them. God always provided.
“Eventually, we sold our condo. Then, in 2006, the Lord directed us to start our own ministry,” Angela remembers. “We started Todd Worldwide Ministries to support pastors, leaders and heads of nonprofit organizations. They pour out and pour out, but who pours back into them?
“Many pastors and ministry leaders give until they get burned out. The Lord had us position our ministry to pour back into them. When the Lord highlights someone to us, we pray and ask what He would have us give. It’s not like they’ve ever told us, ‘This is what we need.’
“For one family the amount we gave was exactly what they needed to pay their son’s college tuition for a year. Another family said it was to the penny what they needed to get out of debt. When we pray, we each write down what we get. Most of the time the numbers agree. If not, we pray until we get into agreement.”
A Distribution Center
In their journey to financial freedom, Charles and Angela immersed themselves in George Pearsons and Gloria Copeland’s teachings on The Prosperous Life. Each day, as Charles worked out in their home gym, he watched at least two episodes of the broadcast.
From the moment that he learned the power of his words, Charles confessed each day, saying, “Thank You, Lord, that You have increased me more and more, me and my children’s children.” Little by little, those words were coming to pass.
Kenneth Copeland had taught them that faith-filled Christians were to be distribution centers. Pastor George Pearsons taught, “It’s not about getting finances in and keeping them for yourself. It’s about getting them in and distributing them to others.”
That was how God was forming their ministry.
One Saturday afternoon, Charles sat in the backyard reading The Laws of Prosperity by Kenneth Copeland, the one book he considered to be the foundational book on prospering God’s way. He’d already read it at least 20 times.
The Lord interrupted his reading. I want you to start teaching finances to the Body of Christ.
“No way,” Charles said. “I’m not qualified.” Silence. Charles knew silence was God’s way of saying, “That’s the wrong answer.”
“OK, I’ll make a deal,” Charles said. “I won’t go looking for opportunities, but if You bring an opportunity to me, I’ll do it.”
Deal.
Teaching Others
The next day after church, one of the leaders caught Charles. “We’re getting ready to launch our school of discipleship,” she explained. “We have courses on a variety of subjects that go for 10 weeks. We want to start one on finances, and we want you and Angela to teach it.”
Charles almost laughed. It hadn’t even been 24 hours since he’d made that deal with God.
“If I’m going to do it, I want total freedom to share everything I’ve learned through Kenneth Copeland Ministries,” Charles said.
Later, she got back to him. “Pastor is a big follower of Kenneth Copeland. You have complete freedom to do what you want.”
“When I started working on the curriculum, I incorporated different teachings from George and Gloria,” Charles recalls. “In the first class, I explained that while you must know what the Bible says about finances, you also need to pray in the spirit over them. The Holy Spirit will have you praying about things you couldn’t even imagine. So the first thing we did was invite everyone who didn’t have a prayer language to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.”
During the two semesters that they taught 10-week financial courses, they were astounded by the testimonies, breakthroughs and advancements their students were having. Parents kept asking if they could bring their children into class to learn supernatural financial increase.
During the last class, COVID-19 hit. Within a couple of weeks, the entire nation had come to a standstill. The phones weren’t ringing. Meetings weren’t being held. Earlier, God had given Charles a series of financial books for children that he’d never had the time to write. Now, he did. During that time, Charles wrote four books in a series called Money Mike and The Gang™. The first book, Money Is Easy, was released in 2022.
God also instructed Charles and Angela to start filming their own show. In obedience, they started a YouTube ® channel sharing supernatural secrets to success. When the Lord directed them to move to Florida, they built a studio in their home.
“Partnership with KCM is a give-and-take,” Charles explains. “You sow into their ministry and you receive instruction and are continually fed, encouraged, uplifted and supplied. Most people think that when you give, you are depleted, although that may be the world’s system, when you sow into good ministries like KCM, there is multiplication back to you. Today, 20 years after we started this journey, I still make the same confessions. I work out and watch The Prosperous Life with George and Gloria. I listen to Kenneth on the podcast and through their app. I still listen to Creflo and all the others, because I must continue to feed on God’s Word. And we continually have supernatural breakthroughs and increase more and more.
“Our marriage has been restored. Our daughter has been restored. Our business has been restored. Our lives have become richer through having our own ministry and through prosperity. We live in THE BLESSING.”
That’s an abundant life.
