Sherry Chapman: God’s Handmaiden and Intercessor is Promoted

Sherry passed into the presence of the LORD on the 29^th June 2025 at 3.15 am after a long battle with Environmental Illness Syndrome. But the EIS had been exacerbated during May – June with Sherry suffering Alzheimers and having difficulty swallowing food. Her release was precious, granting what she had been wanting, to be released into the arms of the Saviour she loved. Sherry has been a provision of God for us over the years and for many others. I regard her as a mighty oak or more appropriate to New Zealand culture, a mighty Kauri tree. In my estimation she stood head and shoulders above other intercessors or Prayer Warriors we had ever met.   

Sherry Chapman lived in Red Oaks, Texas, USA. She was an intercessor of the highest order. Her influence was significant in praying for people groups around the world. She was a member of End Times Handmaidens and Servants International and she faithfully supported the endeavours of the Wycliffe Bibleless People’s Prayer Project for almost 50 years. She had an uncanny knack of knowing what to pray for without having been told. Her support for Unreached People Groups around the world was huge. We valued greatly her prayer support for us and a number of our colleagues as well. We are grateful to God for connecting us to Sherry Chapman, His Handmaiden and Intercessor.

In Celebration of Sherry Chapman’s Life

Sherry’s earthly remains were laid to rest in the Zion Cemetery, Lot 149, 9944 Leslie Road San Antonio, Texas 78254 on 25^th July 2025

In lieu of flowers or plants the family has requested that donations to be made to the charitable organization that she was a part of for almost 50 years.   You can go online to give a one-time gift, after you input the amount click- GIVE NOW on the next screen you can select this as a memorial gift and enter the name Sherry Chapman.  You can also call -1-800-992-5433.  (Note: US Telephone Number)

  www.wycliffe.org/donate 

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The Short Version of Sherry’s Remarkable Story  

Sherry daily sat on her lounge floor with a map of the world at her feet and laid her hands on the nations of the world while she prayed for them. after doing that for three years, she told the Lord one day that it was too hard praying for the whole world. She had a desire to know how God wanted her to pray and fuelled her prayers by compiling information on the countries for which she prayed. She had gathered too much information about each country and as a result there was too much to pray for. So Sherry asked the Lord to give her one nation. “Indonesia” came at her from every quarter over a two-week period: through TV programmes, advertisements for tourist holidays, magazine articles and even a pamphlet in her letter box about a holiday in Bali. 

She said “OK Lord, I will pray for Indonesia.” She bought a map of Indonesia and placed it on her lounge floor and prayed island by island for Indonesia for two and a half years and then said the same thing. “Lord I know too much about Indonesia now; there’s too much to pray for. Give me one island.” As she looked at her wall map of the nation of Indonesia at her feet, she thought, “Sulawesi is a strange looking island right in the middle of the archipelago, shaped like a wriggly K. I will pray for that island.” A number of years later she heard of Wycliffe’s Bibleless People Prayer Project and asked them for a people group to pray for. She received back a card for the Rongkong people of Sulawesi. She was over the moon because that was the island she was praying for. She poured her heart into praying for the Rongkong and the translators who would go to the Rongkong. One thing among many others that she prayed: “Lord, you have given me such a vision for the mission field through the book Bruchko. Father, I want to ask you to use the book Bruchko in the lives of the translators you will send to the Rongkong of Sulawesi as a part of their call. Will you do that Lord? Use that book so they may know that they know they are called to the Rongkong”. 

She prayed all sorts of things for the Rongkong, guided by the background knowledge she had gathered about the cultures, the languages and life style.

After we had been assigned to the Rongkong as Bible translators, we received a letter confirming our assignment to that language. There were four people who had been praying for the Rongkong under the Bibleless People Prayer Project. We were asked to introduce ourselves to each of the four and tell them our background. We received responses from two of the four: Howard Winholtz and Sherry Chapman. However Sherry’s letter was quite unique and grabbed my attention. Her letter was filled with questions. She wanted to know how Tania and I had met. She told me she had an idea that God had brought us together in a very special way and she wanted to know how it happened. She wanted to know about our background, Tania’s and mine. Her letter was filled with questions about our up-bringing, our marriage and our children. It was like she already knew things about us and she wanted confirmation about the details. To say the least, it was eerie. She wanted to know our background related to our work and what we did for a job before joining Wycliffe. How and why we joined Wycliffe?  The letter was filled with questions and each one was detailed in terms of all the information she wanted to know. She wanted to know about past hurts and struggles and myriad details about everything she asked. I thought this woman is  rather strange. 

But her last question in that first letter made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle and stand on end. She just simply wrote: Have you ever read the book Bruchko by Bruce Olsen?

Have I ever read Bruchko? You bet I have, it was the book God used to call us into Wycliffe.

I first met Sherry when I went to International Conference in the US in 1990 and passed through Dallas on my way to Waxhaw, NC. She came to get me in an old, overly large American car. It was then I heard Sherry’s story. She suffered from Environmental Illness Syndrome. The toxins in paint, fabric, furniture coverings, cleaning products, perfumes, cosmetics etc, all affected Sherry’s immune system. The toxins knocked her out for hours, sometime days, depending how long she had been exposed to them. She explained that to me as she drove me back to her place.   She wanted to stop off at a women’s clothing store and buy something as a present for Tania. But she explained to me how a visit to a mall could wipe her out for a week. So instead we went to a second hand shop which I thought was odd in buying something for a woman as a gift. Normally you would buy something new but for Sherry it had to be used so the toxins in the fabric and dyes would have been oxidised already.  That first visit to her place revealed to me much about her and what she had gone through.   

My first question was “Why she hadn’t told Wycliffe BPPP that she was already praying for the island of Sulawesi and that she wanted a people group on Sulawesi?” She said, “No Ian, I wanted God to give me the people group of His appointment.  So I was over the moon when Wycliffe sent back the Rongkong of South Sulawesi when I hadn’t told them anything about what I was doing. I knew right then that God had appointed me to pray for the Rongkong.” 

I soon learned she spent long periods of time in her oxidised home in order to stay healthy. That meant she could spend hours on her knees in prayer. The first thing she wanted to do with me when I arrived at her house was for us to pray together. That first time praying with her was inspiring. Initially there was a long silence as I waited for her to start praying, so I started to pray. Her hand stretched out and rested on my arm and she said, “No Ian, let’s prepare our hearts to pray first.” She then worked through the furniture in the Tabernacle in order to cleanse her heart spiritually before praying. When we had spent over an hour praying she turned to me and said, “I knew it. I knew that you and your wife know how to pray and how to hang on to the hem of Jesus’ garment until you have answers to your prayers.  I sensed that about you Ian. That is why I wanted us to pray together to confirm it.” 

Phew, I passed the test. This lady was truly an intercessor and a little scary. Matthew, her son, has told me his mother was scary and freaked him out with how she seemed to know his thoughts and his feelings. Yes she freaked us out too Matthew. She appeared to get her information straight from God in prayer. Now that is a little off-putting to say the least. Is this woman safe to be around? 

During that first visit Sherry told me much about her hard life and the fact that she had suffered in many ways, physically through EIS but also emotionally living with an abusive husband.. She didn’t understand how her prayers could impact the world of mission as they did for others, yet praying for herself and her sickness nothing happened to heal her. It was a puzzle to her that she never improved, but that God always answered her prayers in amazing ways, like He had for us and our leading to the Rongkong. Yet she was not healed after so long begging Him to heal her. I told her I thought she accomplished so much in prayer because of the physical suffering she had been through and the struggles in her marriage she told me about. I told her about my situation growing up with an alcoholic father and the way he used to abuse my mother and me. She looked at me and said, “You do know the connection between God’s glory and suffering don’t you?” I said, “Yes I do.” I proceeded to share with her the details I had learned about the depth of God’s glory manifested in suffering. She responded with the comment, “Oh Ian you are my little brother. May I call you little brother?” I agreed.

Sherry made the decision a couple of years later to come to Sulawesi and visit the Rongkong villages. That was the first time she had met my wife Tania and our two daughters, Marissa and Natalia. She had an idea there was something about their names that was special. She had asked about their names in her first letter saying, “I know there is something special about their names.” I told her the story of naming our girls and the reactions to their names in Indonesia. The girls and Tania were a little put off by Sherry because she would sit there looking intently at each one of us as we talked with her, particularly Tania and I as parents. Then she would say with a deeply intent look on her face – “What are you thinking?”  I said a number of times, “Nothing much, just pondering what you said or thinking about tomorrow and what I have to do”. She said on the odd occasion, “No you are thinking about something deeper than that.’ It was like this woman was looking deep into my soul and sensing things that I didn’t know were there, or at least not aware of. My daughters thought she was a little strange. Tania felt uncomfortable with her piercing eyes and pensive nature but learned that was just who Sherry was. The Fribergs, fellow translators and friends, loved and appreciated Sherry’s support of their work too. 

However, I think we all concluded that Sherry was like she was because she was so tuned into the LORD and sensitive to people and what to pray for them. She spent a lot of time talking with me over the years about the role of suffering in our lives and how God used it in remarkable ways. Especially so when God deepened my understanding of the principle and opened my eyes to God’s deeper  Truths in His Word in Exodus and Numbers and in the second letter to the Corinthians. Sherry loved hearing all about what I had learned in that regard. 

What I learned from Sherry Chapman, I built into the Effective Pray-ers Seminar and then took the Seminar around churches in New Zealand and Australia. I told Sherry what I was doing to ensure I had her permission. She would constantly tell me, whenever I talked about her story and ours being connected, that I had to tell people how God had taught her to minister out of brokenness. She would often say she was not a super heroine pray-er, but a woman through whom God manifested His power in the midst of her weakness.  “Did you tell them about my suffering and how God works in me despite that Ian?” I would say, “Yes, I made that very clear in the context of what you told me when I talk about your story in the context of the Effective Pray-ers Seminar – Learning to Pray Powerful Prayers.” She also asked to be told when I ran Effective Pray-ers Seminars, so she could be prepared against spiritual attack. She also asked if I would pray protection over her and get the participants to pray for her before I started each seminar.  

There are more remarkable features of Sherry’s involvement in Intercessory Prayer, but much of the details are sensitive and are not for public distribution. If you wish to know more you will have to make a request to me personally. The fullness of her impact on events around the world and in the situations we are aware of astounds me. I have only recently realised the depth and breadth of what Sherry accomplished through her prayers. The sad aspect to sharing her full story is that even now it can only be told in part given the on-going nature of the work for which she prayed.

But I am sure that is the way she would have wanted it. Sherry dreaded to think that she would take the limelight. She preferred to be inconspicuous, in the background. She was simply a humble, faithful maidservant of her LORD who prayed earnestly and focused her prayers on the assignments given to her by Christ.  

Well Done Good and Faithful Servant

Ask and I will tell you more. The way Sherry Chapman prayed was a major example to me in modelling Intercessory Prayer. If you wish to read the Nugget I wrote as a sequel to this one: The Power Behind Sherry Chapman you will have to request the password. OR if you have signed up for the Gems and Nuggets before this point you can use the password I gave you when the sequel was sent on MailChimp. That same password will open the God Story I have added called What’s In A Name?

Author: Ian Vail

ian_vail@wycliffenz.org