Reprint Courtesy AG News

When people are baptized in the Holy Spirit, the initial physical evidence of that Baptism is speaking in tongues (words uttered in a language that the speaker does not know). But many people haven’t stop to consider that sometimes that “unknown tongue” is English! 

Don and Terri Triplett are Assemblies of God missionaries to Latin America Caribbean. Their efforts are focused on reaching children for Christ through their King’s Castle Ministries. 

Recently Don Triplett shared a story about a young El Salvadorian girl, “Ana,” who only spoke Spanish. She was praying in their ministry’s Prayer Fortress and began speaking in tongues. 

“People started going over to listen to her speaking in tongues in perfect English as she was baptized in the Holy Spirit,” Triplett says. “Thirteen other children received the baptism in the Holy Spirit that night in the Prayer Fortress.” 

Triplett says this is not the first time he’s heard a Spanish-speaking child speak in tongues in English. 

“A couple of years ago at the camp . . . a couple of girls came walking down from the Prayer Fortress,” Triplett says. “One of the young girls came up to me and said, ‘Hi Brother Don. How are you?’” 

The young girl would go on to hold a conversation with Triplett in perfect English, when suddenly the other girl with her started to laugh. 

Triplett recalls, “She [the friend] told me in Spanish, ‘She doesn’t speak a word of English, but she has been speaking this language all afternoon, and she just can’t stop speaking in tongues.’” 

They often hear people speaking in other languages, Triplett explains, including Portuguese, French, English, Chinese, and, with the exception of English, it takes someone who has the gift of interpretation to translate for them.  

Triplett says the top item on his agenda everywhere he goes is to encourage children’s workers to reach out and change the future of the Assemblies of God. 

“If every children’s worker in the AG will make sure that every child under his or her care has the opportunity to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit,” Triplett expresses, “we can bring back a new generation of Pentecost to our Fellowship.   

In February, children’s leaders from 17 Latin American countries met with the Tripletts to experience Pentecost. They were also challenged to teach about and minister the baptism in the Holy Spirit to every AG child and young person in all the AG churches in Latin America.  

The Tripletts’ daughter, Michelle Wellborn, missionary to Argentina, came to El Salvador to help show the children’s workers how to lead a child into the baptism in the Holy Spirit. 

Ninety-eight children from the surrounding area came to the camp. Wellborn spent a total of 5 hours explaining the baptism in the Holy Spirit to the children. 

“It was a wild afternoon because these children were unchurched and from unsaved families,” Triplett says. “Some had come just to have a free bus ride to the camp and a couple of free meals.”    

Later that evening, Wellborn gave a very simple challenge, inviting the children to allow the Holy Spirit to baptize them in the Holy Spirit. Sixty-six of the children were baptized in the Holy Spirit that evening. The stories began to pour in by the next day as many of these children went home full of Pentecostal power to testify to their unsaved parents. 

The children workers at the conference also went home inspired to present the opportunity to be baptized in the Holy Spirit as well. 

“Too many churches don’t present the Holy Spirit to kids, but that is not God’s plan,” says Mary Boyd, national Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge (BGMC) coordinator. “The Holy Spirit is for every Christian — no matter the age.”