A Trumpet, A Witchdoctor, & Spiritual Discernment: A Conversation with Don Shire

What if I told you that a very popular cartoon today was actually inspired by real demons? Well, on this episode I'm interviewing a missionary, Don Shire, and he tells some testimonies that are going to shock you. He traveled around with a witch doctor who gave his life to Christ, and he shares some incredible testimonies about what's really going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm. This is a quick but a deep interview. You're not going to want to miss it, so make sure you stick around until the end.

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Hello, welcome. I've got with me here a trumpet missionary, don Shire, a musician, a musician, I like that. Well, we are down here at the 30th Annual Colonist's Sing, and I just got done listening to you rock some trumpet. It was incredible. And so you've agreed to tell us some of your stories here, and it's really an unconventional approach, and I just love how you're using your gift to spread the kingdom and to do God's work. So tell us a little bit about what you're up to, and I know you got an amazing story about a witch doctor too.

So give us a clue to what's going on. Well, yeah, many years ago, I said Lord, please forgive me. I was living without him and I was going to church every Sunday, but I came to a point where I knew I had to make a decision to really be committed or not. And I just said Lord, forgive me, if you can still use me, show me where. And as we stand here today, it's now 36 countries later. Wow, I've been to them multiple times and the Lord just keeps opening doors. And what's interesting is that the trumpet that just opens doors, it speaks every language. I can go to Africa and to villages that I've never seen a trumpet before, and the Muslim chiefs or the witch doctors or voodoo priests they'll let me in because I'm from America and they've never seen a trumpet before. And what I do is I just share from my heart and share Christ. We've been planting churches in Ghana and Zambia and, yeah, that's what I do. The trumpet is my tool. I go where God opens doors. That's why I'm here this weekend. They invited me.

That's amazing. So tell us this story about the witch doctor. Now, that's what really got my attention when I just came here, when you talked about Noah's Ark and my wife and I the Ark Encounter.

Well, yeah, if you've been to the Ark, once you get up towards the end of the tour, on one of the top floors there's this maze that you go through that shares how the Bible has been taken into the world, and in one of those cubbies is a life-size cutout of Chief Shoefoot. Chief Shoefoot was a very good friend of mine. He's with the Lord now. But when I would go to the jungle to visit my missionary friends, he was one that I just got to know very, very well and I'll tell you this guy would stand there when visiting villages would come that were demon worshipers. He would just look at them and he would say you think you're so powerful with your spirits. Here I am. Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. Throw him at me, there's nothing you can do to me. This guy had such an impact and such a ministry to his own people, the Yanamama tribe, and I used to go up and down the river with him with my trumpet, going to villages that have never even heard anything like that before, and again they would all come the only show in town, you know and he would share the gospel.

So how did he come to? I mean, so he was a witch doctor. Tell us about that, or what's the transition? Yeah, that's quite a change.

So matter of fact, if you're an internet person, which obviously you must be, if you're watching this right now, if you will Google Chief Shoefoot, I'll never go back. If you just Google that Chief Shoefoot, I'll never go back. It will bring up a video that I did with him many years ago and he will share his testimony on how he came to Christ and the Reader's Digest version, I guess, would be. Missionaries came to his village and he knew all about God. He knew there was a great creator and lived in a beautiful place, but his demons he had told him that, yes, he exists, but he's your enemy and he hates your people and you need us to protect you from him, because he eats your babies and whenever a child would die. Now, this is kind of weird stuff. All right, we're ready. But you got to watch this video to hear his story. But he used to take drugs when he was a witch doctor and when someone would die somehow he would join his spirits and chase the spirit of the dead person. It could be a child, it could be an adult and he said that whenever a child would die that they would chase it to this place where the enemy god lives, and that he said they would go so far. And he said the light would be so intense. He said it was like coming up onto the bottom of a river, but he said they would get to a point where they were afraid they would burn because the light was so intense. And here's the part I love the noise was so loud of all the spirits there worshiping this enemy God that his spirits would tremble. They would come back and then he would tell the family I'm sorry, but he ate your child.

Oh, wow, yeah, you know this. We've interviewed on this show as well Missionaries that went to the Campbell tribes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and so we've heard some stories too about you know, with doctors appearing in rooms in the middle of the night. Oh, it's just amazing and now you did some traveling with him.

You said in the US, or was that just abroad? Well, I brought a friend down there with me who wrote a book about him called Spirit of the Rainforest, oh, wow. And so he came with on book tours and I would travel with him and the author and he would share his testimony in churches a lot of times in universities and yeah, just an amazing testimony. And yeah, there's just so much. You could fill another book of the stories from there. But I'll share one quick story, and some of you might not like this one, but a church sent a bunch of children's books down to the jungle to my missionary friend who has three boys, and when Shufo went over to the house he looked at the books and he said why are you letting your children read the books about the spirits, I thought, and how do you have pictures of them? I thought you couldn't see them. And Mike said what do you mean? This is just Pokemon books. These are things that the kids play with these days. And Shufo said I know those spirits no way. And he knew their personalities and he said those are spirits we give our children because they don't have a lot of power, but we give those spirits to our children to introduce them to the spirit world.

You're wow. I mean, we all know this audience is aware of the truth about a lot of this stuff that we see, but that's wow. Is there more information on that or is that that? Wow, we got it. We're gonna have to dig into that.

I think so you could contact the missionary personally if you wanted to. And it's funny, he's 300 miles into the jungle, but I think you can even do a podcast with him via Skype or something. Definitely Wow, that's amazing. We got one more story we were just talking about after we turned it off, so I gotta have you go back into that. Okay, well, I can do that. Well, one of the things that amazed me in traveling with Chief Shufo was how he could discern evil, how he could discern spirits. As a matter of fact, one lady brought her grandson and said I think my son is demon-possessed, you know, would you pray over him? And he laid hands on that little boy and that kid started screaming and frothing at the mouth and trying to bite him and finally he calmed down and Shufo just kept praying through the whole thing. And when they left I said, shufo, was that a demon? And he said nope, that kid just needs a good spanking. So, discerning of the spirits. Well, when he was traveling here in the States, there was a Christian student group at one of the major universities that decided as a fundraiser they would put together a spook house.

A haunted house. A haunted house yeah.

And so they put this thing together and it was well attended and just for fun, shufo was there, and just for fun they said let's go check this out and see what Shufo thinks about it. As soon as he saw the house he was like, oh, I'm going to go check it out. He said I know who lives there. He knew the demon's name whose house that was. He said I used to visit that house when I was a witch doctor and he said I would go in spirit and I would. And he described the house. He said when we go in, there's going to be a chain on the wall over here and describe some of the different things that would be on the walls. They went in and it was just like he said. He said now we're gonna go through that door and there's a picture on the wall and the eyes are bulging out and and they went into the hallway and there's the picture, just as he described.

And you said that how was this house to put together?

Well, that's what he asked. He said I thought you didn't know what the spirits looked like. You know, how was it that you can recreate? And he said to deem his name, how could you create his house like this? And the guy just said I just googled it on the internet and how to build a haunted house is you know and he had been there in the spirit realm.

you said Well, shufoot had, but the guy he was just getting information off the internet, right, yeah, and that's the thing is, a lot of people are messing with this stuff, like you mentioned, about Pokemon and the haunted houses and these different things, and they don't really realize what they're messing with.

Well, you know, Shufoot talks about about meeting with the leader of all the spirits down in the rainforest in Venezuela, and and how powerful he was. And then he said but then one day he left and he told all of the spirits and all the witch doctors that he was going to the land of the foreigner to teach them.

Really.

I just wonder where he landed.

Now you're still traveling around a lot, so I mean, tell people how they can follow what you're doing and support you and what you're doing.

Well, my name is Don Shire, the ministry is D-S-M Internationalorg is our is our website, and Don Shire Ministries is how it started out. But now our ministry has gone way beyond just me going to places. But we have orphanages, we have ministry to widows, and so we're in several different countries and I have a staff now that's with us full time and Haiti, india, ukraine, poland, honduras and other places. So you go to the website and you can find out more about those things.

And what was the website again?

dsminternationalorg.

Okay, awesome. Well, hey Don, this has been amazing.

We can sit here and talk for hours, but appreciate the opportunity.