They came in wheelchairs or with babies suffering from apnea or with cancers spreading throughout their bodies.

About 400 people crowded into an Ojai charismatic church with a capacity of about 350, the kind of crowds organizers expect faith-healing meetings featuring the Rev. Charles Ndifon will attract throughout the week. They swayed to praise music and reached toward the heavens — in hopes of catching a miracle.

Ann Copeland of Oxnard rolled into the church Monday night with arthritis so bad she's been in wheelchair for more than five years. Though still in discomfort, she left pushing her wheelchair to her car.

Natascha Sansosti of Oak View walked to the carpeted, raised church stage with a migraine so bad she worried she had a tumor. Her faith-driven cure arrived so fast she jumped.

"Instant relief," she said. "It was awesome."

Other stories offered less dramatic conclusions. Addie Morales' 4-month-old granddaughter Brittney Irish-Morales has a hole in her heart valve. She was proclaimed healed Monday night though a doctor said the next day the condition hasn't changed. The defect also hasn't grown and there was no need for the immediate surgery the family feared.

"We probably just don't know," Morales said of the impact of Monday night's event. "There's no change, which is good news. We don't want change."

Chun Yi McCain of Oxnard was one of the first on stage when the miracles were supposed to begin. In a command as startling as the crack of whip, Ndifon barked "OUT!" at the disability that has been part of McCain's life since she was a little girl.

But she left the church the same way she arrived, with no hearing in one ear and about 50 percent in the other. She said in sign language she wasn't disappointed.

"It's too early to tell," added her husband, Davati McCain, on Monday night, reporting the next day there still was no improvement.

They came from Oxnard, Ventura and Thousand Oaks to New Wine Harvest Fellowship in a corner of Ojai that will be Ndifon's home pulpit for the rest of the week. He's the Nigerian-born leader of Christ Love Ministries International and once wanted a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering. He devoted his life to Jesus and said he has witnessed the healing of millions of people in every continent of the world: AIDS cured, cancer beaten, sight returned, even missing limbs rejuvenated.

"What's a miracle?" he asked. "When God does what no human being can do."

Now based in Rhode Island, he came to Ojai at the invitation of a group of churches called the Ventura County Prayer and Revival Network. He will preach every night through Friday at New Wine Harvest Fellowship and is also leading daytime meetings elsewhere in the county. There is no admission though an offering plate is passed.

On Monday, Ndifon paced across the stage in a natty black suit, alternately preaching, singing about God's healing power, offering diagnoses and commanding sickness to leave. He said illness and crippling injury are caused by the devil. But Jesus heals. He said that when he unites people with Jesus, miracles follow.

"Hope goes when sickness comes," he said. "When Jesus comes, hope is restored."

People heal at different rates, he said, explaining why a change in one person's health may happen instantly but take days for someone else. Attitude can be a barrier, so can a person's conviction that maybe complete healing isn't possible.

He carries a book written about his work, "The God of Miracles," that he said offers journalistic documentation. He also said skeptics and medical doctors are encouraged to come to his meetings.

If there were skeptics at Monday's meeting, they weren't found. On Tuesday, however, they were easy to track down.

Rabbi John Sherwood didn't attend Monday's faith meeting. But tell the leader of ministerial associations in Ventura and Oxnard about Ndifon's assertions about a man without eyeballs who regains both his sight and his eyes and he offers this comment:

"If you believe that I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you," he said, emphasizing the difference between praying for someone's health and theatrical faith healing.

Michael Shermer, Pasadena-based publisher of Skeptic Magazine, hasn't attended any of Ndifon's events but considers faith healing in general to be a scam, pure psychodrama that may offer momentary hope but ultimately brings crushing disappointment.

"Theologically it's also fraught with deep problems," he said, referring to people who expect to be healed but are not. "Does that mean God doesn't like them as much?"

Doctors talk of the placebo effect, meaning the curative power of a sugar pill given to people who believe it contains medicine.

Robert Lum, a radiation oncologist in Oxnard and president of the Ventura County Medical Association, said a person's unwavering conviction they are healed can be powerful.

He said faith and science work best when they are used together.

Can faith without science heal a person? Possibly, Lum said. "Will it happen? Extraordinarily unlikely."

Ndifon, who considers himself an apostle and a scientist, offers the same message to any skeptic: Come and see for yourself.

"Bring your sick and it will happen," he said.