Much going on these months

Since my last update many things have been going on here. In mid-October I was able to attend a conference with the leaders of the Evangelical Free denomination here in Sweden, which is the denomination of the church I work with here. It was a 3 day consultation in Stockholm (my first time in Stockholm!!) about how we can get more missionaries to come to Sweden and about the future of church planting within their denomination. They gave us the bad news first. More churches in Sweden are closing than new ones being planted. If the trend continues, all free churches will cease to exist within the next 30 years. In the last 20 years 58 new churches have been planted within this denomination, but 112 have closed within that time. That was the bad news. The good news is that God is still saving souls here and there are opportunities for the Church to grow in Sweden, we just need more help! That's a big prayer request right now is for more workers in Sweden, especially at the universities. Overall that was a great trip and very encouraging. I got to meet with people who are doing a lot of the same work i'm doing in Sweden and build some great friendships. I visited an international church in Stockholm called New Life. They have about 350 people from 40 nations around the world. It was an amazing place. There were two baptisms that morning. One lady was from Egypt who was a muslim but unable to defend her faith. She then had a dream about Jesus saying who he was and she believed. She fled Egypt and her family to come to Sweden to become a Christian. She was speaking Arabic, then it was translated into Swedish, then English, a very international place. Then another lady who had been an exotic dancer heard God say to her that she needed to go to church, she ended up leaving her old life and becoming a follower of Jesus. God is doing great stuff here!

New Life Church has also planted another church in Gothenburg (Göteborg in Swedish), which is the second largest city in Sweden. It's a new church plant and there are some american missionaries working in there. The first weekend in December I will actually be going out there to lead worship that Sunday morning for them. I'm really excited about that opportunity. Also this past Sunday morning November 9th, I got the opportunity for the first time to lead worship for the Sunday morning Swedish service at my partner church here. We did a mixture of Swedish and English songs and the Sunday morning went well. The service was about God's jealous love and us not prostituting our lives before anything other than God. There were a lot of broken people in the service worshipping and pouring their hearts out to God.

The weather is kind of depressing here right now. It is completely dark by 4pm and this is just the beginning of the dark period here. Besides being dark so early, every day here lately has been really cloudy and rainy. About a week ago we had a snowy day, kind of early though. It hasn't snowed since but in the upcoming weeks it could again. I'm so ready to the see the sunshine again. Thankfully I will getthe opportunity to come home for Christmas in sunny Georgia!

As far as our international services have been going we've had some worship services and Bible studies and also some activities nights such as bowling and movie night. The most we have had so far come is about 40 and people form 15+ countries around the world. Most are Christians but some are not believers who are really interested. We've been able to give 2 girls Bible's who have never read it before; one girl is from Japan and the other from Armenia. Pray for these girls that God will use us to minister to their hearts. I have also started a home group for these students as well and we will have our second meeting tonight. Also pray for 2 mormon missionaries we've come into contact with. Pray that they see God's truth about who Jesus really is and that they see Joseph Smith as the false prophet that he was.
We have also had a new opportunity every Thursday morning at the university to hand out free breakfast to students going to their classes. This is a mixed group of all the churches in Växjö coming together to share God's love with students and to be a more visible presence at the university campus. Pray that these students will become curious as we are there every week doing this. I have updated pictures of everything I just shared with you here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05 . Click on September-November 2008; there are a few short videos there as well. Check them out!! Let me know how all of you are as well! God's blessings on all your lives!