As far as what's been going on here with me in Sweden so far, God has really been working and moving! We made the decision last spring that in the fall school semester we were going to move our international worship services from the church that I partner with here in Växjö to a church that was much closer to the university and the students. The church I partner with here in Sweden, called Ulriksbergskyrkan is about 4 miles away from the university. Now that may not sound like very far, but when the majority of students don't have cars here and mostly get around by walking, biking, and riding the bus, 4miles can take a while. The bus normally takes about 30 minutes to get there because of all of the stops it has to make, so moving to a Lutheran church right across the street from the university has been a great move. We are consistenly having 20-30+ students show up every week for our meetings, many of whom have no relationship with God! They are getting to hear for the first time about what it means to have a relationship with God through Jesus! We have students from about 15 countries coming to our meetings and have been able to give out about 10 Bibles so far to some of these students who have never read the Bible for themselves. Every week we are also having a home group that meets in my apartment. We've been averaging 15+ students showing up for this meeting every week and it's so exciting because we've never had this much consistency! Last night on October 8th we had 16 here at my apartment for the Bible study and I barely had room for them all! Most of the students were Christians but 3 girls that came are not and are just curious. We had students last night from the US, Syria, Pakistan, Japan, Hong Kong, Uganda, Cameroon, Congo, Canada, Latvia, and South Korea. Basically the way these meetings work is that we have a meal together (last night we had home made soup from a few different countries), then maybe something to break the ice like playing UNO, and then have a Bible study and prayer time. Last night I spoke about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well and how He crossed boundaries of race and culture to give this woman living water, eternal life that she really needed despite her life of living in shame. I shared that she was looking for something to fill the void in her life only Jesus could fill, by giving herself over to all of these men she had brought into her life. Jesus however crossed all of these boundaries and looked into the deepest need of her heart, a relationship with Him, and gave her living water. What was amazing is that a woman who came to the well to get water in the middle of the day to avoid seeing people, ran to the people of her town to tell them to come see Jesus! She no longer cared about her shame as Jesus had given her living water and wiped away her shameful past. I really pray that those who came to our group who don't know Jesus but are curious see who He is from our study last night. He wants to give the lost of this world living water, eternal life that will make them never thirst again for something to fulfill their lives. I can say that God has brought us into contact with about 10-15 students right now who are coming to these home groups and international worship services who don't know Him. Please pray that God will continue to use us weekly to open their hearts for Him and that Satan will not deceive them into thinking that what we are saying is false. Pray that they will see Jesus for who He really is and let Him change their lives forever! Here is a picture of our home group on October 8th. Click on the picture and it will enlarge.
Also just to share with you the last few weeks I have been taking Swedish language courses that are given out for free by the government here. I am definitely learning more Swedish than I ever understood before, but i'm in class about 5 hours a day 5 days a week so my head hurts from all the swedish once i'm done...lol. Pray for me that i'll be able to learn the language fast and in doing so be able to minister to the swedish people more effectively. Lasty I want to ask you to be praying for my girlfriend stacey and I. Pray that God will continue to grow our relationship though we are 5000 miles apart at the moment. Pray that we will continue to put God first in our relationship and trust Him for our future. Thanks!
I am putting up about 35 new pictures on my pictures website that you can find the link to on the right of this blog screen on can go to by clicking here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/. Look under August-October 2009 pictures. I would like to hear from you all as well how life is going and let me know how I can be praying for you all as well!
God bless,
Adam
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment