Thursday, April 12, 2018

Pioneering Stories - Bratislava, Slovakia


Hi, my name is Jega from Hope London, and I would just like to share with everyone a story about pioneering that I’ve experienced in the last year.

Over the last 2 years, God has been speaking to me about moving to East Europe. It actually started about 2 years ago when I was praying, and God started giving me a list of places that He wanted me to go to, but I remember the very first place that I actually ever experienced. He showed me a picture of a blue church during my prayer, and as I prayed more into it, I really felt from the Holy Spirit that I should be going to this place. I actually did not have much experience at all in going to new cities and starting something new from scratch. So I was a bit afraid at that time, because when God said “Go”, there was a big part of me that actually knew that He wanted me to start something new wherever it was that He was sending me.

But because I had only a blue picture, I went to Google to try and look for where this place was, and it turned out that there is a blue church in Bratislava of Slovakia, and it is the one famous blue church in the world. I received this maybe 6 months before I actually did go. During that time, I spent a lot of time in prayer, and a lot of it I must say, there was a lot of fear in my heart for going. I did not necessarily know what God wanted me to do there. It felt like He was saying I should go there alone, and I struggled for quite a while. But 6 months later, He gave me another word through someone who actually told me that, God had actually opened the door but I hadn’t gone.

So, I booked a flight and I landed in Bratislava in Slovakia. I had 2 days out there, and during the whole time I was praying and really asking God, “what do You want me to do here? Because I don’t know this place, I don’t know the people, I don’t know the language.” It wasn’t entirely clear what God wanted me to do for that trip. During the flight, God shared with me 4 prophetic words, and I wrote them down on my phone. They were not very detailed, they were probably 3 lines each – specific situation about specific people. He told me that while I was walking I should just listen to the Holy Spirit, and if I hear that He wants me to share a word, to just go to the person, talk to them and give them the word, and He would somehow open up a conversation.

So, I landed in Bratislava, got out of my accommodation, and just asked the Holy Spirit where should I walk to. I walked around the city, prayed quite a lot, interceded for the place. I tried to talk to certain people. I talked to a couple of people over the weekend, but amazingly I did meet 4 people over that weekend with whom I did share those 4 words, and they were very very accurate for them – so accurate that many of them actually had hours of conversations with me, asking me how I knew these words, and I shared with them about God, ministering to them. One of them later on came to London to actually learn to go out on the streets with me. But that was really the beginning, and I really saw God do something really amazing.

Since then, I have taken teams 5 teams in the last year to Bratislava. Each time, we’ve gone only for 2 days, so in total we’ve been there for 10 days. But as we were going there as a team, we have spent our weekends really doing what we felt God has wanted us to do. We spent months praying for exactly what He would like for us to do over those weekends, and we’ve really seen His provision and providing over this time. One big problem we had in Slovakia was, 90% of the population of Slovaks don’t speak English, and so going into our first weekend we quickly realized that if we speak English we were gonna only speak to tourists. So, we really were thinking how would we get along with the language barrier.

God took us one weekend to a church and He told us to visit them. He told us that through this church we would meet other people not in this church who would actually be translators for us. It was really amazing, because during the trip, the pastor who didn’t know us invited us to just speak for an hour to his church. It opened up a bridge for us to be able to go back to his church, and the next time God actually told us to take these people on the streets, but to really start meeting in His church first and there we would meet the other Christians. That really happened – other people turned up whom we did not know – they were having a meeting nearby and just felt from the Holy Spirit to come and join us. Since then, these guys have been following us on the streets being our translators. We can train them a bit while we are out there. But over those 5 different times we had actually been there, we have seen God do amazing things. We’ve seen people healed, and we’ve given a lot of prophetic words.

One person, a teenager, accepted Christ recently and all her friends who would smoke and drink and who were there with her when she accepted Christ, they suddenly got interested in the Gospel. We have seen a couple of the people whom we have started reading the Bible with. We have 5 other Christians whom we have started to disciple. It feels like God has really done something in a space of 10 days with very different people. I’m really looking forward to the next year, while we go in bigger teams all over Slovakia and Bratislava, starting with Bratislava. I expect that God is going to do something amazing! But really, looking back at the last year, I see how having faith in just following what God says really brings a lot of fruit, and just obedience on its own actually makes God’s kingdom multiply!

If you have never been out, I would really like to encourage you that it doesn’t take so much to go out. Sometimes we think we need to be trained, sometimes we think that we need to know so much to be able to pioneer. But one thing I really learned in the last year is: You will never be ready to pioneer, but on the other hand, it is very easy if you do follow just what God says and obey it. So, I would like to encourage if you have never tried to do something new, do STEP OUT, LISTEN to God, PRAY and just ASK Him what He would like for you to try. And I can assure you that if you do step out in obedience to what God says, you will see Him work in a big way in your life!

Jega Thambirajah, Hope London

 
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