Who is Praying for These Students?
My whole life my mom has been praying for me. When I was younger, during the day. When I became a teenager, often, really late at night. Now, that I live Eastern Europe, my poor mom often prays for me in the middle of the night. My dad prays for me, too. The pastor that married my husband and I prays for me. My mentor from my college years prays for me. My aunts and uncles pray for me. If you grew up in America, the chances that someone—your mother, an aunt, a pastor, a friend, has prayed for you are pretty strong.
Hondo and Trish Wynn are Josiah Venture missionaries in the region of Koroška, Slovenia. In mid-January, I read an update from them that explained, “as far as we know there is not a single student in this whole town that has a heart to follow the Lord…..yet!” I was overwhelmed. I have read a lot of statistics about Eastern Europe—I know the percentages, but “not a single student” makes the percentage real, and who is praying for these students?
However, some amazing things are happening in Slovenia. The first week of April, the biggest evangelistic outreach in the history of Slovenia will take place. Nick Vujicic is speaking at this event. He is of Serbian descent and was born without arms or legs. Because he comes from the region, many in Slovenia know about this unusual young man. The story of how he found hope in Christ and overcame his difficulties to become a powerful testimony for the gospel is really an amazing one.
When the team began working to promote the event, they found a wave of support, even among non-believers. They have been able to rent the largest hall in Ljubljana and similar venues in Maribor and other major cities. It looks like there could be as many as 20,000 who will personally attend the series of meetings. In Slovenia, there are fewer than 1,500 total evangelical believers and only a percentage of those are equipped with skills to lead someone else to the Lord. Because of a lack of man-power, all of the organizer’s efforts are going toward simply getting this huge event off of the ground in a very short time. Therefore, the Josiah Venture team in Slovenia has committed to take on the overwhelming task of providing resources, materials, and training for churches to do follow-up. JV Slovenia really needs prayer support!
Our hope is that soon the region of Koroška, Slovenia, where Trish and Hondo serve, would be full of young people who know Christ’s love personally, who are living as Christ followers, and who are discipling others to do the same. Will you pray for these students? If you are interested in receiving a specific student’s name to pray for, please email Hondo (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). I am forever grateful for those that have prayed for me. I’d love for the students of Slovenia to experience the same.
