This past month we have hosted several teams here in North Macedonia. While we had a team serving in North Macedonia, me and a bunch of guys from the second year of LOBC were on a three week trip in Kosovo.
Our original plan was to organize a conference, but due to some practical reasons it was not possible. Even though we knew the conference wouldn’t happen, we decided to go anyway, trusting God to lead us.
Kosovo is a predominantly Muslim country and due to the small size of the churches in Kosovo, our main focus during the stay was street evangelization.
At the beginning of one of the days, when we started making plans, several of the guys in our team felt that we should do street evangelism and sing praise in the square. It’s not something the local church usually does, but we felt we should try it anyway and see what could happen.
After a few minutes of singing in the square, a bunch of young guys from the local barber shop came out, and our team started talking to them. It turned out that one of these guys spoke Swedish. He was from Kosovo, but had grown up in Sweden. Although not much was said or done that day, we exchanged contact details.
After a few days we had a coffee with this Kosovo Swedish guy. After a long conversation, about just about everything, it was time for us to go to church for a meeting. “Why don’t we invite him and continue our conversation in church!” … what a great idea. He was so happy to come along and suddenly started opening up about his faith. He was so close to accepting Jesus. Even if we didn’t get to pray the prayer of salvation with him, I knew God had brought him to us.
A week after we left Kosovo, another team visited Kosovo and we heard some updates about our Swedish friend. The next Sunday, he had come to church with his brother, and had even more questions!
On the last evening before going back, we decided to invite young people from the churches we had just visited. We organized an evening of praise and prayer, because we felt strongly that we wanted to pray for them.
Among the visitors was a couple from the church. The woman had heard our testimony of the baptism in the Holy Spirit a few days earlier and was also eager to receive it. At the end of the evening, we decided to pray for her together with her husband. While we were praying, Kim received several words of knowledge for them, and one of them was deliverance. As we shared these words, we could see that this was exactly what she needed. We prayed for freedom and she experienced such relief. We could see how God touched her in such a noticeable way.
After we finished praying, she shared how while we were praying, she also wanted to pray, but when she was about to open her mouth, instead of words, she spoke in tongues. Hallelujah!
This was a great end to our trip.
Jan Marek,
Missionary in North Macedonia
