It was a Wednesday in the spring of 1989. Ulf and Birgitta Ekman were sitting together with Carl-Gustav Severin in a conference room at Livets Ord in Uppsala. Suddenly Pastor Ulf became completely still. A strong presence of the Holy Spirit filled the room. “I see a train,” he explained to the others.

He saw it in front of him, like in a movie. It started in Uppsala and then went all over Russia. It was filled with young people and preachers throwing books, tapes and videos to people running along the train and stretching out their hands. He saw the train, but interpreted the vision spiritually: that the Word of Life Church would send the Word of God far into Russia and not be limited to the Baltics and the Leningrad area.

There and then it was decided that the Word of Life would start the Russian Inland Mission (RIM) and Pastor Ulf felt that the Lord challenged him that the church would invest 40 million SEK over four years in this work.

Imagine our surprise when, shortly afterwards, a Russian former KGB agent came to our New Year’s conference and offered to rent a 14-car train set, formerly belonging to the Young Communists, to travel through Russia and preach! The vision became a concrete reality.

The train then traveled from city to city, becoming a plow for the Gospel in a country marked by atheism and communism. The vision was a new church in every city.

In cities where the train didn’t stop, team members often stood in the windows and threw out Bibles and books, just as the vision had said.

“Together with Carl-Gustav Severin, I had the pleasure of helping to lead the implementation of the two trips we made with the train in 1991 and 1992. The trips were absolutely fantastic. In city after city, our team visited hospitals, prisons, orphanages and poor families. We held rallies, distributed literature, and in the evenings we rented the biggest rooms we could find – it was always packed. Sometimes when people crowded in, we had to continue the meetings outside the premises. Our drama group, Alive, did a fantastic job. Late in the evenings, when all the equipment was packed and transported to the train, we traveled on to the next city. In the mornings we gathered, about 40 team members, in the former restaurant car and prayed like crazy as we rolled into the next town. And so it went, in town after town. Many miracles took place and Russians in their thousands received Jesus as their Lord.”

Toni Gadd

Excerpt from the book “Grateful, 30 years of the Word of Life”