New Friends...Praying for Healing

It’s been over two weeks since we arrived here in Sarajevo. Though we have not been as busy as I would have liked to be, we are enjoying meeting different young people and missionaries in the city. The past few days spent helping out practically at a local church, passing out flyers for an upcoming seminar on relationships that will be held at the center where we are working, and visiting university students and discussing faith and spirituality with them! There are many, many students in Sarajevo, all working very heard this time of year to pass their exams that are being given this month. Campus Crusade is a student ministry that has been working here in Sarajevo for over 5 years. They regularly go to the universities to meet students, share with them and invite them out to coffee to build relationship and share the Gospel with them. This Thursday they took us with them to be a model for this kind of outreach. For me it was great to see how open they are about their faith and how open the students were to share their ideas of God and spirituality.

While talking with some of the students I realized that many of them are very wounded, from the affects of the war that was here in the 90’s and also from broken families and all kinds of painful situations. One of the young guys we talked to said that he didn’t believe in God because he had just experienced too many terrible things, as he pointed out the many scares on his face and head. How could a God allow all of that to happen? There is such a big need here for people to experience the healing power of God in their lives. Not just for their physical lives but for their hearts. They have experienced so much pain and suffering, and this, along with all the different religious influences of the region have painted a very different picture of God than the one we know. My prayer is that the believers here and our team as well, would have the opportunity to paint new pictures for those we meet of God’s true character- through our lives, through our words and through our love.

I shared a little bit with two guys about how God longs to heal us, to touch us in the places where we are hurting and to set us free from the things that we do just to cover up the pain we feel. Their response was, “Sounds like a nice commercial for Mc Donald’s”-too good to be true I guess. But it is true and it is the Good News that we need to keep on sharing. Please keep praying with us for healing for this nation and for this Good News to be spread to each and every heart…