impactingnations.com

Prayer teams are one of the most effective things we do here at NLI. They are often small teams who travel between several cities, engage in spiritual warfare, & encourage the men and women who work “at the coal face”. We mobilise several teams each year into the church planting projects and always get incredible feedback from these missions! Here’s what Mark and Liz (church planters in Slovakia) have to say about the prayer team from Portland (US) who visited them in April.

“An NLI prayer team came to visit us in Sala, a small city in Slovakia where we are planting a church. Up to that point the work we had been doing had been going well, with an increase in the number of people coming to our outreach programs. However, personally, as leaders we were feeling tired, spiritually dry and really in need of refreshment. We can honestly say that refreshment is exactly what this team brought. Even though they were only able to spend a few hours with us, as they prayed over us and the work here in Sala, they confirmed promises that God had already spoken over us.

They prayed specifically into our present situation and prayed blessing and encouragement for the future; a complete refreshment. The clear insight God gave them into our lives and work was such a blessing especially considering they did not know us.In the evening that followed we did our usual outreach program and clearly saw the difference that their prayers had made, with specific answers to certain prayers that were prayed. Also, since that time we have seen more and more of God’s blessing poured out in Sala, and we know that this prayer team played an important part in this. The following week we saw around a dozen teenagers make commitments to following Jesus.

We truly thank God and NLI for sending this team. Their input was priceless and we would gladly welcome a prayer team back again.”

I’m sitting in Bratislava airport reflecting on the week that has just been, and have just realised what a crazy week I’ve had. 4 days locked in a small cottage in Stare Hory with 3 other NLI’ers, ploughing through one of our new leadership courses, a very successful 4 days actually with some really promising modules being created.

After that I went to Brezno to work with a member of our Slovakian project team Lucia, on the finalisation of the project at the end of March. She and her husband Peter are also planting a church in the same town. They’re working in a very poor part of Brezno and conduct a thriving ministry to young people. With unemployment at 25% and rising they are committed to bring a message of hope and to have great impact in the teenagers lives, in spite of the economic crisis the young people now face.

You have to see some of these towns in Europe to really understand the desperate need they are in.

I fly to Slovakia today for a week. The first few days will consist of our DNA development team meeting together to continue creating the new curriculum for an NLI leadership course, that will be the basis for all other training and development courses we use. I then travel east to Brezno to begin the process of winding down the church planting project which officially ends in April this year. The project has been hugely successful and the national Slovak church movement would like to partner with us to begin another project very soon.