It is hard to believe that I am already well into my second month here in Switzerland. Things have been moving incredibly fast and it has been amazing to see God move. I have fully integrated with the media team and we are in the middle of starting a brand new project I am very excited about. Our new project is called “Living with the Lord.” In our world today less than 3% of Christians have read through the whole Bible in their lifetime. That is less than one book per year. Among young people, the problem is even more severe. Our goal with this new project is to provide quality, biblically backed devotionals, testimonies, and teaching videos to help people discover God and grow in their faith. I have been doing a large portion of all of the setup for this in the last couple of weeks. We hope to be up and running fully in the next month or two. I am so excited for what God will be able to do through this and the people we will be able to help reach. Many exciting things to come in this area, I will keep you posted!
Every Wednesday the base does local outreach in one of the large squares in the heart of Lausanne. During the outreach we sing worship, hand out hot cocoa during the colder months, and start conversations with people on the street. I love this time, but I really struggle with walking up to people on the street and starting conversations. This last week we got in pairs and were tasked with talking to people and hading out paper invitations to them that talked about how much God loves them. My partner and I handed out 2 fairly quickly to people who were very receptive. This left us with one more invitation to hand out. I saw a woman sitting on a bench and I felt like she might be receptive. Turns out she wasn’t and rejected us straight away. This slashed my confidence just a bit. I began to pray as we walked, “Ok God, I want to give this invitation to someone who needs it, just show me who.” We walked down towards the city hall. We walked past a cafe and a slightly rougher look gentleman was standing outside smoking and drinking a beer. He caught my eye but after the last time, I was a bit sheepish about walking up to him. Then my partner turns to me and says “I think we should go talk to that guy.” So we walked over and it turns out he spoke English. His name was Micheal and he wasn’t affiliated with any religious group but had a real hunger for talking about spiritual things and had a lot of Buddhist or eastern ideas. We stood there and got to talk about God with him for a solid 20-25min. His friends eventually came and he had to go, but as he was going he said he hoped to see us again and continue our conversation. In hindsight, this encounter has been a great reminder to me personally to not let external things impact my sensitivity towards God’s leading. I am continuing to pray for Micheal, specifically that he would come to know God and have a true personal relationship with him and that he would find peace. I hope to see him again in the city and continue to talk with him.
One of our staff talking with a person in the square at local outreach.
My Ministry Leadership Development school has been going very well. I have really taken a liking to all the reading and lectures, my inner student is coming out a bit. A lot of the teachings are very practical and I have really enjoyed learning about different leadership styles and strengths. We did a lengthy assessment with an expert in strength finder. It was really neat to understand better how I and my classmates function especially in team settings. During the assessment, I scored unusually high in futuristic thinking and input (a fancy term for the desire to learn). The futuristic thinking was a bit of a surprise for me and I hadn’t considered it before. After the assessment, the expert sat down with each of us individually to talk more in-depth about how and where we can find places to thrive in. He pointed me in the direction of some really great books that I have really been enjoying reading. I have been pleasantly surprised by the high level of individual personal development and have been enjoying the process of growing so much.
As far as prayer requests go I have 2 major ones currently. The first is for Micheal, the guy I talked with in the city. I really feel the need to pray for him and that God would continue to place people in his life that would point him to the Lord. He is really open and hungry for spiritual things and I am hoping and praying that he finds the one place there is true spiritual fulfillment by finding a personal relationship with Jesus. The second area is for “Living with the Lord.” We really have a strong sense that God is leading us into this. It has been laid on several of our hearts quite heavily and there is a lot of excitement about what it could become. However, in this awesome and exciting process, I really don’t want to lose sight of the Lord’s leading. I would like to invite you to join me in prayer over this project, specifically that God would have His hand over it, and that we would have an extra level of sensitivity to His leading as we are making decisions about how to move it forward.
I would also like to thank all of you who have partnered with me in this work over here both financially and in prayer. You guys are really helping to make all of this possible and I am so grateful. If you have any questions about how things over here or if you have any prayer requests I can be praying for, feel free to send me an email, benj@rockcache.com.
Thank you for coming along on this journey in faith,
Ben