This month, Team Nuria had the incredible blessing of being assigned to Unsung Heroes for ministry… in Macedonia. Our first route change!! God has taught us all so much through this task. He has shown up for us in incredible ways. (a blog soon to follow will dive deeper in to all those lessons). But one of the greatest gifts of UH is being able to meet people. Meeting in church. Meeting over coffee. Meeting over a feast of Macedonian grilled meats. Meeting in a square full of statues and water fountains. Meeting in cities all over the country. Meeting next to rivers, lakes, and mountains. We have been able to sit down with believers all over this country and hear their hearts. We have been able to hear how God is moving in their lives. How God is using them. How they persevere and endure, even though the body of believers here is so small. 0.01%. We have been able to get to know some incredible people. We have gotten to see what God is doing in the church here in Macedonia.
And we have seen a full range of things. Quickly we learned that part of why God brought us here, was to encourage our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. A lot of the work being done here is pioneering work. The beginning stages of ministry. I read an article about a Christian cofee-shop in Ohrid that summed it up well. It said something along the lines of “We are still picking the stones out of the soil so that we can plant the seed.” God brought us here to see that the need is great in Macedonia. He brought us here to raise awareness and to interede for our brothers and sisters. They are fighting to establish truth and freedom in a society stuck in law and ritual.
And the truth is that some of them are discouraged. Some are downtrodden. They need our prayers. They need a reminder of who our God is….but in the meantime, they need our intercession. We as the body of Christ, the church, need to gather around them and pray. We need to pray for the Lord to raise up workers with a heart for this country. Pray for those stuck in the tradition of Orthodoxy to be radically transformed by the love of a Savior that died to set them free. Pray they know that Jesus paid the price for them and now they can enter the presence of their Father freely and openly, without shame or guilt or punishment. Pray for the believers here. Pray that even if there are only 9 of them in a city of 50,000 (as is the case in Ohrid) they will continue to seek the heart of the Father. Pray they will not lose heart, but will instead experience an increase of faith.
Pray for the Albanian Muslims living here who form 33% of the countries population. At the moment there is not a single church plant among them. While we were here a large group of Christians met to pray and cast vision for a way to enter this community with the light of Jesus.
I would like to introduce you to a man that is sharing the great news of Jesus boldly, fearlessly and lovingly to this group. To protect his ministry here, his identity shall remain anonymous.
Let’s call him Fred. Shall we?
Okay so the first day we met Fred, he took us for a quick walk across Skopje’s Old Stone Bridge in to the heart of Old Town. He stopped to explain the differences in culture, religion, and tradition, that result from being on a different side of the river. Then Fred took us to his coffee center. In this coffee center, Fred and his partners, share the gospel with local Albanian students at the university. This center is a place where students can hang out, seek counsel, be prayed for, and hear about Jesus. Outside the door of the center, free bibles and Christian literature are available to anyone passing by. Not a sight often seen in Macedonia.
Fred also makes regular trips to surrounding villages. In those villages he takes food to those that are hungry. Because you see, Fred knows that the gospel isn’t just something we say. The gospel is not just a series of eloquent words. It is something we act on.
Love isn’t a word we use. Love is a way we live.
And Fred gets it. Fred gets it, because He has experienced the greatest love of all. Fred has experienced first hand the love of Jesus. When he was just a baby in his mother’s stomach the Lord spared his life. His parents got in a horrible motorbike accident with a big truck. His mother was thrown from the bike which, slid under the truck. Fred survived because he literally moved to the other side of her stomach. Fred grew up in Albania. When Fred was a child, his parents who were a “perfect” couple-madly in love, started to have problems. His dad became involved in a gang. And becasue of that his family had to flee the country. But to flee the country they had to travel in a small boat across the sea, to Italy. He was only six years old at the time but he remembers that night clearly. “Everytime a wave would come crashing over the boat or the boat would toss from side to side I thought ‘Okay this is when we die.'”
They made it to Italy but before long his dad was found and the family was sent back to Albania where his dad was thrown in prison. A few years later, he started his own gang. He and his friends would get in to trouble. All the while, he acknowledged a deep emptiness and knew that all of his gang activity was a means to numb that void. He reached the end of himself and prayed. “God if you are real, I need you to show me that you are there.” One day, while walking down the street, he heard the sound of music. The music he heard was worship flowing out of a church. That was his first sign that God was real. His second sign came when he was fifteen. Seated in church, but still unsure, the pastor before starting his sermon, apologized to the congragation and then proceeded to say “someone sitting in here needs to know that God is real and that He loves them. When you were a baby you were protected when your mother got in an accident. When you were six years old, you almost died in a boat but God protected you then too….” And well you know the rest. Fred surrendered his life to the Lord and hasn’t looked back since. His mother and siblings are now living their life for Jesus as well.
So now, Fred is leading a ministry in Macedonia. He is passionate about sharing that love with others from his community. His heart is on fire for seeing this country changed. He knows the importance of using wisdom when sharing his faith but he also trusts God and doesn’t tiptoe around the powerful message of a Savior that loved us enough to enter hell to save us from it.
We only spent a few hours with Fred, but his story and his heart for reaching the lost left a huge impact on us.
Oh did I mention he is just 22?
