Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thanksgiving Day in Sweden 2009




Time has flown by so fast as we approach the Christmas holidays to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus.  Well I'm sure all of you just recently celebrated Thanksgiving with your family and friends, and I'm sure some of you got out really early for Black Friday in the mad rush of people looking for discounts on Christmas presents (I wish they had some sells like that here in Sweden, the taxes are too high here for that though!).  Well as you know Thanksgiving is an American holiday (it's Canadian as well but they celebrate theirs in October), so here in Sweden there are very few cooking turkey's and having a big celebration on that day, mostly just Americans living here.  Well this year I decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner in my apartment so that the international students we are connected with could experience this American holiday.  I was expecting maybe 10-15 students to show up, but they kept coming in the door and we had 25 people here!  I didn't even have enough seats for everybody, but it was a great night overall and I'm sure almost half the people were new.  Normally Thursday nights we have our home group Bible study at my place, so this was a good chance to connect with some new exchange students and invite them to our worship services as well and just befriend them.  

This was the first time I tried cooking a turkey by myself and surprisingly it turned out great!  I also made some homemade macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and banana pudding.  One American girl also made some green bean casserole and fudge.  A few international students brought food as well so we had just enough.  It was a great time overall, but man was I tired, I cooked for about 6 hrs that day and it's harder work that it looks like!  Up at the top you can see  2 pictures.  One is turkey right as it came out of the oven, and the next is the after picture.  People tore it up!  All in all it was an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner, about as good as it can get when you're away from home.  You can view the rest of my pictures and videos from my Thanksgiving dinner here in Sweden by clicking here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/  Hope you all had a great one!  I will be coming home in some weeks for Christmas break so hopefully I will see a lot of you then.  

God bless,


Adam Moody



Friday, October 9, 2009

August-October 2009 Update

Well i've been back in Sweden about 7 weeks now and things are going great! As most of you know I also went back to the US a few weeks ago for a 10 days trip. A friend of mine was getting married and had asked me to be the best man in the wedding, a friend i've known for 13 years now. I also got to spend a little time with my girlfriend and her family when I was home so overall it was a really nice trip :).


As far as what's been going on here with me in Sweden so far, God has really been working and moving! We made the decision last spring that in the fall school semester we were going to move our international worship services from the church that I partner with here in Växjö to a church that was much closer to the university and the students. The church I partner with here in Sweden, called Ulriksbergskyrkan is about 4 miles away from the university. Now that may not sound like very far, but when the majority of students don't have cars here and mostly get around by walking, biking, and riding the bus, 4miles can take a while. The bus normally takes about 30 minutes to get there because of all of the stops it has to make, so moving to a Lutheran church right across the street from the university has been a great move. We are consistenly having 20-30+ students show up every week for our meetings, many of whom have no relationship with God! They are getting to hear for the first time about what it means to have a relationship with God through Jesus! We have students from about 15 countries coming to our meetings and have been able to give out about 10 Bibles so far to some of these students who have never read the Bible for themselves. Every week we are also having a home group that meets in my apartment. We've been averaging 15+ students showing up for this meeting every week and it's so exciting because we've never had this much consistency! Last night on October 8th we had 16 here at my apartment for the Bible study and I barely had room for them all! Most of the students were Christians but 3 girls that came are not and are just curious. We had students last night from the US, Syria, Pakistan, Japan, Hong Kong, Uganda, Cameroon, Congo, Canada, Latvia, and South Korea. Basically the way these meetings work is that we have a meal together (last night we had home made soup from a few different countries), then maybe something to break the ice like playing UNO, and then have a Bible study and prayer time. Last night I spoke about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well and how He crossed boundaries of race and culture to give this woman living water, eternal life that she really needed despite her life of living in shame. I shared that she was looking for something to fill the void in her life only Jesus could fill, by giving herself over to all of these men she had brought into her life. Jesus however crossed all of these boundaries and looked into the deepest need of her heart, a relationship with Him, and gave her living water. What was amazing is that a woman who came to the well to get water in the middle of the day to avoid seeing people, ran to the people of her town to tell them to come see Jesus! She no longer cared about her shame as Jesus had given her living water and wiped away her shameful past. I really pray that those who came to our group who don't know Jesus but are curious see who He is from our study last night. He wants to give the lost of this world living water, eternal life that will make them never thirst again for something to fulfill their lives. I can say that God has brought us into contact with about 10-15 students right now who are coming to these home groups and international worship services who don't know Him. Please pray that God will continue to use us weekly to open their hearts for Him and that Satan will not deceive them into thinking that what we are saying is false. Pray that they will see Jesus for who He really is and let Him change their lives forever! Here is a picture of our home group on October 8th. Click on the picture and it will enlarge.









Also just to share with you the last few weeks I have been taking Swedish language courses that are given out for free by the government here. I am definitely learning more Swedish than I ever understood before, but i'm in class about 5 hours a day 5 days a week so my head hurts from all the swedish once i'm done...lol. Pray for me that i'll be able to learn the language fast and in doing so be able to minister to the swedish people more effectively. Lasty I want to ask you to be praying for my girlfriend stacey and I. Pray that God will continue to grow our relationship though we are 5000 miles apart at the moment. Pray that we will continue to put God first in our relationship and trust Him for our future. Thanks!


I am putting up about 35 new pictures on my pictures website that you can find the link to on the right of this blog screen on can go to by clicking here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/. Look under August-October 2009 pictures. I would like to hear from you all as well how life is going and let me know how I can be praying for you all as well!





God bless,





Adam

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Summer 2009 in the USA

June 1st I left my home in Sweden to come back to the US just for the summer time to spend some time with family and friends, but mostly to do more fundraising building up my financial partnerships. I have been home now for 5 1/2 weeks and have seen God do great things with my financial support levels increasing. I'm about half way to my goal of getting $2000 a month more in support so that I can go back to Sweden and continue the ministry there more long term. I definitely have to say that summer in GA is much different than summer in Sweden, but coming home to GA to 90+ degrees Fahrenheit (they use Celsius in Sweden) temperatures has been nice. It feels good not to have to put a jacket on and long pants every time I walk inside. At the same time the air in Sweden is much more fresh as we have less pollution and more rain there as well, so it's kind of bitter sweet being home as usual. I am so thankful that God has provided above and beyond for me in so many ways more than I could ever think or imagine. Fundraising is definitely not the easiest part of being a missionary, but I've found that it can be something to look forward to as I share with people, churches, and businesses about the work God is doing in Sweden and how they can partner with this storing up for themselves treasures in heaven the will last forever. We all have our part to play in bringing people into a relationship with God through Jesus and encouraging the believers around the world. We are all called to make disciples where we are at and for those of us God calls to go into other nations to do this as well, other's pray for this discipleship, and others fund this discipleship. Thank you all so much for your willingness to be a part of building God's kingdom locally and globally.
One of the opportunities I have had while I've been home was to go to Pascagoula, MS, a place hard hit by hurricane Katrina, and help a youth minister friend of mine do some ministry out there. He brought his youth group along with a few other youth groups to that city to do some backyard Bible clubs to connect children and their parents to a local church there. I had the opportunity in the mornings and evenings of leading worship for these youth and also share with them about what God was doing with this ministry in Sweden. I even taught them part of a worship song in Swedish. I am posting pictures of this time in MS on my pictures website so check out the link on the right side of this page to see those pictures and a video of these youth singing the chorus to "How Great is Our God" in Swedish with me.
I will be leaving to head back to Sweden around August 13th, but I have a lot to do before I leave. I really want to be able to leave this time fully funded and up to budget. In the next few weeks I have left I will be speaking to many individuals, businesses and churches about these partnerships. If any of you know any person, or church, or business that might be interested in contributing to this ministry, please let me know.
Lastly this summer I have the privilege of being ordained at my home church Eagles Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, GA. I'm not sure of the exact date yet, but it will be closer to the time I leave. I'm excited about having the opportunity because this is a big encouragement for me having my home church more "officially" behind the calling God has give me to minister in Sweden. If you would like more information about when this will take place you can e-mail me at WMoody1471@hotmail.com.
Again thank you all for all of your prayers and partnership!

God bless,

Adam Moody

P.S. If you didn't get my last update letter, let me know and I'll send it to you through e-mail. It's an exciting update as 3 guys from Afghanistan received Christ and got baptized right before I left to come home and one of their stories is on this update!

Friday, March 20, 2009

February & March 2009

Recently as I was walking around the University campus here in the town of Växjö where i'm working at as a missionary, I just felt the desire from God to do more on the University campus. I felt the desire that God wants me to reach people where they are at and not just try to find so many innovative ways to get them to our church services that are miles away from the University. I prayed that God would start giving me new ideas then on how to be more proactive about sharing my faith at the university as well as encouraging the other believers to do it. Of course everytime you take a step forward in the direction God wants you to go the devil is going to use someone or something to try and stop it. I recently found out that it is actually against school policy at this university to evangelize on campus for any religious group and somehow they call this freedom of religion?? Seems to me to be the opposite. I would be okay if they let all religious groups evangelize and then call that freedom of religion because that's what it consist of. Obviously they don't have the same idea here in Sweden. However, I found out that we can still do things shrewdly. It is okay if people have questions for us about God and it's even okay to have an educational showing of a movie about Jesus and if people have questions we can answer all we want to. The rule I found out was to prohibit people from outright having like protest type evangelizm where you hold signs up and throw Bible's at people (which personally I don't think that draws people into Christ, but pushes people away).
We have started back up once a week handing out free breakfast sandwiches and coffee in one of the main buildings at the university once a week. This has been a great opportunity for us to be able to just show God's love with students through a free gift and then many have questions about why we do this and then the have follow up questions about God. Pray for us that God will use us weekly to build relationships with students that come by and be able to tell them about God's love for them in Jesus! I have been very busy lately with a lot of opportunities to lead worship at church which has been exciting. I prayed that God will give me more opportunities to use these musical gifts more and actually in the next few weeks also I have a lot of opportunities to lead worship. Also, April 1-3 we will have something at the University called Christ Days. Basically it's 3 days of different events and meetings on campus. Some worship services, Bible studies and prayer times. We are starting out by having a full day of prayer on April 1 as we believe that is the foundation for everything we do here, laying it in the hands of God. An event like this has never been done at this University. Pray that the Christian students at the campus would be bold enough to be a part of these days and that we can also reach out to the non-Christian students and share God's love with them.
We also have a home group again this semester that meets weekly and it's been really exciting lately! I really feel God is using this group to grow us all and encourage us in our faith. Another exciting opportunity came about a week ago as some guys from my parents new church came here to visit with me and see the work going on here. It was really great to have some people come here and pray with me and check out what God is doing in Sweden. I'm very thankful for their encouragement. Lastly, in about 11 weeks I will be going home again to do another summer fundraising campaign. To be able to continue here in Sweden and have a future here I really need to be at a much better place financially. I know God is faithful and has always provided for my needs. I would just ask all of you to pray for me that God will provide that I can have a future ministry here in Sweden. It feels as if things are just getting started and that there is a lot more work to be done here. This summer I will be trying to find 50 people to commit $25 a month in partnership to this ministry. I would also ask maybe some of you to pray to see if God leads you to become one of these partners. Thank you all so much for your continued prayers. Let me know how all of you are doing as well. I also put up a few new pictures on my pictures website. You can find the link to that website on the right side of this page. Let me know how I can be praying for all of you as well!

God bless,

Adam Moody
Project Sweden

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Holiday cheer

Well it's been almost two months since my last blog update so there's a lot to mention. First off I just want to say that God has been doing some good things in Sweden in the past months. In early December I got the opportunity to lead worship one Sunday morning at a church called New Life Gothenburg. This is a new international church in Gothenburg, second largest city in Sweden. It was really cool to get this opportunity to meet up with other american missionaries who are doing some of the same type of international ministries as we are doing in our town. Pray for their church as God continues to use them in Gothenburg. I also recently have taken in a roommate. He's a great brother in Christ from the African country of Cameroon coming to Sweden to get his masters degree. Pray for him as he is searching for a part time job to have money to live on while in Sweden, and his name is Paschal. I'm thankful to God for being able to have the extra space and resources to be able to help him. He's been an encouragement to me as every morning and all throughout the day he is singing hymns to God joyfully.
We just started up a home group meeting at my place on Tuesday nights. One night we had 10 people show up and it was such a cool international setting. We had 5 Latvians, 1 American, 1 from Cameroon, 1 from Armenia, 1 from France, and 1 from Brazil. What was really amazing is that we had a time of prayer, and we each prayed in our own native languages. We also had tacos that night and suprisingly to me the guy from France was the only other person who had actually had tacos before, but everyone seemed to enjoy them. Pray for us this next semester as we will continue to meet and grow in Christ together. Some members of our home group have had the awesome opportunity to share some with their friends about Christ and even give them a Bible for the first time in their lives. So far a muslim guy and a japanese girl, and an armenian girl are reading the Bible for the first time in their lives!
As far as the holidays go on Thanksgiving day an american girl who is an international student at the university cooked a nice thanksgiving meal so I was able to have turkey and dressing that day (remember thanksgiving is an american holiday, not celebrated in Sweden so this was a nice treat for me). I have actually had the opportunity to come home for the holidays back to Georgia. I have been home since December 16th and am heading back January 16th to prepare for all the new students coming in. This has really been a nice time to be home and relax with my family and friends and eat a few restraunts i've been missing (like Chick-fil-a and Longhorns!). Of course being in Georgia I haven't seen any snow for the holidays, but before I left Sweden we got about 6 inches over the course of a few days and i'm sure i'll see some more snow when I get back. The warmer weather here in Georgia has actually been quite nice since everytime I go outside in Sweden during this time of year I have to dress in layers. I also got the opportunity to speak at my relatives church down in south Georgia about what God is doing in Sweden. Pray that God will continue to provide the opportunities for me to share with His people about His vision for Sweden and develop more partnerships. I also just updated my pictures website, so check those out on the link to the right side of my page here!!! (I also had a really cool opportunity to attend the Japanese dinner party at the University campus. Check out my pictures of that.) I hope you all had a great holiday season and were able to remember that Jesus is the reason to celebrate not only at Christmas, but all year round. Let me here from y'all!

God blessings on your life,

Adam Moody

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Much going on these months

Since my last update many things have been going on here. In mid-October I was able to attend a conference with the leaders of the Evangelical Free denomination here in Sweden, which is the denomination of the church I work with here. It was a 3 day consultation in Stockholm (my first time in Stockholm!!) about how we can get more missionaries to come to Sweden and about the future of church planting within their denomination. They gave us the bad news first. More churches in Sweden are closing than new ones being planted. If the trend continues, all free churches will cease to exist within the next 30 years. In the last 20 years 58 new churches have been planted within this denomination, but 112 have closed within that time. That was the bad news. The good news is that God is still saving souls here and there are opportunities for the Church to grow in Sweden, we just need more help! That's a big prayer request right now is for more workers in Sweden, especially at the universities. Overall that was a great trip and very encouraging. I got to meet with people who are doing a lot of the same work i'm doing in Sweden and build some great friendships. I visited an international church in Stockholm called New Life. They have about 350 people from 40 nations around the world. It was an amazing place. There were two baptisms that morning. One lady was from Egypt who was a muslim but unable to defend her faith. She then had a dream about Jesus saying who he was and she believed. She fled Egypt and her family to come to Sweden to become a Christian. She was speaking Arabic, then it was translated into Swedish, then English, a very international place. Then another lady who had been an exotic dancer heard God say to her that she needed to go to church, she ended up leaving her old life and becoming a follower of Jesus. God is doing great stuff here!

New Life Church has also planted another church in Gothenburg (Göteborg in Swedish), which is the second largest city in Sweden. It's a new church plant and there are some american missionaries working in there. The first weekend in December I will actually be going out there to lead worship that Sunday morning for them. I'm really excited about that opportunity. Also this past Sunday morning November 9th, I got the opportunity for the first time to lead worship for the Sunday morning Swedish service at my partner church here. We did a mixture of Swedish and English songs and the Sunday morning went well. The service was about God's jealous love and us not prostituting our lives before anything other than God. There were a lot of broken people in the service worshipping and pouring their hearts out to God.

The weather is kind of depressing here right now. It is completely dark by 4pm and this is just the beginning of the dark period here. Besides being dark so early, every day here lately has been really cloudy and rainy. About a week ago we had a snowy day, kind of early though. It hasn't snowed since but in the upcoming weeks it could again. I'm so ready to the see the sunshine again. Thankfully I will getthe opportunity to come home for Christmas in sunny Georgia!

As far as our international services have been going we've had some worship services and Bible studies and also some activities nights such as bowling and movie night. The most we have had so far come is about 40 and people form 15+ countries around the world. Most are Christians but some are not believers who are really interested. We've been able to give 2 girls Bible's who have never read it before; one girl is from Japan and the other from Armenia. Pray for these girls that God will use us to minister to their hearts. I have also started a home group for these students as well and we will have our second meeting tonight. Also pray for 2 mormon missionaries we've come into contact with. Pray that they see God's truth about who Jesus really is and that they see Joseph Smith as the false prophet that he was.
We have also had a new opportunity every Thursday morning at the university to hand out free breakfast to students going to their classes. This is a mixed group of all the churches in Växjö coming together to share God's love with students and to be a more visible presence at the university campus. Pray that these students will become curious as we are there every week doing this. I have updated pictures of everything I just shared with you here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05 . Click on September-November 2008; there are a few short videos there as well. Check them out!! Let me know how all of you are as well! God's blessings on all your lives!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

New semester

Well i've been back in Sweden almost 3 weeks and it has been an interesting and exciting time back. My first week and a half back was really rough. I had really bad jet lag, worse than i've ever experienced before. I felt disoriented, confused, a little bit homesick, and sick on my stomach every day. Thankfully I started feeling a lot better once I got over all that and got adjusted to the time change again. I spent one weekend overnight with the staff at our church. It was a nice relaxing weekend out in a house in the woods somewhere in a house that was built in 1858. It had a lot of nice apple trees around as this time of the year in Sweden the apples are ripe and ready to pick. We had a nice time of prayer and planning and it was a nice time to get to know the staff better. I also went this past weekend on a retreat with the whole church about 60miles from here. We had some nice times of worship and grilling out and another good time to connect with the Swedes at my home church here.
Last Thursday we had an evening at a Cafe at the University where we invited people to come who wanted to hear more about what the local churches here are doing and hopefully get involved with them. One group sang some cafe style songs and then I got up and sang some worship songs and informed the students about our international service. It was a nice night and about 100 students showed up.
This past Monday night we had our first international worship gathering of the fall and about 20 students showed up. We had students from about 6-7 countries show up. It was a really great time of worship. I was in charge of the music and the preaching so it was quite a lot to do, but I really enjoyed it. It's my first time preaching here in Sweden and only like my 2nd time really preaching in front of a church. The new students really seemed to be excited about having a place to connect with other Christians since most students on campus are not and just like to party a lot. This is a nice alternative for them and also a nice place to get away from the partying for a little bit and come worship together. Pray for us as we seek to connect with more new students international and Swedes. Pray for me as I will be teaching some more for our services this fall and leading our home group. Pray that more Swedes would be encouraged to be a bigger part of this international service and really connect with these international students. I really believe God has brought some of the students here from countries we cannot go as missionaries so that we can connect with them and share the gospel while they are here. Pray that the Swedish Christians here who are students will see what God is doing and join in that. I look forward to hearing from all of you as well! Also check out my newly updated pics from our first service and a few other events at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/ . Look under the title August-September 2008 pics. Thanks!

God bless,

Adam

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Summertime fundraising

Well i've been back in the U.S. now for about 3 weeks with about 6 more weeks to go before I head back to my new home of Sweden. These past few weeks have been extremely busy with meetings with friends, pastors, and new acquaintances asking them to join me in being partners financially in what God is doing in Växjö, Sweden with university students. This summer i'm trying to raise (with God's help and guidance) $2500 in monthly commitments in addition to those who have already been giving financially so that I can get up to budget to be there for the next 3-5 years at least. God has already been working in the hearts of the individuals i've met with and i'm up to about 40 % of my total budget. Pray for me as this is a large task, but also a great opportunity for God's people to join up financially in what He's doing in Sweden. I have an update video I just recently posted on youtube. Check it out if you get a chance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHNoEHoLE48 . I hope this gives a better picture of all going is doing with Project Sweden! Pray for the new university students that will be coming in the fall that we will have the opportunity to meet with for the first time and bring encouragement and healing in their lives through the message of our Savior Jesus!!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Back in the US for 8 weeks

This past Tuesday June 17th I arrived back home to the U.S. to Atlanta. I came home this summer for 8 weeks to do long-term fundraising so that I can go back to Sweden to continue to minister and be fully funded doing so. Thank you all who have given your time being a financial partner and prayer partner in what God is in Sweden. Before I came home a prayer was answered in a huge way. I wrote in April that I thought I was going to lose my apartment and then everything worked out. Well, it happened again that for sure I was going to lose my apartment again because of technical issues with how the apartment company gives out contracts. Basically there about a 1 in 10,000 chance for me to get my own contract on my apartment, so God had to really do a miracle for this to work out. Well, 2 days after e-mailing the apartment company explaining the situation God acted and now I have the first hand contract on the same apartment i've been renting second hand in. Not only that, but I do not have to pay any rent in July when i'm here in the U.S. and the wall papers that were messed up before I got there will be fixed free of charge! I really believed God confirmed that He wants me to continue in Sweden with this act of faithfullness. God is always faithful, we can count on that!!
This summer I have a big task ahead of me. I need to raise $2500 in regular monthly support for long-term work in Sweden. I am certain this is what God wants me to do and have such a joy and peace about going back to continue to minister in Sweden. Pray for me as I look for financial and prayer partners to join up with what God is doing in Sweden. Not only does this ministry touch Sweden, but it touches the world as we work with international students who come as exchange students to the university. They come from every continent in the world, well except for Antartica of course..lol. I've been able to meet and minister to students from Asia, the Middle-East, Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Australia. If you want to support project Sweden send me an e-mail at wmoody1471@hotmail.com and I can give you more info on what we're doing there. Thanks and God bless!!

Saturday, May 3, 2008

April 2008 update

These past few weeks have been stressful yet exciting. I wanted to share something really cool that has been happening. Back in January I wrote about a friend of ours here a Chinese girl who is an exchange student. We gave her a Bible in her language as a Christmas present which she received with gratitude. However, I have never taken the opportunity to just sit down and talk with her about the Bible we gave her. She has been coming on and off to our services and Bible studies when she can. Well about two weeks ago I decided that me and my friend Ben should ask her if she'd like to just sit down and talk about the Bible we gave her. We had dinner here with her and what I thought would be a simple 15 minute discussion about where to start reading the Bible turned into a 4 hour talk about God and why He wants a relationship with her, why He sent Christ, and how our deepest need in this life is to fulfill our hunger and thirst for God. She ended up also sharing with us some personal thing and pouring out her heart. We were able to share with her that only God can heal her broken heart. She left that night probably for the first time in her life really understanding at least what Jesus is all about. She has not yet come to faith but is still asking a lot of questions and really curious. All of this is new to her so pray for her life and that God will bring her to Himself. She comes from a country where we can't get into as missionaries so I believe God sent her here along with many other Asian students we've been able to meet and encourage. Pray for all of them! Some are believers, some are not but are very curious! God is working in their lives!
I also got the opportunity to spend a few days in Berlin, Germany with a short-term missions team from my organization Powersurge Worship Ministries. It was a great chance to meet up with them and help out for a few days. The whole music team was very genuine with their worship and that genuineness to serve and worship God helped to impact a lot of lives. I have some pictures of my 3 day trip to Berlin updated on my pictures website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/
At the moment I am preparing to renew my permit to live in Sweden another year as God is laying a foundation for the future ministry here. Pray that this process will go smoothly. I also am preparing to come home for about 6-8 weeks during the summer to update my ministry partners and raise more long-term funding to achieve a stable budget. Pray for me as God continues to direct and guide my path here in Sweden. Let me know how you all are doing and if there is anything I can pray for any of you about as well!

God bless,

Adam Moody

Monday, April 14, 2008

Prayers answered

In my last blog one of the issues I was dealing with and needed prayer for was the fact that I thought I was going to lose my apartment. God answered a big prayer however, and the guy that I rent from is now allowing me to stay here as long as I want to which means there is one hurdle down in my pursuit of staying in Sweden for another year. The next hurdle is my finances. I will be need more monthly financial commitments from people to be able to continue to stay here and move into the next phase of ministry here. Pray for these needs as well.
Today I will be leaving for Germany for a few days to meet up with some people from my missions organization who are on a 10 day missions trip there in Berlin working with a few of the international churches there. Pray for the team as they will be leading worship and encouraging the believers in these churches. I have really been looking forward to this time since I have not been able to get out of the city of Växjö here that I live in since 3 months ago so i'm going a little bit stir crazy. Thanks to the support of some friends that stayed here about a month ago I was able to have enough money to join them on this trip, God provides.
This past weekend we had an international conference at church that went really great. A man from the EFS church denomination here in Sweden came and spoke most of the day Saturday and Sunday morning. Most of the conference was in Swedish and we had headset translations in English, Frech, Romanian, and Spanish, so it was quite a mixed international group there. The speaker challenged us that since the creation of the world God has had a mission to redeem mankind back to Himself and that God wants us to cross physical, spiritual, emotional, and cultural boundaries to be a part of His mission in the world. It was very challenging and God worked in a lot of people's life at the conference. At the evening worship service time of the conference our worship band got the opportunity to do the music for that time. All the songs were in English and suprisingly people seemed to know a lot of them. It was great to see people pouring their hearts out before God in song and worship and to see people broken before God and having their hearts healed through His love.
We have also had another asian girl start coming to our international service who is from Taiwan. Pray for her as she says she is about 70% there to becoming a Christian. I am not sure what that means for her exactly but I am going to see if she would like to have coffee someday and talk about it and ask her what's holding her back. Pray for my friend Ben also. He is a Canadian exchange student who was here in Sweden with his wife. She had to go back home early so he moved in with me for a month until his classes are over and he goes back home. Pray for them as they experience this time apart.
Also some great news, Passion Conference is coming to Stockholm on May 18th. Right now we are in the process of getting some vans and trying to get about 15 people to go. With travel and all it's going to cost about $100 a piece for each of us so pray that the students will have the finances to be able to make it for this trip. Hope you all enjoy reading these blogs! Leave me some feedback!

God bless,

Adam

Monday, March 31, 2008

Decisions for the future

This past month has brought a lot of exciting times, but also a lot questions. As I think about what God has been teaching me and using me to teach others I find myself amazed to see how much He can do even through something so simple as a flyer. This past month I have been able to meet more new international and swedish students at the university and begin to build friendships with. One new girl from China began coming to our international service who is interested in learning about faith in English. She saw our flyer up in one of the laundry room at the University and e-mailed me about it. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to share with her the basics of who we believe God is and what Jesus has done for us. Pray for her as God continues to open her heart towards Him. Our international service see's new faces almost every Sunday night. A few guy who are international students from Africa joined us this past week and it was great to have them there! It really feels like a foundation is beginning to be laid for the future university ministry here. I can really see God working through our dilligence. A lot of stuff we have been doing has been trial and error so there's still much to learn. One of things i've learned since i've been here is to find out where God is already at work and join up with that, and if something new needs to be started then God will give us the direction in that as well.

Now comes the questions that I need much prayer for. I know there is much more work to be done here in Växjö and the question is am I the one who is supposed to do it. At the moment I don't feel like I have an answer for God one way or another. Today I talked to God and said to Him, "God i'm going to pursue staying here for a longer period of time, and if you don't want me to then stop it from happening." At them moment I feel good about staying. However one of the tough things is that every semester a new group of international students come and the ones I have become close to leave. It will be difficult and exciting at the same time with so many people coming in and out of my life. Pray for me in all of this. Pray that God will also raise up others who will eventually come here to Växjö and join me in this cause so that there will be a team of people here working together and mutually encouraging each other. I will be going home for a little while during the summer for a short break and to also do a fund raising campaign to raise more long-term finances. My Swedish and international friends here have been encouraging me to stay and have been encouraged by the ministries God has called me to here which makes me think God wants me here longer. Pray for me as I face all these decisions. Pray that my permit renewal will go smoothly, pray that I will be able to keep my apartment, and pray for more financial ministry partners to help fund the cause of Christ here in Sweden! Thanks and God bless!
I also just updated my pics recently last week, check them out here http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/. There are new pictures from our international service and Tuesday night small group, so check them out!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Look what God is doing!!!

Hello all! It has been a month since my last blog update and so much stuff has happened. This past week my parents visited and really enjoyed their stay. The weather was kind of rough though, pretty much rainy, cold, and windy every day, only one day of snow when they were here. It was really good to have them here, their first time in another country! Our international service has grown quickly in just one week. Two weeks ago we only had about 8 people at the service. This past week we had 30 show up, mostly all university students. They were from America, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Korea, and China. Next Sunday we will begin having our service with a worship band i've put together here to create a service with some more energy to it. Pray for us as we try to become more organized to lead people in worship, challenge believers, and open up the hearts of the non-believers. I also started one of my University classes here this week. It's a history class about the contemporary middle east and there is a big diversity of students in the class. There are people from Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria, Austria, Sweden, and me the only America. About half the class is muslims so pray that God will use me to shine the light of Christ in their lives as well. There are three people in particular God has put me in contact with who have no relationship with Him that I want to ask all of you to be praying for. A chinese girl who i've mentioned many times before. She doesn't have any type of faith at the moment, but is very interested in Christianity. We gave her a Chinese Bible for Christmas and soon I will start meeting with her to see where she is in this whole process and spend some time looking at what God's Word says about a relationship with Him. Pray for her as she is very curious! Last week I also met two guys in different places. One guy named Daniel I met on the train and me and my parents shared with him about Christ. We could see that he is really seeking truth, but he has a lot of philosophical objections to the truth's of Christianity because of some bad teachings from churches in his past. Pray for him as I continue to share with Him. Pray that God gives me wisdom so that I can exactly what to speak into Daniel's life. Also I met a guy named Anil from Nepal which is near India. He said that his parents are Buddhist, but he himself has no religion. I met him at a music cafe we had at the University where people could find out about the local churches and the ministries there, so I believe he is seeking. He seems like a nice guy, always happy and want to come to our international service so pray for him as well! Another exciting thing has been our street church ministry on Friday nights. We go out late at night on the streets of Växjö and hand out free coffee, tea, and cookies at a table we have set up just to show God's kindness and love to people. If they want to talk about God, we let them initiate the conversation and suprisingly so many people want to talk about God. Some of them are drunk and some sober, but we are still planting seeds of faith and have even had the opportunity to pray for some people right there on the streets. Keep praying that God will use this ministry and that the believing Swedes that join us will have boldness and not be shy about sharing their faith. Pray for all of us to have boldness and courage as we fight the attacks of the enemy and fight to share the love of Christ with those who have no hope!
I would also like to ask all of you to pray for my financial needs. Everything is moving forward here which encourages me that God wants me to be here at least until my permit ends in the last part of July. To be able to do that however, I need to my financial support to increase. If you have the ability to support this ministry in Sweden, it would be much appreciated. For all of you that pray, read my blogs, and support me financially thank you for partnering with me in this ministry. Your part is just as essential as what God is having me do. Thank you all very much and God bless! Let me know how you all are doing as well. Send me an e-mail to WMoody1471@musician.org. Also check out all of my recently updated pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/.

God bless,

Adam

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Beginning of the year update January 2008!

Hello all, Adam here. Sorry it has been such a long time since my last update, but I have been busy with the holidays and such here in Sweden. For Christmas I spent 4 days with my friend Johannes and his family in a town about 1 hour from mine called Hässleholm. It is a much smaller town than where I live, but it was nice to spend time with my friend and his family. They were very welcoming and even gave me some Christmas presents (Julklapp in Swedish). The Chinese girl I spoke about in my last blog, we were able to give her a Chinese Bible for a Christmas present from our international group. She was suprised that it was in her own language and was very thankful. There is nothing like being able to read the Bible in your native language, and hopefully this will help her to understand God's Word even better now. Pray for her that she will be able to have opportunities to spend time in God's Word when she's by herself and maybe even encourage other Chinese friends that she knows here at the university. For New Years I had some friends over from the international group about 7 of us total. We had a fun time cooking some foods from our home countries. I cooked some BBQ Chicken in the oven with good BBQ sauce my parents sent me for Christmas in a Christmas box. Then we watched some fireworks around one of the lakes here in Växjö which were very nice. They lasted about 30 minutes. Then we came back and watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3, well most of it. We were all starting to fall asleep about 3am and couldn't finish the movie. This Wednesday I will be having a meeting with some others here who an interested in having a more focused University aged ministry at our church. We are looking to have a monthly service for people our age with some more rockin worship music and help plug students into weekly small groups that way. Pray for me as I will be talking to the ministry leaders at my church about me starting and leading an english small group here at my apartment for university students. We will also start back up the english language service and weekly prayer walks in the coming weeks. Pray for us as we seek to have a more focused ministry within these areas and do it more with excellence following God's direction and vision for His ministry here. A few other prayer requests, at the moment I have a few specific financial needs I would like to share. One need is for the books I will be having to buy for a class at the University I will be taking. The books will costs close to $100-150 total. I am also going to study Swedish at a place called Folkuniversitet here in town. It is a 10 week Swedish language course for beginners and it costs around $135. In March there in a conference in Stockholm in which missionaries will be gathering to talk about a more focused ministry plan for Sweden and how it is has changed into a country with a large international profile and how we can meet these needs. It will be 3 day conference all in english and the costs for the conference, food, and travel there and back will be about $350. If any of you have the ability to fill these one time financial needs, I would very much appreciate it. If you do not have the ability to give, then pray for my needs and for the people of Sweden. Please continue to pray that peoples hearts will be opened to the gospel and that believers will be encouraged to live out their faith in a visible and encouraging way. Thank you all for all the prayers and support! Also, it really encourages me a lot just to hear from all of you, so you are welcome to leave me a comment on here or send me an e-mail at WMoody1471@hotmail.com. Also check out some of my updated pics I've taken the last few weeks at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/
God bless,

Adam

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Sweden bi-monthly update early December 07

Hello All Adam Moody here again. Things have been going really good here in Sweden lately. It's been two weeks since my last blog update so I have a pretty good bit to tell. Today we did our third prayer walk at the University campus as we have planned to do it every week. It went well today and God is really using the time to open our hearts up more to what He wants to do on this campus. There is not really a spiritual life on campus. Christians are looked at as intolerant and and belief in God is looked at as being simple minded and not up with the times. The truth however is that there is a lot of hopelessness on campus. Basically 5 nights out of the week students are partying and getting drunk because they do not have hope in anything more. Pray that we will be able to bring hope to the again through Jesus Christ. Pray that God will show us the best way to build relationships with people on campus. This Thursday I will also be talking with one of the ministers at my church here about us starting a more focused college age ministry at the church which will encourage the believers and draw in non-believers with a worship service that has modern style worship music and challenging yet encouraging messages. I'm really excited about the potential for this. A few weeks ago I spoke with a girl who was a non-believer and she said she would like to come if we had something with some more energy to it like this service with a music style that relates. This ministry will give believers the chance to connect and non-believers the chance to connect to us as well. We will be bringing together the international service with the college age ministry to do this. Pray that we will be able to relate to the college students through this ministry and that we will do it all with excellence. This pas Sunday I was formally introduced to the church I am working with Ulriksbergskyrkan and they prayed for me and really made me feel welcome and encouraged me. I shared a few minutes about my hopes for the campus ministry and it went well. Another cool opportunity has come up. The ministry Passion Conferences will be coming here to Sweden in mid-May. I've gotten in touch with Passion and they are going to see how I can help out and be a part of Passion in Sweden, so pray for that as well. The is a Chinese girl here who is very interested in Christianity and I can see that God is drawing her closer to Himself every week as she comes to the services and hangs out with us. Pray for her salvation to come in God's timing as He continues to use us to speak to her. Those are all the exciting things that are happening at the moment. I thank all of you for the constant encouragement and prayer support. You are vital part of this ministry of growing God's kingdom in Sweden! Also check out my updated pics from these past few weeks at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05/

God bless,

Adam

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

First week in Sweden

Hello all, this is my first post since i've been here in Sweden. I have been here 1 week and 1 day now and it is going great! The first few days were rough as I did not have a phone or internet, so I did not have any way of communicating with people here about meetings and stuff like that, but it has gotten better. God has really answered prayers as almost all of the furniture and kitchen furnishings I have needed have been given to me for free. Thankfully I have had to only buy a few of those things. I am still in the process of getting my apartment completely set up and settled in because I am still cleaning furniture and arranging stuff. Spiritually this first week has been really good.
On Thursday I went to the church across the street here called Teleborgkyrkan (Teleborg is the area of the town of Växjö that I live in and kyrkan means church), and went to a short service and a meeting afterwards of an organization called Credo that is a student Christian group. They wanted to hear what my heart was for the University and I shared that we should start once a week prayer walking at the University, praying that God will bless the campus and start opening up the hearts of the students there because at the moment their hearts are very closed to God. The student priest was there and thought this was a great idea so we prayer walked today, Tuesday, and will hopefully do so every week. We were all a little nervous doing it but I believe God used us. We will try to do this every week, so pray that God gives us courage. We placed hands on each building and prayed over the people in them.
We also had the first meeting of Växjö International Christian Fellowship, the international service that I will be leading worship for. We had more of a small Bible study time as we had 8 people show up. Although it was a small group, it went great. There were 3 Swedes, 2 Americans, 1 African, 1 Mexican, and 1 Chinese girl who is wanting to make friends and know more about who God is, so pray for her, her English name is Nancy. Pray that God will open her heart more to Him as He is already starting to do so. She seems to be hungry for him. Continue to pray for the Swedish people as this is a time in the year when everything is dark and cold feeling and people feel much more lonely during this part of the year.
Today has been the coldest day yet, it is below freezing, windy, and there is snow on the ground, so not many people get outside. I also met with the pastor for this international service and many of us met and talked about why the Swedish people are so far from God right now. It is really the whole philosophy of their culture that leads them away from God. It is extremely individualistic and self-centered culture. To actually say there is such a thing as sin here is taboo and any mention of satan our enemy is taboo even in many churches. Pray for the Swedish people that the power of God will break through and open peoples heart towards Him for a harvest among the Swedish people and international students here. Also check out my new pictures. You can get them at the link on this blog page on the left. There are a few of my first week, of me in my apartment, of the international service, and of us praying at the University. God bless!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Departure date!!!


Well the decision has been made, on November 19th I will be flying out to move to Sweden! Right now I have enough financially to live on until February. My permit is valid until July 31 next year, so i'm going on faith trusting that either God will provide the finances I need to live there for until July 31 or that He has some other plan for after that point. Pray for me that God will give me strength and boldness and wisdom. Pray for the people of Sweden. Less than 1% of the people there have any real relationship with Christ. Pray that His love will shine on the hearts of the people there and break the coldness of their hearts towards Him. Winter time is even more tough from what i've heard because of the cold climate. They are already having their first snow sometime this week in the town of Växjö where I will be moving to. It slowly gets darker and darker during winter time to where there is only around 5-6 hours of daylight and the cold makes most people stay inside and feel lonely. Pray that God will use those of us who are believers there to warm the hearts of those in Sweden with the light of Christ. Pray for me as I have so much to do within the next few weeks to get prepared. Pray that the rest of my financial needs will be met as I step out on faith to do what God has called me to in Sweden.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Decisions decisions....

This is Adam Moody and this is my first blog entry about Project Sweden. Two days from now on November 5th I will be making a decision with the head of my missions organization setting a date in stone for when I will leave for Sweden. Please pray for me as I have enough financially to live on for the next 4 months, but my permit is valid until July 31, 2008 so I'm trusting and praying that God will provide the funding to keep me there for the other 5 months. I've been patiently waiting, and sometimes waiting in frustration as well for the time to go and I believe it is either now or never, so i'm choosing now! I will try to update this blog as frequently as I can. By this blog you can journey with me in what God has called me to do in Sweden. Follow along for prayer requests and updates on happenings in Sweden and you can posts comments to me on this site as well! Also you can check out my pictures which I will keep updated regularly at this website http://www.flickr.com/photos/17394877@N05. A friend of mine just recently took pictures of the apartment I will be moving into there in the next couple of weeks, so check it out and let me know what ya think!

For His Glory,

Adam