Michael Ots Evangelism Trust

Posted on September 19th, 2011 at 12:29 AM / 1 comment »

Returning from Egypt two weeks ago I couldn’t believe how cold it felt and how expensive everything seemed. Returning from Norway yesterday it felt exactly the opposite! Normally I speak at University Missions in the winter months and although still September it certainly felt like it. Of course it’s not surpassing given that we were 500 miles north of the Northern tip of Scotland!

But in spite of the cold and rain it was a very good week. The first three days at the University in Volda were very encouraging. The CU grew in confidence as they saw the gospel at work. A number of people came back to each event and by the end several were very close to faith. Christians stepped out in faith and got got involved and learnt how exciting sharing the Gospel can be. Hopefully several members of the CU are going to come to a UK mission this year and then plan another mission for there own University next year.

The last two days were spent at a High School in Aalesund. It was hard at first to adjust after getting to know so many people at the University. But again we had a good number of people wanting to investigate more about Jesus.

From my experience one of the traits of Norwegian students is a reluctance to ask questions. So it was really encouraging that we managed to get people to ask more as the week went on. Christianity has nothing to fear from good questions and people should have nothing to fear from asking them!

The biggest crowd of the week came to the talk on ‘Where was God at Utoya?’ It felt hard coming in as an outsider to address this subject. In such a small country many people know those who were killed. I started by sharing that there are two problems in the face of suffering – one is to say to much – to pretend there are answers for everything – because there is much that we do not know. The other is to say to little – to think that the Bible has nothing to say. While we don’t often have specific answers to specific questions we can at least make sense of the way the world is, what God has done and what he will do in the future.

It was great to work with my good friend Bjorn-Inge Aurdal who is the IFES staff worker in the region. Pray for him as he helps the students in the groups follow up those who showed interest. Pray that as a result many come to know Jesus. Pray that the groups would grow in confidence as a result of the week and boldly continue to share Christ. Pray that the missions will be stepping stones to more public evangelism not just in those institutions but across Norway.