Outreach | Jan 1, 2010 | 5 Comments

Goodbye Sweden, Hello Malmo

We left Linkoping and traveled by bus the 5 1/2 hours to the city of Malmo (3rd largest city in sweden). We could tell once we stepped of the train that this city was going to be quite different to the very Swedish towns we were just in. There was a noticeable change is the people and the stores. The people here are mostly immigrants from eastern europe or the middle east. The stores have swedish and arabic languages on them. Falafel and Kebab shops are all over the place! We really get the feeling that we have left Sweden! It’s wonderful to see this new culture

We took the city bus to Rosengard and started walking at night in a place that supposedly the Swedish Police sometimes don’t go into. As we walked we were hearing these large bangs. We were like “gunshots!” Then we realized it was 2 days before New Years and they were fireworks haha.

We went and saw the city center of Malmo and ran into this guy preaching with a PA system. He invited us to give it a try and Rex stepped up to the plate and gave a sweet message on the love of God. It prompted this guy to talk to him about God and question what he was saying. Go Rex! Go God!

As I’m writing this, we just returned from downtown Malmo after an amazing New Years celebration! New York and Chicago doesn’t have anything on Rosengard for fireworks! We were walking to find a good spot to bring in the new year and stopped to pray with a guy in this parking lot and see if he wanted any cookies we had baked. Little did we know the parking lot offered a 360 degrees view of fireworks. We ended up praying and celebrating as the new year came in and just took in the amazing spectacle of thousands of fireworks going off!

We took a bus into the city center to possibly meet some new friends to start building relationships and speak life into them. It was the beginning of a crazy night. We got to the downtown area and were thinking of getting into some clubs. As we walked down the strip of clubs, it was amazing to see the women in skirts in the sub zero temperatures! It broke our hearts to see these people looking to things other than God to fill them. We warmed up in Burger King for a bit to get the game plan. We met some Ethiopian students that were also Christians while waiting for the bathroom and got there contacts for a possible later meet up. After a team meeting, we decided to try and get into the club next door called Étage. Camille and Aria went to the bouncer and talked to see if we could bypass the 1hr+ wait and get in the VIP way. We stood by interceding. It worked! He said he’d let 4 of us in. Kevin, Stina (our awesome Swedish friend from Linkoping YWAM Base) and Lana (other awesome Swedish friend) decided to go in. We’d meet up with them later. The rest of us went back into BK to warm up and had an interesting conversation with a drunk guy before trying to catch our bus. We missed our bus because we were in the wrong line but it worked out because we had two or three more opportunities to talk to people at the bus stop and in Burger King. All in all the night brought a better understanding of just how multicultural this city is and how wonderful the people are. We got to pray with a few people and made some contacts in the city and in Rosengard. The team members that got into the club had an interesting time too. They interceded over the place which was full of people that looked like they weren’t even having a good time according to what Kevin said. The men were mostly looking for a woman for the night. Stina got an image of a girl in a red dress and dark hair and as they were walking out found the girl! She got to speak with her about Jesus and pray with her. Overall I think our team had a good night listening to God’s leading and meeting new friends! I’m tired though after going to bed at 5am!! It was worth it though.

Internet is sketchy here but I should find it at least once a week to keep you all up-to-date. Love you all and Happy New Year!

Author: Calvin

My wife and I are currently staffing a Discipleship Training School (DTS) through Youth with a Mission (YWAM). We both love God and are committed to following his will. I enjoys taking photographs of my travels as well as blogging about awesome things God does. To see more photos, visit our gallery. More about Calvin and Camille

5 Comments

I love this guys. I’m so stoked to come and see you in finland. Tear it up in malmo. Did you know it’s the only city that claims to have never had a revival. 2010 is the time. Jesus. Don’t forget who you are, the Lord longs to be revealed through you. Adore him and be loved by him.

Jeff Reid

1/1/2010

NICE!

rip that city up!! =D

PREACH IT!!!!!!!!!!!

miss you guys incredibly

Matt Kang

1/2/2010

i love seeing a bit of your outreach through this blog! You guys have kingdom vision! I love it, keep going! You guy rock!

Melodie

1/6/2010

Sketchy? What is that suppose to mean? Dear son of Hans, you are in the country that first made it governmental law to provide broadband to the whole population.