Pete is one of our Advance Group leaders in Stockton, North East England, and has recently been able to get to know a number of people in his community. One day, Pete got chatting to Berti who mentioned he had pain in his back. As they spoke, Pete got to tell Berti about Jesus and offered to pray for his back. As they did this Berti’s back was fully healed and he responded to the gospel!
As Pete got to know Betri, he found out that he and his wife, Bozena, lived in a street they described as ‘lively but never dull’ with some of their neighbours. He described how life isn’t always easy for their neighbours with some battling addictions and others having moved to area as asylum seekers.
Desperate to show the love of Jesus to his community, Berti invited Pete and his Advance Group to meet in the front of his house each day for prayer meetings. So they did just this. At 11am every day from Monday – Friday the group would meet for an hour to pray and distribute food. As more people came along to the prayer meetings and heard about Jesus, they had to spread across three different gardens just to fit everyone in. Everyday they found would come up and ask what thye were doing giving them a chance to pray for them as well as share the good news of Jesus with them, and they saw many responding to what they heard.
And that’s not all. Wanting to reach even more people with the gospel, every Thursday evening on Facebook, someone from the Advance Group gave a 30-minute gospel talk which was broadcast from the street with sometimes 15 to 20 people logging in. From what started as a chat and prayer, Pete and Berti have helped encourage and equip a community devoted to sharing the gospel and growing in their evangelism. And it’s growing from strength to strength with seven people from the local Czech community joining an Advance Group in Stockton.