Dunamis EuroTrip 2018
It has been a while since I sent and update and I do want to apologize for that. I have been without my laptop since I left for Scandinavia and I haven’t had much down time! Its a long one so buckle up!
FIRST OF ALL
Thank you to each and every one of you for your prayers and support for this time and specifically this missions trip to Europe.
If you were following my Instagram my team and I did a day by day update to proclaim the testimony of Gods goodness. I will summarize those here and give a few other specific to me testimonies. If you would like to go and read them you can go to my instagram page @zachholderness and check it out.
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
The first testimony actually comes from my flight from Sao Paulo to Amsterdam. I was on the plane and sitting next to me was a Brazilian girl named Victoria who I started talking to. We started by talking about traveling and then she asked me why I was an American traveling to Europe from Brazil. I explained to her that I am a missionary and that I am actually meeting a team there. I explained a bit about 21 project and Dunamis movement. Then we really started talking about what we believe and I shared some testimonies with her about how Jesus had changed my life. She shared some of her experience in the catholic church and how it was very negative and cold. She hated all of the rules and felt like no one really cared about her they just cared about her money. I started to share my experience of how religion can mess up what God is actually trying to do and even how religion is the very thing that put Jesus on the cross. She had never heard this perspective before. She started asking more questions about God and I just kept telling her stories from my life and then reading the scriptures that proved those things. It was amazing! She had been hurt by the church and so she started to just pick and chose different things from different religions. She specifically felt like church didn’t really get it all right. She said that she is a feeler and she can just sense when there is like a bad vibe in an atmosphere. I told her that I can do that too and that the Bible actually talks about that in 1 Corinthians. She was like blown away. So we read 1 Cor. 12 talking about the Holy Spirit and discerning of spirits. She couldn’t believe what she was reading, she said “YES thats exactly how I feel”. She kept on asking more questions about the Holy Spirit so I just decided to read Acts 2 with her in Portuguese. She read the whole chapter out loud to me in her language! it was awesome. From there I asked her if she had accepted Christ and she said when she was younger she did, but she had never heard of the Holy Spirit. I told its really easy to receive the Holy Spirit and the gift of praying in tongues God didn’t want to make it hard for us. So we prayed together and she received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and she started praying in tongues! When we were finished praying she said “WOW, I feel like I was always meant to be in the place. I’ve never felt this kind of peace and joy before.” It was great we laughed and kept on talking about the Bible and Jesus. GOD IS SO COOL
Malmö, Sweden
Malmo was our first destination as a team and it was awesome. As soon as we stepped off the train entering the city I started talking to this man named Mohammad Zack (lol) at the station. We just genuinely started an awesome conversation asking questions and small talk. It turns out that He was from Syria and had fled the county cause of war and his family has more recently fled and now were living in Germany. He said that the situation is bad there and its affecting so many of his friends and extended family. God really gave me a heavy heart for what he was saying and I knew I needed to pray for him. I have to admit I was a bit afraid at first assuming he was a Muslim. I asked him anyway and he agreed, I prayed for Jesus to fill him with Love and for his power to come into the situation with him and his family. I blessed and protected his travels and said amen. When I looked up his expression was completely peaceful. He really got touched by the heart of God. He thanked me very genuinely and said that If our team was coming to Stockholm then He would host us, all 10 of us! He was so open to receive from the love of God. I asked him if he had been having any dreams that He couldn’t explain lately and he said no. But I told that I was practicing hearing Gods voice and I felt like God said that you have had dreams or you will have some dreams. He was shocked but blessed by that.
The next day Mohammad posted on instagram about meeting me and the team. He mentioned in his post that we prayed for him in the name of Jesus and that it was wonderful. This was s huge victory because for a Muslim to post publicly like that including the name of Jesus is very dangerous. The Quran instructs that if someone apostasies then it is the responsibility of other muslims who know him to convert him back to Islam or kill him. So this was a risk for him to say the least. I believe that Jesus encountered him in that moment and is continually revealing himself through dreams.
Helsinki, Finland
Northwind church was definitely a highlight of the trip. This place is a lighthouse for the gospel to go forth in POWER all over Europe. These people are on fire for God and they aren’t quiet about it. We had the most incredible times of worship and fellowship with these brothers and sisters. There are so many testimonies from this destination but I’ll share two quick ones.
I was speaking with this lady after church about coming with us to do supernatural street evangelism (where we get words of knowledge, healing and pictures for people and then use that as a platform to share the gospel.) She was really nervous about going because she herself had been struggling with pain in her body for more than 8 months and no matter how much she prayed or whatever she did it never went away. She said that she felt completely unworthy to go and pray for peoples healing when she herself wasn’t healed. I shared with her the testimony about my knee and my knee surgery. I encouraged her that its not up to us to tell God how we receive our healing. Our job is to believe that God is who is says he is and does what he says he does. We just keep believing that and we will see it! She was really encouraged after we prayed. When I saw her then next day coming to do the street evangelism she said God healed her heart of feeling unworthy and unfit to be used by him and then her pain went away as well! MIRACLES
During the street evangelism, one of the team members that went out got a word of knowledge about someone having back pain and asked if He could pray for him. He was at a restaurant and there was quite a few people around. The people over heard him and He said I can pray for your healing as well. They said that they weren’t in pain and just watched as he prayed for this mans back to be healed. He got up after the prayer and started praising God because his back was no longer in pain! Then the people that refused earlier started coming and asking for prayer from pain in their bodies. There were so many coming up that it would take so long to pray for each of them. God told him to just start commanding the pain to go away. So he just went around to them and said “be healed in the name of Jesus” 20 people received healing right there outside the restaurant!! God is GOOD! Remember that this happened in FINLAND. They said that people aren’t open to the gospel and that they won’t talk to you about religion. THAT is a LIE!
Another testimony that made us very happy was a young man born in Thailand, but who lived in Finland because of a process of adoption of a Finnish couple. When we approached this young man, we wanted to pray for his life because he had one of his legs bandaged, so talking to that young man, God was telling us about his life and how God as a father loved him. Then that young man being very vulnerable began to tell his life story, he had come to Finland because he had lost his biological parents. In his orphanage he suffered abuse and not long ago he also ended up losing his adoptive parents as well. Still very vulnerable, he told us that he did not trust himself and that he was depressed. But we were carrying good news for that man! So we began to say that there was a solution. That solution IS JESUS. Then without hesitation he accepted Jesus into his life! Help us in prayer for his life, that from today he will build a relationship with Jesus! He will be accompanied by our brothers here in Finland!
Voss, Norway
Being back in Norway was wonderful, the only down side was running to catch my train in the rain in Bergen and slipping & falling right on my back. This wouldn’t have been such a bummer if I wasn’t wearing my guitar on my back. I am VERY sad to tell you al that my guitar has about a 15 inch crack in it now and may never sounds the same. God gave me that guitar to bring worship wherever I travel so it has a special place in my heart. its been to 11 countries on 3 continents.
ANYWAY, lets not linger on that. Voss really was amazing. I was still able to use my guitar and lead worship at least once a day during our stay. A special moment for me and for our team was climbing up a mountain to a lookout point over the city and getting to worship and pray from there. A word from a friend was spoken over me that I “would worship in the high places and bring them into redemption with their original purpose.” This has two meanings for me. Literally high places with great altitude (Arequipa, Peru is one of the highest cities in the world) AND in the Bible when they say high places it is referring to a temple to pagan Gods. They were generally built at the top of the hills in cities so that people were always looking up to them. When one of the Kings was disobeying God he set up an Idol right next to the temple of God, a holy place. I am doing just the opposite, building an alter of praise where the enemy once had a place.
We spent much of our time in Voss praying and speaking life into the pastors and leadership from the church. We did more intercession then anything. We had a couple days of street ministry that went well. I got a word of knowledge about a man with pain in his right knee. We found that man and his name was Moses. We shared the gospel with him and how much Jesus loved him. We prayed for his leg and he received his healing! All of his pain was gone! This man was from Eritrea and he was a refugee. He had many refugee friends and he told us that he couldn’t wait to share what Jesus had done for him that day. Praise God!
Nijemegan, Netherlands
We were received with so much love in the Netherlands. We did a tour of the city and learned about the history and culture. We prayed over the city as we walked and met some amazing people along the way.
One thing that really stuck out was the times of worship that we had in the pastors house. They had an open house for the month due to their church building being unavailable, and so the Pastor opens his home and everyone just fellowships there. I was able to lead worship a few times and the Holy Spirit really showed up! The last night we were there, we ended up praying for people that had pain and 6 people got healed right there in the living room! GLORY. That night ended with much laughter and Joy of the Lord being poured out. We are forever connected with that place.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
This wasn’t an official spot of our team but I stayed in the middle of the Red Light district before heading back to Brazil. There is a YWAM prayer and worship house right there in the center of the prostitution zone. Do you know that they refer to that area as the “museum of prostitution”. I saw this on my google maps when I was looking for the house. It broke me. There is a unique heaviness there that I have never felt to that degree. It was a dark place. As soon as I stepped into the prayer house it was like the heaviness lifted and I could breath again (Garment of praise really lifts heaviness). So I had a vision from the Lord of me singing “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury in the midst of the district. I knew I would be persecuted for this but that the worship that would go out would be a seed for the darkness to be expelled. So me along with a team of people from the other Dunamis Euro Trip went out at about 130am to worship God in one of the “High Places”. It was so beautiful, we started preaching the gospel to people on the streets. We began conversations and started praying for people. There were so many lost people there. It was amazing to see men walk up to the windows and almost go inside, hear us and stop in their tracks. Its like they woke up from their hypnosis. We talked to many people. We prayed with Drug dealers and we even had a run in with the men who “organize the work” for the women. Everyone that we came in contact with left our presence either encouraged or outraged. The truth divides, and persecution emboldens. We prayed with one guy who was joking alot with his friends and making fun of us. They were a bit high or drunk or something but not incoherent. I told them that when I pray for people the love of God invades them and they feel better then all the drugs in the world could do for them. They wanted to try it (our God answers with FIRE). One of the guys kept his eyes closed tightly as I prayed and when I said amen he opened his eyes with a new light in them. He looked my dead in the eyes and said “thank you so much for praying for me.” He couldn’t break eye contact with me as his friends pulled him away. I know God touched his heart in a real way and he won’t be able to deny that it was Jesus that encountered him.
Over all Europe was incredible. Besides all the amazing testimonies I've written here, there are so many more that I could have written about. Not to mention all of the things that God did inside the churches that we visited, and all the things he spoke to me personally. Europe is ready for revival it is a lie that Europe is to far gone for the gospel or they are not open to receive it. It happens in a different way yes, but people are searching, they are in so much pain, and we have the solution. What we carry is the most valuable thing in this world, and everyone there is looking for it.
I am so encouraged by this trip and i know that my work in Europe is just beginning. Philippians tells us that “He who started a good work in you is faithful to bring it to completion”. Paul launched the gospel in Europe and now the numbers tells us that so few Europeans are evangelical christians. But the time has arrived to redeem that. God is in the business of reconciliation and Europe is next on the list. It was beautiful to be in Europe knowing that missionaries from Europe is one of the main reasons that I know Jesus today. We are bringing it back around full circle and we shall see Europe on fire for God once again!
Love you all, thank you for staying in tuned and updated with prayers and support. Rio was a good time of rest and refocus before finishing my summer with my final stop in Peru. Keep me lifted up in prayer, I am definitely feeling the exhaustion from all of this traveling and output.
Grace and Peace,
-Zach
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