Doug and Lila Groth
ECMI
Fall 2016
“I will do it.”
This is the promise I believe God gave me, five years ago at an ECM leadership conference in Austria, about starting a new church planting work in Nowy Sacz.
I don’t have a church planting team. Nowy Sacz is more than an hour’s drive away from us and we don’t believe God wants us to move there (Lila travels to Krakow every week to teach at a Christian grade school and it would be too difficult to do it from N.S.).
I have been traveling to N.S. regularly (when Lila goes to Krakow each week I go to N.S.) to try to build relationships with people, pray and mobilize people to pray, teach English to needy young people, share the gospel as God opens doors.
More than once I’ve decided to give up but each time God has shown me in a very clear way that He wants me to continue.
Just recently I had another such experience and now am convinced that we need to keep moving ahead.
A few weeks ago I visited N.S. and nothing much happened except having a cup of coffee and a conversation with a fellow I’ve been meeting with. A few months ago I had invited a Belgian evangelist to do evangelism with us in N.S. when he came to visit us in Rabka. After the discouraging visit in N.S. I said to the Lord; “If nothing significant happens when we visit N.S. with the evangelist I’ll understand that you want me to give up on trying to work there.” God answered in a very clear way.
We went to N.S. with Alex (the evangelist from Belgium) when he came to visit us in Rabka. He talked with several people about the Lord in the city square. At the end of the day he took me with him. We began to talk with a young Polish guy (21 years old). He said he was living and working in England and was here visiting family in N.S.. Alex shared the gospel with him and he was very open and interested. After Alex finished I talked more with him in Polish. As it turns out, he used to live in our village and went to school with our son, Philip. I gave him a gospel of John and my phone number. Later he got in touch with me and we met again at my house. He wanted to hear more so I told him about how I came to know the Lord and shared the gospel with him again and prayed for him. Later we talked more on facebook. He told me more of his story and then I remembered that Philip had returned home from school one day (he was in second grade at the time) and told Lila and I that one of his classmates would have to move to Nowy Sacz to an orphanage because his parents were alcoholics and couldn’t take care of him and his siblings. I remember feeling compassion for him and Lila remembers that we prayed for him. In God’s providence, this is the same person. It’s no accident that we met him and shared the gospel with him in N.S.. Pray that he will come to know Christ as his Lord and Savior and experience God’s fatherly love, leading and blessing.
I don’t know how it will all work out but I am now convinced that God wants us to keep working in Nowy Sacz.
Please pray;
-that God will give us a church planting team
-that He will show us His plan for working in N.S.
-that many more people will come to know Him and become true disciples of His in N.S.
Thank you, Doug and Lila
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Doug and Lila Groth
32-434 Skomielna Biala
Nr. 623 POLAND
douggroth@poczta.onet.pl
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ECMA-USA
P.O. Box 2217
Monument, CO
80132-2279
george.brown@ecmi.org
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