This weekend is a busy one with two Festivals—one in Ukraine and one in the Faroe Islands, northwest of Scotland. Here’s some background on these two places. Please join us in prayer.
Ukraine
Ukraine has been no stranger to news headlines this past year, ever since political tension brought the eastern European country to the world’s attention.
But Christians around the country are praying Ukraine will be known for something else.
This Saturday, a football stadium in the city of Lviv will draw people from six surrounding regions—not to watch a game or cheer on a team, but to hear the unchanging Gospel.
“We have a lot of prayer going on in that city,” said Russian-born Viktor Hamm, vice president of Crusades for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).
Hamm has visited Ukraine several times in past months to prepare for Saturday’s Festival of Hope with Franklin Graham. For months now, people across Ukraine have been praying for this Festival every day at 10 p.m., just before bed. Prayer time ramped up this past weekend with churches praying around the clock a week prior to the Festival. And with 1,200 churches involved, that’s a lot of people.
The Gospel-centered event will be held in the beautiful, old city of Lviv in western Ukraine, just an hour from the Polish border. With banners, radio announcements, 72 billboards and thousands of flyers all inviting people to attend, it’s hard to miss.
“The city is blanketed,” Hamm said.
The 2,820-member choir is also “a tremendous mobilization effort” as singers tell their friends about the Festival.
But this isn’t just a one-time deal that happens before people start packing up and going about business as usual. Locals, along with teams from Samaritan’s Purse, have worked hard for months to serve the community.
“The mayor of the city of Lviv is personally very involved in all of this,” Hamm said, referring to Mayor Andriy Sadovy. The city council has been supportive, too, he added.
Hundreds of area youth have gotten involved in the community, joining city officials and others in a Clean City project—painting, cleaning and removing garbage around some of Lviv’s historical sites.
Larger scale projects have included helping refugees in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, providing children with school supplies, and offering bedding, groceries and heating system repairs to orphanages, shelters and rehab centers—all as a way to show God’s love.
Arena Lviv can hold nearly 35,000 people, and as of Friday, more than 24,400 people had already reserved a seat for the free Festival. Six hundred buses and four trains will help people get there.
With such a large anticipated turnout, BGEA and the local Ukraine team pray many lives will be changed for eternity. Eight thousand people who went through the Christian Life and Witness Course there stand ready and waiting to share their faith with those around them.
Please pray for Franklin Graham as he meets with leaders of various denominations in Ukraine. Pray for unity among believers and for their continued passion in sharing the Gospel.
Faroe Islands
Just a day after the Ukraine Festival, Franklin Graham will be in the Faroe Islands, north of Scotland and halfway between Norway and Iceland.
“We had a standing invitation for a number of years,” said Viktor Hamm, BGEA’s vice president of Crusades.
Finally, with about five weeks to prepare, the islands are thrilled to host the Midsummer Festival with Franklin Graham.
“I’ve flown over it many, many times, but I’ve never been there before,” Hamm said. Now, he’ll get his chance.
This group of 18 major islands is a self-governing region of Denmark that relies heavily on its fishing industry. While a good portion of the people there consider themselves evangelicals, Hamm said, they want the rest of the population to know Christ, too.
Like every Festival, it’s a group effort. Forty-five churches of different denominations are coming together to help organize and support the event, which, as Hamm put it, “is huge” for a population around 48,000.
The Midsummer Festival will be held in Tórshavn, the capital of the islands, caught between the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic Ocean. Festival organizers plan to have a total of 2,200 seats available in the venue and in an overflow area.
Due to space, the Festival will be split into two parts, one during the day and one at night geared toward youth. Special guests include Michael W. Smith and Thousand Foot Krutch.
Pray for Christ to come alive in the hearts of all who attend Sunday’s Festival in the Faroe Islands. Pray that this region will be a light to all who pass through.
