International Newsletter December 2022
How can we share Jesus with young people who just aren’t interested?
One day into the Camino de Santiago Impact Trip, the Steiger team met Nina, a young woman from Germany. Like many in the Global Youth Culture, Nina believed in a god, but saw anything more specific as religion - something in which she had no interest. After a day of great conversations, the team invited her to join them for dinner.
Dania (a Steiger Denver team member) met Nina at dinner and started talking with her. “The Holy Spirit led the conversation, opening Nina’s heart to listen and ask questions,” she recalled. “I got to share how God has worked in my life, and the team worked as the body of Christ loving her. At the end of the night we prayed for her.”
Dania and the team ran into Nina a few more times on their trek from the border of Portugal to Santiago, Spain, and continued to show her the love of Jesus in each of those small interactions.
At the end of the week, they invited her and some others they’d met along the road to join them for dinner at a park - and Nina showed up!
The team invited those they'd met on the trail to join them as they worshiped.
“Right as we finished dinner, it started pouring,” Dania recalled. “We all ran to a shelter in the park, and it was like God used the rain to get us all into a small space together. We started worshiping, and through all of this, Nina stayed.
“Around 11pm, we asked if we could pray for her and she said yes. Another Steiger team member, Eduard, asked her if she’d like to have a relationship with Jesus. Right there in the park, she asked Jesus to be her Savior! It was incredible - you could immediately see the joy and life in her eyes.”
Just a few days later, Nina made the decision to get baptized. In Dania’s words, “She was all in.” Our team surrounded her in Santiago as she made a declaration to the world that she is a follower of Jesus.
Dania and the team prayed with Nina just before she got baptized.
Dania and others from the team continue to encourage Nina (from a distance) as she grows in her relationship with Jesus and gets plugged into her new church in Germany.
“When I decided to do the Camino by myself, I was searching for something. But I didn’t know what it was,” Nina reflected. “Then I met the Steiger group and connected to people in a way I’d never felt before. They showed me a whole new perspective and it’s still hard for me to find the words to describe the thankfulness that I’m feeling. God was leading me right where I was supposed to be.”
After walking the Camino, the team spent 3 days in Santiago to follow up with those they'd met.
In all, 59 people from 9 different countries joined the Camino de Santiago Steiger Impact Trip (a short-term opportunity to reach out to young people who would not walk into a church). Over seven days of walking, our teams had Gospel conversations with 460 different people!