Last week was my first trip to Lapland, and it was really special. The nature there is simply stunning, and I'm sure I'll be back there again.
While there, I spent some time reading a thesis someone had found online, written about the Lapland revival that started in about 1845 through a guy called Lars Levi Lestadius (or triple-L to some of his friends), among the native Sami people and also the settlers. It was amazing to read about the transformation that happened in one area and spread right across the Sami people in Finland, Sweden and Norway.
The thesis was fairly epic (60 pages or so), but I also found this shorter summary that gives a pretty good picture of it. http://northwestanglican.blogspot.com/2007/07/apostolic-lutheranism-lars-levi.html
On Wednesday the 16th of February, eight of us again got into cars and drove about 2 hours north from Ylläs to Karesuvanto, where the Lapland revival started. The village is half in Finland and half in Sweden, and the church building is on the Swedish side - my first visit to Sweden, yay! We prayed beforehand for clues from God of people He wanted to bless throughout the day, and the journeys there and back included stopping to meet various different people and to see reindeer and stunning views.
The major focus of this little pilgrimage was to visit the church building (since rebuilt) where the revival began and pray there. We spent about an hour praying in the building - it was pretty awesome. I played piano for a while there and we worshiped, and then we sat in a circle and prayed for Lapland together. It was a really powerful time, and some of us were slightly 'out-of-it' in the Spirit for a while. God gave me something of His heart for Lapland, and it was so amazing to pray for revival to break out once again in the place where the previous revival started.
Today is in fact the 150th anniversary of Lestadius's death, and we're praying that the seeds of revival planted all those years ago would continue to bear fruit today.
1 comment:
I enjoyed reading this blog post. In going to Karesuvanto and praying that those seeds of revival planted long ago would bear fruit today you are doing something I would really like to do. I've prayed that same prayer from here in the US but it would be great to be able to pray for that in the church at Karesuvanto. May God bless you on your journey!
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