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Uncategorized — YWAM News

Kolkata – Prayer

Published on: September 10, 2018

Join YWAMers around the globe in praying and hearing from God as we pray for Kolkata, India. He is inviting you!
This month, please join the YWAM family as we pray for Kolkata, India, the world’s eleventh largest city. YWAM’s City Ministries Director, Tim Svoboda, claims Kolkata is the most captivating city in the world.
Kolkata is the capital of the state of West Bengal where there are 67 unreached and unengaged people groups, each with its own culture and beliefs. Of this population, 78% is Hindu, 20% is Muslim and less than 1% is Christian.
YWAM has had a presence in Kolkata for more than 35 years, reaching various people groups and providing an enchanting field for other YWAM locations to send their Discipleship Training School (DTS) teams. YWAM Kolkata is also part of City Ministries YWAM that is not only reaching out to the poor and needy of the cities but to the high and mighty as well. City Ministries is about reaching the entire city with the gospel. This means employing strategies that reach into every ethnic, linguistic, religious, economic and employment structure of a city like Kolkata.

Kolkata market, Victoria Memorial.
Photo credit left to right: Dong Shao and Nick Miller



Listen to the Letter
Kolkata has a richness of cultural diversity, beautiful sites, and also many challenges: poverty/slum living, a caste system, political violence, economic stagnation, pollution, street children, and migration from rural areas.

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!”
William Carey, Missionary to India (b. 1761 – d. 1834)

Please join with YWAM’s global prayer day, called The Invitation, during the month of September to pray for Kolkata with us. You are particularly invited to pray during our prayer day, September 13. If you only have a few moments to pray, please pray that God would usher in many workers that are called to reach the people groups of Kolkata and that the people would become hungry to hear about Jesus.

Strategic Peoples and Languages of Kolkata (2012)
Source: City Ministries YWAM

Prepare to Pray:

  • Read this story from a YWAM team in Kolkata: Many teams wonder how they will be able to communicate when they come to Kolkata. They are finding it’s easy to get locals to translate, but sometimes those local translators aren’t Christians themselves. What some may think is a problem can become a great opportunity. One of our translators had been open with us early one day saying “There are 1,000 reasons why God cannot exist.” Throughout our mobile clinic he was translating the gospel for us and watching as miracles happened right in front of his eyes. As more people received healing, he said, “Your prayers really work!.” At the end of our ministry time, he decided to give his life to Jesus as well, and as we left, he told us “I have changed my mind, I know now that there are 10,000 reasons why God is real.”
  • Watch a video or two about Kolkata (each just over 3 minutes long):
  • Read this poem from a YWAM outreach in Kolkata: https://ywammadison.org/i-left-a-piece-of-my-heart-on-that-street/

Photo credit: City Ministries YWAM

Let’s Pray:

  • Pray for qualified and well-trained missionaries to come and plant churches and to become leaders in the city.
  • Pray for evangelists to reach the Bengalis and for church multiplication.
  • Pray for short-term missionaries to come and evangelize the young people.
  • Pray for greater networking among churches and mission organizations.
  • Hindus are dedicated to the goddess of destruction and death – Kali. Pray for the revelation of Jesus’ life and power to break through the darkness.
  • Kolkata has a very small population of Christians. There are a very small number of churches for the population size. Pray for the Christian believers to be strong.

  • It is estimated that over 1 million people are living on the street and 100,000 of them are street children. Pray for the Christian organizations reaching them like Emmanuel Ministries, YWAM and others.
  • There are over 1.5 million people living in over 5,000 slums in the city. Pray for the gospel to spread in the slums and for ministries to reach people through mercy ministries.
  • Pray for Business as Mission initiatives to provide employment.
  • Pray for the ministries that are endeavoring to reach Muslims and for God to speak to the Muslims through dreams.
  • There are 11,000 sex workers in one slum alone called Sonagachi. Pray for Freeset https://freesetglobal.com/ a Christian organization reaching the women in the slum of Sonagachi.
  • The urban issues in Kolkata can become overwhelming. Pray that Christians will minister to both the rich and the poor in this city.

Photo credit: The Catholic Rose

Take Action:

Photo credit: YWAM North Cascades

DTS students in Kolkata
Photo credit: YWAM Madison

How We Prayed:

August 2018 – YWAM Together 2018

  • From the YWAM Together Prayer Team:  There is a growing momentum of prayer globally for YT, for Pattaya, Thailand and Asia and for this time in our history.  Many have participated in the 21 Day Prayer and Fasting and The Invitation, both corporately and individually.  We believe this tenderizes our hearts, prepares us to hear the Lord afresh and encounter Him as we “Come Up Here,” and “see those things that must take place” Revelation 4:1
  • IHOP in Kansas City prayed and they produced a daily prayer guide for their YWAM prayer which focused on YWAM Together 2018.

Future Topics:

  • October 11, 2018: YWAM Foundational Values 10 – 12
    #10 – Function in teams
    #11 – Exhibit servant leadership
    #12 – Do first, then teach
  • November 8, 2018: Muslims (North Africa)
  • December 13, 2018: Moscow

Don’t Miss The Invitation:

  • Sign up for prayer updates. Go to ywam.org, find the “Stay Connected” box on the home page, put in your email address and click “Sign Up.”
  • Download prayer updates in a specific language. Go to ywam.org/theinvitation. (Currently available in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Indonesian, Korean or request other languages.)
  • Join the conversation about how God is leading in these prayer times. Comment on the Facebook page on the second Thursday at facebook.com/youthwithamission or on Twitter @ywam, hashtag #praywithywam. You can also post a photo on Instagram and use the same hashtag, #praywithywam.
  • You can now listen to The Invitation as a podcast. To sign up or listen to past episodes, go to: ywampodcast.net/prayer.
  • If you sense God giving you a word or a direction for YWAM’s prayer, please contact us: [email protected].

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