The Work Of Missionaries In Lockdown

When lockdown brought Ian and Katie Moore’s mission work in Macedonia to a halt, they used the time to seek a refined vision for reaching their local area. They told Chris Rolfe their story

- Ian and Katie

Schools were shut, home gather-ings were banned, UK mission team visits were cancel led. Like the UK, Macedonia went into lockdown last March, forcing Elim missionaries Ian and Katie Moore to rethink their outreach work in the city of Skopje.

The couple had spent the previous two years engaging in street evangelism and supporting churches in and around the city since moving to the country in 2018.

Lockdown brought this to an abrupt halt. But looking back on the past year, Ian says they value the space it created to listen to God and refine the vision for their missionary work.

“It gave us an opportunity to reevaluate what we do, why we do it, and ask if it was effective.

“Our aim here is to share the gospel, build locally and empower the church, and God really brought that back into focus.”

Ian and Katie felt God calling them to focus more closely on the area they live in.

With normal activities curtailed, Ian began to answer this call by prayer walking the area with fellow missionary Scott Jackson.

“We drew a map of our suburbs and prayer walked every street. Most days, we would do half an hour then colour in the map where we’d been to keep track.”

Katie, meanwhile, found new opportunities to connect with their neighbours.

“We’d seen the NHS rainbows in the UK. We don’t have that here, but we decided to get the kids to paint some anyway. We’ve got 32 apartments in our building and we gave everyone a rainbow with a note saying we were praying for them, we hoped the picture cheered them up and to let us know if they needed anything or had any prayer requests,” she says.