Ask God Which Town CENTRAL ASIA | Mark JH Klassen
In 2006, Ivana (not her real name) and her husband moved with their five children from Germany to Canada, where they soon welcomed their sixth child. It was a big move for a big family. Little did they know, eight years later, God would be preparing them for another international move.
After finding it on the map in Central Asia, Ivana started praying for Zara. “There were times when I forgot about it,” she said, “and then again times when God put it heavy on my heart. As predicted, the desire grew in me to visit the town and to find out what God was doing there.”
One year after arriving in Canada, a missionary visited their church and told them this story:
Several years later, Ivana and her husband were talking about taking a trip for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. “As my husband was praying and asking God where we should go,” said Ivana, “God drew his attention to Zara.”
A woman put her hand on a world map and asked God to show her a town she should pray for. She was led to pray for a town in Iran. After praying for that town for thirty years, an Iranian pastor came to her church. He testified to the great things God had been doing in his town in Iran. After his report, she walked up to him and asked him the name of his town. Because it was very small and didn’t appear on most maps, he didn’t think she would recognize the name. She insisted to know it. When he finally told her the name, she said, “Thirty years ago, I started praying for this town.” He replied, “Thirty years ago, I became the town’s first follower of Jesus!” Ivana remembers well the challenge that the visiting missionary gave after sharing this story: “He told us, ‘Go home and ask God which town you should pray for.’ Then he added, ‘and maybe someday you will even go there.’” The next morning, Ivana was lying in bed, and she heard God’s voice: “Your town is Zara.” “Right away, I thought of our daughter’s name, Sarah” said Ivana, “which, in German, we pronounced the same way. But God said, ‘No, your town starts with a Z and doesn’t end with an H.” 6 | witness
On their anniversary trip, the couple visited the town of Zara. “We walked the streets and prayed for the people,” Ivana said. “We also distributed Bibles in the town. I can’t describe the joy we had knowing that the Word of God was now in Zara.” The Bibles the couple distributed in Zara included contact information of an organization that provided Bible study material upon request. Within months, someone from Zara was actually ordering more material online. The trip was a turning point for Ivana and her husband. As they traveled, they saw God’s hand of faithfulness upon them. “We were overwhelmed by God’s care over and over again,” said Ivana. “We saw God orchestrating a plan and bringing the right people into our path. On the trip, God gave my husband the assurance that he was calling us to move.” However, for Ivana, the idea of another move was not easy. “I wasn’t ready for that at all,” she said. “The challenges of moving to Canada were still in my memories. Learning a new language was difficult. Helping our teenage children to adjust to the culture was very tiring. We all struggled in
