The Banica Story

Banica is a village just 2 km from the large city of Strumica. Strumica has 40,000 people and is a modern and fairly rich place because it is an agriculturally developed region which exports a lot of goods.

However, even though Banica is just minutes from Strumica, life is drastically different from the city. Banica is known for its very violent reputation and the aggression the people of the village have towards each other and especially for strangers (from surrounding villages or cities).

In November 2006, we received a call from a local person who asked us if we could go and preach the gospel in this village. The first thing what we did as we entered the village was to go inside the local shop, and without any preceding planning we had a crowd of 70 people asking us why we are there and what we wanted. We told them that we have come to tell them the best news in the world. They were puzzled, and asked us what that can be. After 10 min of sharing the gospel, one man responded; “we have never ever heard something like this...our hearts are melted.”

We promised them that we will come again and show them a movie. We returned a month ater and showed the movie “Jesus”. We didn’t know what to expect (knowing the reputation of the village), and at 8.30pm we only had a group of 30-40 people, but around 8.50pm there were around 500 people which is half of the village. This was a major surprise for us and for everybody that we would tell about Banica, and even more of a surprise that half of them responded with a desire to believe in Jesus.

The background story is that when Sashas wife’s mother was young she had to pass thorugh Banica to go to a neigbouring village where she helped in a church. The people from Banica didn’t like anything which was Christian so they would tell to their children that they should harm this lady when she passed through Banica. However, as the children threw stones, she didn’t want to retaliate, so she would take candies and wrap them up in paper with bible verses and throw them back to the kids. When she heard about all the things which have taken place in Banica recently, she told us that the man and the woman who responded to the messages and the movie were the children who threw stones at her 40 years ago. She has been praying for them all these years.

After this we provided some indoor meetings and we had a great response. The atmosphere in the village has changed for the better, we have seen people who have been transformed by God, and the level of crime has been changed. The level of education is very low and it was very difficult to work with them, but we are slowly influencing this village. The great thing is that people don’t believe us when we tell them that we actually have a church meeting in Banica.The violent history of this village means that even the police hesitate to go there, taxi drivers don’t want to drive to Banica and pastors wouldn’t go to there as it was too dangerous.

Because the darkness over the village is so tangible, the manifestation of the Kingom of God is evermore so real. We have seen Angelic manifestations, we have seen healings, the very obvious and tangible presence of God, physical oil manifestation, and a lot of other unusual manifestations. All this is to confirm that The Kingdom of God is moving in and the Kingdom of darkness have to leave this place. We know that God is moving in this place and that it will be a great testimony for all the surrounding villages and Macedonia because of the magnitude of what God is doing.