A shining light to strangers

If they're fortunate enough to meet Ljiljana Krstevski and her husband, Slobodan, that transition can be made easier.

Ljiljana was 13 when she and her mother moved to Vienna from Yugoslavia. Ljiljana didn't know German, her mother was drinking and sometimes beating her. She didn't have any friends.

"I thought there's no purpose in life." By 15 she was considering suicide. But one day she was walking through the city when she came across a group that seemed to be singing about God. "I was standing there glued and they noticed me." Although she had difficulty understanding the words they spoke to her, "I liked their interest in me," she remembers. "I wanted to be with them."

Overwhelming peace

Ljiljana became a Christian a few days later when she heard another girl's testimony at an evangelistic meeting. She prayed to accept Jesus, and as soon as she finished, "I started to cry-just like pouring with water." She felt overwhelming peace and joy, as if Jesus was right there.

"Since then he gave me purpose in life."

She became active in open-air ministry in Vienna-"winter and summer, raining and snowing"-handing out tracts, and that's where she met her husband, who was preaching on the street. Slobodan had also moved to Vienna from Yugoslavia with his single mom.

Slobodan moved to Canada to study, and Ljiljana followed a year later. The two were married, and Ljiljana, only 18, launched into five years of studying theology at Central Baptist Seminary. "I didn't know any English," she says.

Since graduating in 1989, she has been active in ministry with her husband, as well as raising four children. "The Lord blessed me!" she explains. Sarah is 7, David 5, Peter 4, and Joshua a year.

Slobodan Krstevski heads Shining Light Ministry, an evangelistic outreach focusing on Eastern Europe as well as people who have come to Canada since the war that broke up Yugoslavia. For five years the couple also hosted the Yugoslavian Christian Television Ministry under the sponsorship of Crossroads Christian Communications.

Now they are working at establishing a Yugoslavian fellowship in Hamilton. They have formed a small group, and are planning to start a weekly service.

Newcomers are open to the gospel, says Ljiljana, who remembers what it is like to arrive in a foreign country. "When I came to Austria I didn't know where to turn."