My Journey to Victory

By Arja Winterstrang

Priest. Wife. Mother. Scholar. 

 

In this unflinchingly honest memoir of a remarkable woman of faith, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at what it truly means to walk with the Lord.

 

Through highs and lows, Arja Winterstrang shares the most pivotal moments in her life, showing that with the Lord, you can persevere in the most difficult of times and emerge victorious.

 

In addition to her own experiences, Arja Winterstrang also takes a closer look at the lives of some of God's great servants over the ages in light of the Word of God. Their lives can serve as beacons of hope and comfort in turbulent times.

 

At times humorous, and often poignant, this memoir of faith shows you how you too can let the Lord lead you to his wonderful plan for your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gielas Publishing
• Release date: Aug 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9789657821077

Book preview

My Journey to Victory

ARJA WINTERSTRANG

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Jerusalem

MY JOURNEY TO VICTORY

Copyright © 2023 by Arja Winterstrang

All rights reserved.

Published 2023 by Gielas Publishing

www.gielaspublishing.com

Foreword copyright © 2023 by Thomas Nordberg

Foreword English translation copyright © 2023 by Arja Winterstrang

Cover design copyright © 2023 by Elina Winterstrang

Cover art copyright © Michal Bednarek / Dreamstime

ISBN: 978-965-7821-06-0 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-965-7821-07-7 (Ebook)

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This book is a memoir. It reflects the author's present recollections of

experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed,

some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form

without permission.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I dedicate this book to Elina,

my daughter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

1.My Journey with the Lord Begins

A Childhood Vision of God’s Apostles

God’s Guardian Angels Keep Watch

2.Called by God

Childhood Events Speak of Our Calling

A Touch of the Holy Spirit

3.God Trains Us Step by Step

Moving to Sweden

Back to School

4.My Sabbath Year

A Trip to Africa

Amboseli National Park

Alone in the Camp

The Ant Army Arrives

In the Maasai Village

5.Not All Appointments Are Safe

Africa’s Spiritually Dark Side

You Will Return to Kenya

6.My Trip to Africa Continues

A Rocky Start to Our Time in Ethiopia

7.God Continues My Inner Training in Sudan

A Khartoum Welcome

From Khartoum to Port Sudan

Finding Myself in Sudan

8.Returning to Khartoum

My Journey Down the Nile River

Dangerous Times on the Catamaran

Luxor — Valley of the Kings

9.Back in Sweden

Lund University

My Time at Lund Theological Institute (Fall 1984 - Spring 1985)

The Theological Institute Sends Us to Be Trained

The Day of My Ordination as a Priest

10.I Meet My Husband for the First Time

On Board Rania

11.My Love for Israel and the Jewish People Is Ignited

Don’t Feel Bad, We’re Not Church-Going People

Pentecostals in My Bible Classes

The Lord Helps Me Preach

12.The Lord is My Healer

I Break My Neck and the Lord Heals Me

God Works on His Schedule

God’s Healing Touch at Thomas Mass

13.The Lord Has More Blessings in Store for Me

My First Trip to Israel

The Lord Calls Me to Be Baptized

14.I Hear God’s Voice

God Calls Us to Israel

15.God Continues to Lead Me In Amazing Ways

God Sends Me a Word of Knowledge

A Prophesy: The Lord Will Send You Beyond the Seas

16.An Encounter with Bishop Daniel

The Holy Spirit Puts Pressure on Me

Bishop Daniel Comes to Sweden

17.I Return to Africa

You Will Be Picked Up from the Airport

Confusing Surprises

18.Jesus Appears to Me

The Harvest Is Plentiful, but the Laborers Are Few

Sister, this Conference is Training for You

19.My Love for Mathare Slum

I Walked Where Jesus Walks

A Mother Is Saved and Her Baby Healed

20.The Marvelous Works of the Holy Spirit

An Invitation to Speak

The Holy Spirit Touches the Pastor

21.A Trip to Pensacola, Florida

Revival at Brownsville Assembly of God

The Pastors’ Conference

I’m Baptized by David Livingstone

22.At Brownsville Assembly of God

A Pink Orchid and the Immense Power of Intercession

How Badly Do You Want to Attend this Conference?

23.Lunch on the Shores of the Gulf of Mexico

You Can Leave the Hotel and Move into My House

Annalisa Gets a Vision

God Sends a VIP Limousine

24.The Conference Begins

I Have Heard About You!

I’m Invited to Alabama

Do You Understand Now that I Love You?

25.Difficult Times Lie Ahead

You Will Be Put Out of Your Office

Rescued in a Prophetic Dream

26.The Storm Gathers

The Bishop Comes for an Inspection

Time to Visit the Bishop

27.Pensacola Revival Touches Northern Sweden

Nancy and Donna-Kay Come to Our Village

28.I Visit Israel

Divine Appointments

29.God Takes Care of Those Who Love Him

God Wakes Me Up in the Middle of the Night

Harvesting Elderly Souls for the Lord

30.Faith and Logic Don’t Go Well Together

I Receive a Call from Patmos Foundation

Penguins Can’t Fly

Would the Address to a Guest House Help?

31.Our Family Arrives in Israel

God Always Has a Plan

Our Apartment on Abraham Lincoln Street

Our first Sukkot Feast in Jerusalem

32.A Hundredfold Reward

I Receive My Doctoral Degree

Afterword

Endnotes

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Acknowledgments

I want to thank all of our friends whom we have had the privilege of getting to know over the years and who have helped us further our calling.

A special thank you to Thomas and Maria Nordberg, for their friendship and for encouraging me forward with the writing.

Many thanks also to those who recognize themselves in the stories, but whom I have either protected by not mentioning their real names, or whom I have not been able to contact during the writing and publication of this memoir.

Furthermore, thank you to all pastors, priests, evangelists, and all others who in one way or another have been part of, or encouraged me in my journey with the Lord. It has been a true joy and blessing to have relived, over the course of many long days of writing, those days and meetings with each one of you.

I want to thank my daughter Elina for all her help in making this book a reality. Her numerous readings and insightful comments have been very helpful while writing this book. I also want to thank her for designing such a beautiful book cover.

I want to thank my husband Henry for his daily help and love that have given me the necessary time and space to engage with the writing process.

Finally, and most importantly, I thank the Holy Spirit who has helped and brought me and my family through many challenges, and who continues to encourage us with his lovely presence to this day.

God bless you all, so much!

— Arja Winterstrang

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Foreword

It is a great privilege and joy to write the foreword to this book that I have been waiting so long to read. I have been able to follow Arja and her lovely family’s journey from a village in northern Sweden to the center of the world, Jerusalem in Israel. From afar I have watched and marveled at God’s guidance and all the miracles that have happened over the years.

Many times I have encouraged Arja to write and share the experiences and lessons she has learned from her life’s journey. I read Arja’s book My Journey to Victory with great anticipation. The book is well written, easy to read, and exciting, while at the same time, it has depth and credibility that only a first-hand experience can convey.

A fantastic story about God’s ways and guidance through life. Over the years, I have been fascinated by the simple and in a way childlike faith and conviction that characterized Arja’s life since her life-changing encounter with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That meeting has taken her on an absolutely amazing journey and will challenge you to take new steps from where you are in life.

From simple circumstances in Finland, she moves to Sweden like so many others to get a better life. Life, which may seem to be full of coincidences, leads her to an academic education in theology and the priesthood. A personal encounter with the Holy Spirit opens up a whole new world of experiences and adventures, to the joy of many and the chagrin of others. You are invited to join this journey.

This book is well worth reading and will encourage you to take new steps of faith with God in your life’s journey. The book is a testimony of God’s faithfulness and guidance in life even in the small details. As we go through various events in life, we often have difficulty seeing and understanding God’s plans and ways for us. But he is there, usually more than we understand. These small details become a puzzle where each part makes the picture clear and we see that God holds his hand over us.

God’s goal is for us to respond to his voice and his ways for us. Sometimes it can take time as you will read about in this book. Sometimes you face resistance and difficulties but don’t give up. When you say Yes to God’s calling, an exciting journey begins and new absolutely fantastic doors open. The best is yet to come. The best is still ahead of you.

One day in our faith in Jesus we will be able to meet in the New Jerusalem!

Thomas Nordberg

Pastor, Sweden

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Introduction

When I first began writing this book I had three major reasons for doing so that kept me going. The first reason was that our friend Pastor Thomas Nordberg had many times asked for a book about my life’s journey, as encouragement for many weary wanderers.

Second, I have written this book not just as a record of my own journey with God, but also to encourage you in your situation, whatever it may look like. Maybe you are facing a difficult situation that is breaking you down. Or maybe you’ve felt that years have gone by without you feeling that there is any concrete meaning to any of it.

Maybe you have prayed to God, asking him to change your life in some way.

Or heal your hurting body.

You’re not alone, and as you read, maybe you’ll recognize yourself in some of these pages. The Lord has taken me through one obstacle after the other, and in doing so He’s changed my whole life. The change that came into my life included my profession, my inner being, the country where I was living at the time, and much more.

But how did this happen? I wish to show you in the following chapters because God has no favorites. If he could change my life, He can change your life too.

I will show you how you can make it easy for the Lord to rain down His blessings on your life and give you new encouragement and hope.

One of the changes in my own life came as I took a trip to Africa decades ago which turned out to be a real eye-opener. That trip widened my worldview and would later have an important role to play in my decision to become a priest. To be a priest and a servant of God you need to prepare yourself, deeply. I didn’t know how to do that at the time, but I let the Lord take over.

Instead of letting me spend my sabbatical year before university learning how to make pottery, God instead sent me on a trip to Africa. And He knew that He could use this trip to steer me away from the scientific career that I had fixed in my mind and to use me for His divine purpose.

The third reason for writing this book is that people need to know what God can do when they surrender their lives to him and let him lead them, using them according to his plan for their lives. If we don’t know what God can do in our modern times, then we won’t look for it. And if we do know, then the desire for God’s presence in our own lives grows and becomes even stronger.

This book will open a door to a life that is unknown to many. I prayed to the Lord while working on this book that He would help me write it in such a way that He would be able to touch hearts and bring a hunger for God’s holy presence to the reader’s life.

When God calls somebody, He often takes the person through experiences that they can only afterward identify as having been part of their schooling by God’s hand. Only He knows from the beginning, what the end looks like.

Through the following chapters and stories from my life, I will take you on the same journey through which the Lord took me, from my old life filled with uncertainty to a new life filled with purpose and joy in the Lord.

A Christian’s life is not always easy, but following the Lord is never boring, and as I can attest through my own experience walking with the Lord, it is often filled with adventures and heavenly appointments.

In any written work that makes diligent use of verses from the Bible, the question of which Bible version to use comes up, and unless noted otherwise, the Bible quotations I’ve included are from the New King James Version (NKJV), by Thomas Nelson Publishers (1982).

A note on historical accuracy: This book is a memoir of important moments in my life, and I’m relying mainly on my own memory as I recount my life experience. I have done my best to craft dialogue as closely as possible to what I remember having been said by various individuals, and if there happen to be inaccuracies, they are completely unintentional.

I have done my best to protect the private lives of the people mentioned in this book. To be able to do so, I have at times changed the names of people, places, and other identifying details, and sometimes I’ve kept a person’s professional title while changing other details in order to maintain clarity for the reader.

It is my hope that this book will be a wonderful well of hope for anyone who picks it up and starts to read, showing that it is possible to reach victory in life with the Lord, just as He has promised us in his Word. There is nothing too big for the Lord that He cannot change and He can create miracles in all of our lives.

We just have to trust in him!

— Arja Winterstrang

Jerusalem, January 2023

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My Journey with the Lord Begins

A Childhood Vision of God’s Apostles

It was a beautiful summer day in 1961 in Kauhajärvi, a small village in the South Ostrobothnia region on the southwest coast of Finland. At the time I was around eight years old, and I was walking home with my older sister. It was late in the afternoon, and we’d been visiting our friend Sinikka.

Sinikka’s home wasn’t far from where we lived, and as we descended the small hill on the way back, from which I could see the crossroads that led to our home, I saw two men walking ahead of us. They wore long, colorfully striped robes that reached the ground. I had never before seen people dressed like that in our village and I stared at them in amazement.

When I rubbed my eyes and looked again, they disappeared into thin air, and I got goosebumps all along my bare arms. The way they disappeared, as if they weren’t really of this world, really frightened me.

I was a lively and curious child whom older people often found amusing, and therefore I didn’t tell anyone, not even my sister, what I had seen. Terrified, I took my sister by the hand and began tugging her in the direction of our home.

Let’s go straight home along the creek! I said to her.

We normally never walked along the creek, except on clear sunny days, because everyone knew that there could be snakes in the tall grass. But now, the danger posed by the snakes was smaller in my mind than the terrifying men that could disappear into thin air. We rushed along the creek until we got some distance between us and the place where I had seen them.

I have never forgotten what I saw and felt that day. It’s ingrained in my innermost being, and as I grew up, I understood that this vision was given to me by the Holy Spirit. I believe that the men that I saw were two of Jesus’s disciples from the Bible and that the vision spoke of my future walk in His footsteps.

Herbert Lockyer, a scholar of Biblical prophecies, writes that revelation is the divine interpretation and communication of truth to the mind of man, independent of his mental ability and acquirements. ¹ I believe this to be true.

And Jesus himself said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight (Matthew 11:25-26).

God’s Guardian Angels Keep Watch

Kauhajärvi village spread out around a serene lake and at the end of a beautiful birch alley, nestled deep in the rural landscape, was our small, gray log cabin home. My whole family, comprised of my parents, my five siblings, and I, lived in the cabin’s three rooms. We were surrounded by neighbors with whom we socialized.

Most of the time, my father was out somewhere earning a living to support our family, so the responsibility of caring for us children rested mostly upon my mother’s shoulders. We had four cows and my mother made our own butter and cheese at home. She baked dark rye bread and we got our potatoes from our own field. Whenever it was time to plant the potatoes, and then later to get the potatoes out of the ground, the whole family got involved.

Of course, at that time many people in Finland still didn’t have a fridge in their homes, so we stored the potatoes, as well as mushrooms, and freshly crushed cranberries in the basement of our cabin. There was a hatch in the floor of our living room through which you could get down into the small space, and that was also where all the milk products were stored because it was cold, also in the summer.

Our father would prepare firewood while he was at home and we in turn would help our