At 6:30 in the morning of June 13th, Fritz Wäfler and family stepped aboard a train in the Berner Oberland, headed for Switzerland's Christustag. "In our village of 500 people, we are not many Christians and we feel very alone," says Fritz. "It's important for Christians to show Switzerland that we are coming together to pray for our country. It's also important that my children see a lot of other people who believe in the same God and trust Him."
Fritz and his family were certainly not alone as they squeezed in the doors of the biggest soccer stadium in Basel–40,000 others swarmed next to them. During the day they praised the Lord alongside youth choirs, Swiss alpine horns, street dancers and yodellers. They came together to stand as one in Christ and to pray for their villages. In fact, representatives carried flags from each of the 2,787 districts in Switzerland.
"[The Evangelical Alliance, independent churches and Protestant state churches] asked us to coordinate the day and put the program together," says Hanspeter Nüesch, director of Campus für Christus Switzerland, "because we have relationships with all the different groups. So I travelled Switzerland from east to west, north to south to share the vision and motivate people to pray."
Hanspeter has long dreamed of seeing a prayer cell in every Swiss village, but didn't know how to make it a reality. Christustag helped. As people carried their flag, they also carried the responsibility to pray for their village. Laurent Piaget, for example, carried the flag for French-speaking Côte-aux-Fées. "It was fantastic," says Laurent, a member of his village consul. "I felt a very strong anointing as we carried the flags and the people prayed for us. We're going to continue to intercede for our village."
And as thousands of Christustag participants pray like this, Hanspeter and the other leaders trust that God will allow every Swiss citizen to have the opportunity to follow Jesus.  --Dawn Sundstrom
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