Baltic Church Planting

At the beginning of august we had an evangelization with the church “Voice of Gospel”. There were services held in tents which were put not far from the region which is full of big living houses and there is also an orthodox church. The services were being held during three days. We really did not mean to cause any problems or special attention form the side of the orthodox church but our region is quite small and everything is close to one another.

Every evening I was leading the services and was also playing the guitar in our worship team which was gathered together with the church “Voice of Gospel”.

Our brother Vladimir Fiaktistov was also preaching at our services. He immigrated to the USA six years ago and he decided to use his first opportunity to go outside the States to come to his own city to serve the Lord

There were not many people coming to these meetings. There were many people at the first service. Three people accepted Jesus during the first service. I was praying for them and had fellowship with them after the service that evening. All of them were Latvians. I wrote down their addresses to visit them afterwards

One woman did not come to the next service but came to the last service. She came to argue and complain. She came and told us that we had deceived her, that we haven’t told her that this was a Baptist church. She also ordered to delete her name from the book with her address and telephone number. We pointed to the poster which said that “We preach the Christ crucified” and at the end of the poster there is a line saying “Baptist church “Light of Gospel”.  The women said” Delete my name any way; I thought that this was an orthodox church”. I met her after some days when I went to the store. She tried to make me understand that it is bad to attend our church and that we are not Christians and so on, she was holding a bottle of alcohol in her hand and was drunk. There were not many people coming to the following two services. I still think that our services will leave traces. We have planned to have small groups to carry on the work that we started this summer with teenagers and youth. Fro this reason I have lead one day long seminar for the leaders of those small groups, there will also be the youth from the church “Voice of Gospel”. I was preaching about the main principles of leading small groups. I was talking also about the purpose and the methods, I was basing my teaching on the program of “Omega” which has helped me much in my ministry.  I was sharing my personal experience and the youth was very interested in what was said. Another question is about the ways how they are going to apply it in their ministry. We decided to dedicate one more evening to practical lessons about leading small groups.

As I was taking very active part in the ministry with teenagers at summer camps of the church “Voice of Gospel” then I really think that I should help them with the work with those teenagers from the summer camps. I was born and have grown up in that church as well. I was leading all the services at the week and on Sundays during the last month.

We have already started to get ready for new school year at our Sunday school. I have visited a seminar for the teachers of Sunday schools which was carried out in Riga on one of the Saturdays of the last month. The seminar was held by the organization called “The Society of Children’s Evangelization”. We had a wedding in August. Svetlana and Roman got married in our church. Svetlana is a member of our church but she works in Riga, and Roman is a member of the church “Salvation Temple” in Riga. That was the first time I was leading a wedding and it was an amazing occasion for me as well.

The biggest joy was that roman and Svetlana are a new family blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ. A year ago Roman just started making his first steps into the Christian’s life but today he is already baptized and is a very happy man. The wedding was held in our church where the whole church was present and there were also many guests who took part in it.  At the moment Svetalana and Roman live in Riga but their life is in the hands of the Lord. I have started thinking about the changes that could be made in the way of work with the teenagers of our church. I am not satisfied with the work that we have done before as I am not really satisfied with the number of teenagers we have in our church right now. I have spent two weeks of August just resting. I had a lot of work to do at home, so I decided to use that time to do all that work for my family needs.

Plan for September: New school year at or Sunday school. We are also planning to have a holiday and rest for the whole church. The next holiday is the holiday of Harvest next month