Baltic Church Planting

The biggest excitement of the whole month was Ivan’s and his wife’s Velta’s  and Dzintar’s repentance.  I have already written to you about Ivan and Velta’s family but I haven’ yet written anything about Dzintars. He has just recently come to our church. One Sunday I saw him in our church. He had black eyes, his face was full of bruises and it was very obvious that he has had a very stormy and violent weekend. I got acquainted with him, and I found out that he is 24 years old and that he has just come out of prison, where he had spent 2 years the last time. 10 years of his 24 he has spent in prison. From his story I found out that he had started thinking about the Lord already in prison, when one of his acquaintances had been writing letters to him and sending him some religious literature. This young lady’s name is Sveta, and she is attending our church now. Dzintars had already tries to change in prison, but it did not work. One Sunday after the prison he came to our church and was praying to the Lord before the whole church and was asking for forgiveness for all his sins. A week before that, Ivan and Velta did the same in the church. The whole church was so very excited about all these events that they had tears in their eyes. Somebody called Aleksey and told about the repentance in the church, and Aleksey was so very glad and happy that he was yelling “Alleluia”, and was even happier than we the witnesses of the event at the church. He was so very glad because Ivan is his neighbor and he was the slave of alcohol, and everybody knew how he was just dying because of it. Later, his wife Velta told us that her mother was a Christian born from above, and Ivan’s grandmother also was an orthodox. Here we are witnesses of the answers to grandmother’s prayers for her grandchildren and mother’s prayers for her children.

In two weeks I was meeting with Dzintars every morning in the church, we were reading the Bible, spending time in meditating, and were also praying with him. During that period of time Dzintars learnt to pray and I was answering to all the questions he was interested in. In a few other weeks the issue of his documents was settled and he had to wait for an apartment. We were meeting till the moment when Dzintars found a job. Now he is working and we do not have time to meet for the prayer and fellowship time that we had before. The continuation of our meetings is Navigator 2:7 program. I offered to those three people to undergo this course, as that program in for strengthening people in faith, and training their discipline and growth in the knowledge of the Bible. 7 people decided to attend this course, three of those are Ivan, Velta and Dzintars, 2 other members of our church, one candidate to a member of our church and one person from “Voice of Gospel” church.

And Sveta is a candidate to a member of our church. Sveta with her father, mother and sister came to the evangelization for children that we carried out this summer. They are form Pentecostal church “Emmanuel”. After some time, Sveta claimed her desire to be a member of our church, but the rest of her family went back to “Emmanuel”. At the meeting of the members of our church we decided to give Sveta a chance to think about her decision till the New Year, and to grow in it. She has already started working with the children of our Sunday school, and she is preparing a program for Christmas with them. We have decided to learn some songs with children, so we meet once a week. Sveta has musical education, but what is more and really important is that she has a desire to serve, and she is good at doing it with children. The church “Voice of Gospel” has given us practically a new keyboard, which means that we will be able to fulfill all our plans concerning the program for Christmas. I also dream to have our own musical instruments so that our children and teenagers could pay those. I think those could be drums and electrical guitars. In October, we had doctor Donald R. Clary here with us, he was giving lectures. We spent two evening together where we were talking about the fundamental Christian truth. It was a wonderful time for all of us. This month I have also met some other pastors of Baptist churches. We were discussing different questions, and also there were ideas about meeting for common prayer on regular bases. There are two pastors who agreed to meet with me for common prayer meetings. The aim of our meetings is to have unity about the issue of the mission of the church, about the desire to reach unbelievers, and to join of forces for planting new churches. We are very glad that sisters’ meeting has again started. More sisters have started attending it. One of the forms of this ministry is visiting people at their homes, and this has certainly given a positive affect. The sisters have felt unity more showing their care about other sisters, for whom love is not some kind of abstraction but real deeds, and real people. In October I spent two days in a seminar where the pastors were taught how to reach teenagers through rangers’ ministry. They taught how to be a leader for the teenagers in all the situations of life. My biggest desire is still to work with teenagers, that is why, I attended this seminar. This year I also plan to carry out an evangelization for teenagers, and as a continuation of the evangelization, I want to organize a winter camp in Ergli, there is a skiing base in Ergli, it is after Riga. I plan to do this for the teenagers of our region, and brother Zhenia will be helping me in this ministry. More than a year ago Zhenia had a very serious crisis in his Christian life, and he went back to his old sins. A very serious spiritual war was going on for this soul. Now Zhenia has got back his relations with the Lord and wishes to reach teenagers. He lives in Karoste and he knows many teenagers, and many teenagers know him, so it is an advantage.

Plans for November: Preparations for the evangelization, Christmas program, “Navigator 2:7”, prayer meetings with the pastors.