Baltic Church Planting

I want to start my report form gratefulness to the Lord for His miracles.   

I had a plan to start a musical group with the children and teenagers of our church and for this purpose we needed musical instruments that would also serve during the services. So, this month we have already bought drums. It is a miracle for us. Some time ago one American team visited our church and they say our children’s group and decided to collect some money for us, and so we bought the drums.    

I also want to give thanks to the Lord for the course “Navigator 2:7” that we have started at our church. The material of the course helps the readers to read the Bible more, to meditate and draw conclusions. There is a family that has just come to Christ, the husband’s name is Ivan Fedorovich and his wife’s name is Velta.  They are not young any longer but are very different from others by their active mood during the course.  Regularly attend the training and try to come to the service every time they are not at work. When Velta came to our church the first time, we started to pray about her husband. Ivan was drinking very badly that time. The wife invited him to church but it happened so that she had to work that day and was not able to come. I was glad to see her husband coming to our church. Later he confessed that there were doubts that day whether to come to church or not to, but he said to himself that he had to come because he had promised to his wife. So, he came in spite of his closest person not being with him. This continues also now. If Velta has to work, Ivan keeps coming without her to all the trainings and to the services too.  For Christmas we are preparing a program where the Sunday school is going to sing songs, to show some skits, and to read poems. There are some problems with the preparation of the problem, because Sveta had to take care of her ill mother and she herself also had some problems with her health.  There is still some time left, so I hope that we will fulfill the task that we want to. Ljuda will be serving instead of Sveta, and I hope to manage everything on time.

I have already written that we want to reform our Sunday school, by this I mean the program and the process of the lessons at our Sunday school on Sundays.  This is still our desire, and we see changes not only in children but also in the service in general. We see how children have changed during this last month, they obey more. There is an atmosphere of a family present during our services. At the end of every lesson at our Sunday schools, we read some children story, and the children enjoy it very much. They sit on the chairs and the sofa and listen to their leader who reads the story. We saw how wonderful it is when we love each other as members of a family. So, now we have come to a point whether there is a need to lead our children’s services on Sundays instead of Saturdays, because if we do so we loose what we have now. May be we will have a period when we have meeting on both days and then we will see how to be. The leaders will have a lot of things to do.  Please, pray for this, as we do not want to loose what we have already gained during these years of our Sunday school.

The meetings with the leaders of other churches that I wanted to organize have not happened yet. I have talked to Martinshs Balodis, he is the one with whom I have closer relations than with the others. He was interested in this but unfortunately there are no results yet. I think I have to be more strict and concrete concerning this issue. Martinsh once told me that he is glad that I give him ideas. There are many people who are ill this month from our church.  This is some kind of a period when people are ill. There were only a few people during the services on the working days. I had to lead the service alone on Sundays, but usually Peteris helps me. Our family also felt sick. All our children we both with my wife were ill. But the illness was not very serious. Our younger child Timoty had very serious problems with his health. He had very high temperature. We were very sad as we did not see any recovery for a long time. Thanks the Lord, now everyone is fine, and people come to church.

We are very glad to see sister Ljuda among us. She was not coming to church for a very long time, she has experienced a spiritual crisis. We were praying for her, and visited her several times, and were also calling her regularly. She has not been with us already for a year, but now she is with us. She is very active at our sisters’ meetings and also at the Sunday services. We see that her spiritual life is alive again.

Plan for December: to carry our Christmas program at church and an orphanage, to carry out an evangelization for teenagers, and a winter camp for teenagers.