Baltic Church Planting

            December is one of the hottest month in the year, in spite of it being a winter month. All my helpers and me myself were involved in carrying out all the activities and serviced that we had planned before. The first service carried out by us was the evangelization for teenagers. We had invited a musical band from Vangazhi. They gave a positive answer to our invitation and came to us, there were 9 people in their band. There were not many people during our evangelization but the hall was almost full.  There were adults and children from our Sunday school, and the youth from the church "Voice of Gospel". All in all the purpose of our evangelization was fulfilled; the musicians were playing and singing their songs and shared a sermon with the people. But I wanted to do after the evangelization did not work. The next stage after the evangelization was to be a winter camp, but we were not able to carry in out, as there was no snow. The program of the camp included many activities connected with snow. So we did not carry it out as the whether had its surprises for us.

            The children Christmas service was more successful. There were different parts of our service, we had a puppet theatre and a skit, and also some games and of course the gifts for children. The presents were in a traditional way containing many delicious and sweet things. During the preparation of the program we faced some challenges. Sveta, who prepared a program with the children of Sunday school, first fall ill, and then stopped attending not only the practices of Sunday school but the church services too. Before Christmas, sister Luda tried her best to help to do all the things that sister Sveta did while she was coming to the practices. As a result, we had wonderful music during our services and we were able to sing Christmas songs with our children. We wanted to carry out the program at the orphanage but we did not have strength and the program was not ready for them. I talked to the director of the orphanage and we came to a conclusion that we will carry out a program after the winter holidays.

            The most impressing event of the month was the Christmas Eve at church. That evening was different from others and at the same time there was nothing really different.  I think that the atmosphere of that evening was different. Simplicity, warmth, openness, and these are not all the qualities that were present during that evening. We had a real family dinner and games, songs and gifts. We were and we are very happy.

            The first practice was carried out in December. It was very interesting, in spite of being only two people there, me and my son Maxim. We could make some steps forward but we missed a person who had better knowledge in music, so were playing some familiar songs and the songs written by Maxim. We have a prayer request to pray about a person who could help us with this musical service. This is our need and we pray for it. Maxim comes to church and learns to play the drams, and I plan to have lessons with those teenagers that would like to play in our musical band. This is the way I plan to prepare the young generation for the service at church.

            In December I had a meeting with pastor Mike Bryan from Smolensk. He has a desire of coming and serving in Latvia and we were discussing the opportunities of cooperation with him. Olesja who was serving in our church for a year is from his church.

            One organization has given 700 Ls to our church fro developing our children's service. The organization got his money in one charity activity that was carried out by the embassy of Latvia in Washington. Different traditional Latvian souvenirs were sold during that event. People who came to that activity were told about Liepaja and about our region Karosta where we serve. That way people were able to get to know about our needs and to take part in meeting those. We bought a computer and we plan to buy a digital photo camera. We were praying for this already for a long time, and we are so very grateful that the Lord has answers to our prayers.

            I carried out all the services I had planned for December. I was very excited particularly for our lessons of Navigator 2:7. All the students attend these lessons with much interest.

            Our family got acquainted with the neighbors that live not far away from us. The owner of the house Andris had a serious illness and now he is in a wheel chair. We often see how he moves on our street. Once our children helped him to get home as he was very tired from a long road. It was very strange for him to see other children helping him. Then my wife visited them and got to know Andris' wife. On Christmas we prepared a package with food and a gift for their grandchild who lives with them. We also helped them with cloths as they live very poorly, just on the pension that Andris' wife gets. We told them about our church and invited them to our church, this way we became friends with them.

Plan for January: We plan to carry out the service at the orphanage, we also plan to start our lessons at Sunday school after the holidays, and we have a desire to develop our musical service.