I am obviously behind in blogging and wanted to catch up- SO, Right now I am currently in Thailand (month 8) and I hope to get my blog all caught up by the end of this month. So now, I’m going to share with you about Estonia!
Estonia was team Tenacious’s first month together, and it was a pretty good one. We lived in a town called Voru and our contacts were Cuzan and Clarien Vandeburg (you can check their ministry page and see pictures here: https://www.facebook.com/CovenantlighthouseMinistries ) We worked with them leading and joining in on 3 different youth groups in the area as well as helping out at the church where we lived.
We got to help out with a church yard sale, and we passed out cupcakes with verses written in Estonian on them, we took down wallpaper and did some painting- and really just did a lot of building relationships with the youth.
Many Estonians, especially the younger generations have a mistrust for the church, and don’t feel it’s necessary. This makes it difficult for any youth group to get started, let alone attract new visitors. While it was refreshing to know that there were several churches with opportunities for youth in the region- all of them were very small and rarely had new people join. It was a hard month for us in that sense seeing a lot of the despair and hopelessness that a lot of the Estonian people experience, but not being able to get close enough to reach them. All the baltic states we visited seemed this way, but we felt the most emptiness while in Estonia.
One of the things that we were able to do- which I enjoyed a lot- was visiting the schools and talking with students in the English classes about America. We each shared a little about each of the states that we came from and how we ended up in Estonia. We always opened it up for questions and discussion, and many times that allowed us to share our personal testimonies with the kids and explain to them that it was because of our love for Jesus Christ that were travelling all over the world. Of course, being Americans coming to talk with junior high and high school students, they all got excited to meet us and wanted to know our facebook and instagram information 🙂 this led us to invite them to youth group and several of them actually showed up! It was great to see them come, even if it was just for the fact that they would get to talk more with the crazy Americans.
As Team Tenacious, we really started to figure out who we wanted to be as a team and we grew closer together throughout this month. We really had to learn to depend on the Lord and to arm ourselves with the armor of God, as we realized that the atmosphere of the country could bring us down very quickly.
One thing that our contacts are passionate about is youth. They know that the Church is not trusted so their vision is to open a coffee shop/ youth center where young people can hang out without feeling like religion is being forced upon them. They were currently still looking for a space to buy/rent when we left, so please continue to be in prayer for them and the ministry they are doing there.
Thank you!
– and don’t forget there will not be a Month 6- China post, so be sure and ask me about it when I get home 🙂
God Bless
