You know, when my first team got wind of the opportunity to do Unsung Heroes, I was intimidated. I was a little scared. What is Unsung Heroes? Well, it's a month on the World Race when your team does not have a "contact", a predetermined order of what your ministry is, where you stay, who you talk to, what your daily life looks like, what you eat, how you stay clean. It's all up to you… and ultimately, God. It is a month when you are supposed to rely completely on the provision of the Lord (kind of what your daily life should look like) 2 weeks in, and I can't get enough!
The purpose of Unsung Heroes is to find the hidden warriors for the kingdom, the men and women, the small groups and ministries that haven't yet had the spotlight shone on them. The mission of Unsung Heroes is to bring those people to the front and make them known. Simultaneously, we are hoping that these Unsung Heroes have the capacity and need to put future World Race teams to good use.
Enter Baltic School of Ministry, a tiny little bible school in the tiny little town of Ozolnieki, Latvia (at least I figured it was tiny because we were able to walk from one end of the town to the other in about 20 minutes). The school was started about 5 years ago by a husband and wife missionary team from Argentina. Argentina! Yeah, that's what I said. Daniel Pedraza and his wife have actually lived in Latvia for 16 years doing various missionary work when the Lord called them to start the Baltic School of Ministry.
Our story of Daniel and BSM are an intertwined and confusing story that has exploded almost since day one of being in Riga. We've met multiple, multiple people here in Riga, many of them young people (early 20's) who seemed to all be going to some bible school. With our net of contacts soon spanning several people over 2 or 3 churches, we had no idea that the bible school everyone was talking about was all the same thing. On Wednesday (3/12/14) Derek, Amanda and myself all visited BSM. Right away, we saw one of the students, Edwards, who we had met just days earlier (and translated for us) at Vilandes Baptist Church (the church we are living at!). Harry, and older gentleman from Manchester was teaching (yay, English!) and he was familiar with a pastor named Paul and his students whom we met and talked with at a Russian church called Word of Truth. The son of the pastor of that church attended the bible school as well. "All roads led to Rome", as it were, and in more ways than one, God was leading us to this bible school.
The bible school is small, with only about 20 students attending at a time. The school program is only 1 year long. Students live on campus for the year while calsses are in session. The school scrapes by, running on donation, voluntarism and the gracious provision of God. The students must pay their entire way through the program (the school is unable to provide scholarships). The teaching staff is a hodgepodge. One teacher (usually from out of country) comes to the school to teach for a week on some aspect of theology, and then leaves, to be replaced by another teacher for another week, and so on. The teachers come to the school, work and teach voluntarily. The teacher while we visited, Harry, whom we had the pleasure of speaking with briefly during our visit, actually lived on campus during the week with the students. In his mind, he wanted to live with the students rather than in a nice hotel, he wanted to eat with them, talk with them, impart life to them. During his week at BSM, Harry was teaching primarily on the history of the Pentecostal movement (and God's movement) through Latvia and the Baltic States, in general (the Baltic States being Estonia and Lithuania, in addition to Latvia). He desired to not only give the students a history lesson, but make the lesson come alive, give them something practical, relevant, memorable, lasting. He wanted the history of God moving in their country to make a lasting impression on them.
The students were lively. Derek, Amanda and I walked in on the last 20 minutes of their morning class. Harry was teaching in English, and two translators spoke to the class in Latvian and Russian. After the class, Daniel introduced us and invited the students to welcome us, and boy did they! Almost every student shook my hand and several of them just walked up to us, giving each one of us great big hugs. Their joy and enthusiasm was clear. The school was small and could not afford much, but they were happy, joyful, thankful. They were grateful for what little they had. They did not seem to focus on it. Their joy seemed familiar… oddly reminiscent of the figurative wave of joy I rode here to Latvia, all the way from Africa. They are on fire for Jesus.
After seeing the classes, meeting students, talking with the teacher, we got to sit down with Daniel and his wife, and learn more of their hearts. They told us how they started the school, how it doesn't have a lot of resources to spare, how little they have to work with, but year after year, students come, and it somehow continues to grow –ever so slightly. That's where we come in: offering the "manpower" of future World Race teams to assist in whatever needs BSM might have. Now you might be thinking that God helped us slam dunk this and we already have the plane tickets for the next WR crew to come help the school. Not quite.
Daniel and his wife are a God-lead and humble folks. Being from Argentina, being foreign to Latvia, instead of saying "Yeah, come on down!", they guided us to take our offer to "higher courts. We need to go talk to the bishop, who is, more or less, in charge of the Pentecostal Church in Latvia, as a whole. We could have looked at the day as a waste of time, waste of effort, but we got a unique look into Daniel's heart for the young people at his school. Daniel did not want to overstep his authority, and opened us up to an opportunity to make Adventures in Missions' name known in this area. How awesome is that?! Here I am, just some 28 year-old guy, somehow sitting in a random office in a bible school in Latvia, and now have the opportunity to spearhead, start and build new relationships with the church, the community and people of Latvia. Whoa. Daniel's concerns are simple: the name of Adventures in Missions is still essentially unknown here in Latvia, and before we go forging a path in the name of Jesus, we want people to know who we are, what we're about, what we're doing.
We now have scheduled a meeting with the bishop. Soon, we will talk with him, and see what God has in store for us (and AIM). At the end of our meeting with Daniel, I was so ecstatic. I had a gut feeling that once we talked to the Bishop, this whole scene we are on is going to blow up and we will have more opportunities and directions to go that we even know what to do with. I know that my God is all about relationship, so I can only assume that forging new relationships with the people of Latvia is a really good thing. What actually will happen, only God knows, at this point… but how exciting?
