I know I’m a little behind, but this is a re-cap of month three and the ministry we did there at the baptist church. I’m sure you know this is the month that Lori got malaria and the same month that we posted our team blog (since then we have done a whole other month of service together and then went through team changes- but I’ll get to that later)
Our time in Latvia was spent in a town called Daugavpils. We worked with the baptist church there teaching an English course 6 nights a week. Our contacts Vova and Marina, recognize that there is not a very positive view on the church and not everyone is going to want to just walk in and give it a chance. Because of this they have a great passion for finding practical ways of reaching out to people on the streets and just getting to know them. They are both skilled in English and teaching and they use those skills to start relationships and share the love of Jesus by example. So basically our goal for the month was to meet people, make friends, teach English, and just be an example. Once we established relationships with our students we would invite them to church or to a Sunday evening gathering where we would sing worship songs and hang out.
Our first week we basically went out to different high-traffic areas and just handed out fliers and invited people to come to the class. We went to the University, to the town square, the malls, and cafe’s just inviting people and trying to gage what level of English people spoke so we knew how to plan.
We ended up having 3 classes: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Marina would have lesson plans for us and we would meet with her each day to prepare before class. A lot of our students ended up being church members who wanted to learn, but we did have several people come who we had just invited on the streets. We learned a lot about ministry that month and what it looks like. I know that I personally tend to think of ministry as sharing the gospel with those who have never heard. However ministry can take many other forms. We were able to inspire and empower those who were already in the church and also encourage and care for our contacts, whom we grew to love like family.
Even though the month may not have looked like what we expected it to a lot of the time, we were still able to all grow and learn a lot. When Lori got sick we had to figure out how to get her the best care and deal with being apart from her for a big part of the month, and also learning how to pick up take charge in the ministry when she was gone and our team leader See Eun was with her. We each grew a lot individually, but we also solidified ourselves as Team F.I.E.R.C.E. and were able to go deeper with each other than ever before.
Stay tuned for a recap of our fourth month in Latvia, and an update on team changes and the start of month five!
Also as an update: I am SO CLOSE to being fully funded!! I only have a little less that 2,000 to go- which is due by July. Again all your support and prayers have been a blessing to me so far, and I’m excited to see God to continue to work in all of our lives! Please continue to feel free to message me or facebook/email me with any questions or prayer requests. Thank you!!
