Last Week before Coming Back to Corvallis

Last week or so…

Wednesday The Youth meeting was very good. We changed the structure a bit, decided to serve dinner first, and most importantly, prayed together as a team about an hour before we started. Kaspars again did a great job of teaching the lesson.

Weekend Went with Kaspars to the Baptist Congress meetings in Riga on Friday. It was good to hear the plans and dreams for church planting, training pastors and reaching out to the youth of Latvia. I went as a representative of the Tilza Baptist Church and appreciated the prayer times, worship, lectures, videos, a great dinner etc.

Matt Unwin came for a visit. He flew in from Ireland late on Friday. He enjoyed Riga on Saturday morning while I finished with meetings. He had rented a car so we then drove out to Tilza. It was fun to have someone new see the ministry. After church and Sunday School the next day he headed back to the airport to catch his plane.

Monday Well, our septic tank needs to be pumped again. Dan had said it would be about every six weeks and sure enough, here it is 6 weeks since the last time. Not sure what I would do without the others to help make these things happen. Someone needs to be here so we can pay the guy. He will probably come on Thursday.

Getting all my things packed. I leave here on Friday morning and will spend the night in Riga. Fly out to Germany on Saturday and then to Portland on Sunday. Where has the time gone?

Wednesday Another good Youth Meeting. I really think the changes we’ve made are helping. We are continuing to teach through the book of Acts with an emphasis on the changes made in Peter’s life. Kyle Jones took the bus out to visit for a couple of days.

Thursday Helped a bit with the kindergarten English classes. Aija and Liga then fixed a delicious, amazing lunch – with guests (Kaspars, Daniels, Dave and Kyle). What a wonderful send off.

Week 9

Nothing really typical about this week. Tuesdays we normally meet with the Ergli group for Youth outreach planning but since Kaspars went to Riga on church business and Dustin’s group couldn’t make it, we decided to start planning the Wednesday night meeting instead. Dave came over and the four of us spent quite a bit of time digging into the life of Peter. We are going to talk about him in two stages – before Pentecost and after.

Dan and Katie have gone to the US for three weeks. Dan’s brother got married two weeks ago and so they went for that and to spend time with family.

The Youth meeting ended up having less leadership than normal and the teaching didn’t seem to flow very well. We need to plan a little better for next week. The really good thing is that relationships are being built and some are responding to the Gospel.

On Friday I was visiting with Kaspars and Liene and mentioned that I need to get an x-ray for my Residence Permit. Typically, Kaspars said, “Do you want to go to Balvi and do it today?” I said sure – and off we went to the Balvi hospital. The receptionist told us where to go. The technician told me what to do and the whole thing took less than 15 minutes and cost about $5.00!! I’m supposed to go back and pick up the results next week.

On Sunday Aija and Liga met with two of the girls from the boarding school and began to have a follow-up Bible Study. The girls seemed very interested.

Dave left on Thursday for Liepaja and it is so unusual not having him around. Most of the time he leads the music for worship on Sunday mornings but we had to make do without him this time. There were only a few of us who came to the service but Kaspars did an excellent job of teaching the Scripture as usual.

Two weeks from today (Sunday) I will be back in Corvallis.