Nancy Kelley comes to visit

During the second week of language classes Nancy Kelley came out to Tilza for a visit. She was able to get a ride with the students from Riga and got to know a bit more about them on the 4-hr drive out here - and then back!

I was really looking forward to spending some time with Nancy

and was delighfully encouraged by her cheerful and careful

listening skills. Our time of prayer together brought brought much calm assurance of the Lord's working in my life and the ministry here.

Nancy also blessed me by taking the material I had over the window and made it into curtains!! She is quite good at this sort of thing and very fast.

She even offered to make a few additions to the curtains in the Yellow House and so took those back to Riga with her to finish the project there.

As a special blessing (for her and us), Nancy participated in the Latvian classes with us.

Second Latvian Class Begins-January 23

I am now taking the second "term" of our Latvian class here in Tilza. We also have three folks coming out from Riga each week. the schedule is the same as last Fall. We have class on Wed, Thurs, Fri from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. We have been doing some review and some new material but no matter what it is, Katie seems to come up with creative ways to present the information and for us to practice. This time I am using these materials when I meet with my language helper, Kristine, and sometimes when I go visit my neighbor, Inguta.

I need a lot of practice listening to people talk. We do have some listening drills during class but I also try more and to understand what Kaspars is saying during the sermon on Sundays and I try not to "tune out" when others are speaking Latvian with each other. We also got our TV hooked up so now I can also listen to the news which is quite helpful.

Mission Days-January 10-12, 2008

Latvia’s third annual Mission Days took place the second week of January at the Agenksalns Baptist Church in Riga. Some 200 attended, most younger than 25, representing Lutherans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, Reformed, Catholic and Adventist churches. The theme, “Blessed to be a Blessing” was taken from Genesis 12 where God clearly shows his heart for the nations.

I had the opportunity to explain our "prayer room" for the Mission Days conference. Even though the room in the tower of Agenskalns Baptist church was quite cold, one could look out over the city of Riga and pray for those who are yet to know Jesus. Also, on the walls of the room were reminders to pray for people groups around the world. Individual prayer requests were brought to the table in the room and any who came in could also pray for those. It was a very encouraging experience for me.

Let Me Catch Up!!

So many things have happened these last couple of month and now I need to see if I can tell what's been going on!!!

Dutch ministry to Gulbene

During the last week of December and the first week of January, a church from Amsterdam sent 23 short-term missionaries to join with 22 youth and leaders from the Madona Baptist church to share the Love of God with the people in the small city of Gulbene. Our team hosted these folks here in Tilza. They divided into small teams each day to visit homes and pray for people -- and leaving some candy. When they found folks in need of food they also delivered a bag of groceries. Each household was then invited to an outreach event at the end of the week. Songs, skits, testimonies and a gospel presentation were a part of this event.

Most of this time I stayed in Tilza and helped watch kids which was very "behind the scenes" work but quite necessary because the young ones couldn't be with the others every day. The days were quite cold - snow and ice. In the evening the youth went ice skating on our little pond.

Here are a couple of pictures of the event.

A whole truck load of clothes were shipped to Gulbene the week before the outreach took place. Clothes were given out on two of the days. The Dutch folks also brought blankets and other gifts for the Gulbene hospital. One day some of the people visited kids and older folks who were in the hospital.

The teams seemed to work well together and in the evening we heard reports of each days' opportunities.

Aija, Liga,, Kaspars, Dan and Katie all helped with translation for teams and other work as needed. For example Katie went with one of the young girls (and her mother) to the Balvi hospital because she had gotten quite ill. The girl ended up staying there for 5 days - not a fun thing at all.