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.