You are invited! Tu esi ielūgts!

Tu esi ielūgts!

uz Angļu - Latviešu Bībeles Stundām

Kopā ar Amerikas Misionāriem

Katru svētdienu - 18:30

Ogrē, Brīvības ielā 30

Vairāk Informācijas atradīsi:

· http://www.calvarylatvia.com/

· 2 780 3318

„Jo mēs nesludinām paši sevi, bet Kristu Jēzu, To Kungu,

mēs paši esam jūsu kalpi, Jēzus sūtīti.”

2. Kointiešiem 4:5

You are invited to an English and Latvian Bible Study with American missionaries.

Every Sunday at 8:00 pm. Contact us for more information 2 780 3318

"For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord;

and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.' 2 Corinthians 4:5

New Prayer requests for July

For those of you who are committed to praying for us monthly or even daily, Thank you! Here are some new prayer requestes:

• For fruitfulness in all of our weekly activities especially Friday evangelism, Sunday Bible studies, Latvian language lessons (mon, wed, fri), Monday night prayer, Thursday fellowship, etc.
• For our family and our continued blessing and balance with ministry. Our wedding anniversary is 7/1/07, Lena's Birthday is 7/16/07.
• 7/7/07 wedding of Elina and Vadislav. This couple is from the Baptist church that we are helping at. Elina sings with me on the worship team, she is the one who is looking to my wife for wise counsel and she may be translating for me in September. Pray for a blessed Christian wedding and for us to be godly encouragement to them in their marriage.
• 7/8/07 Seminar on Evangelism for churches in Ogre. i have been asked by the Evangelical aliance be a speaker along with pastor Rufus (a missionary from Africa) to teach and equip believers from various churches who are interested reaching their city with the gospel. The goal is to show how evangelism is more of a lifestyle than a once a year program. Pray for my teaching in Russian. Pray for a good turn out and that God's word will be received and put into practice for the sake of the gospel.
• For preparations for the annual Bible Reading Marathon 8/4-8/7/07. For four days evangelicals team up to read the whole New Testament and Psalms in the central square. Pray for wisdom as churches are seeking to work together to proclaim the word of God in Ogre.
• 7/20/07 A missions team from America is coming to help us do VBS outside our house for the kids who are out on the streets while their parents work. Pray for kids to come to Christ and for us to be gracious hosts.
• 7/23/07 Steven and Teresa leave for Moldova. Pray that the remainder of their time with us and their church in Moldova to be blessed when they return. I will be street witnessing with Steven as much as possible while we have the chance.

Praise God for answered prayer

Praise God for sending more missionaries for the summer. God brought another missionary family to help us as we begin, Steven and Teresa Yeats, who were on our missionary team in Ukraine a few years ago. Now Steve is a pastor in Moldova but they had to be out of that country for 3 months because of Visa problems. So we are blessed to have their fellowship and help in the ministry from May through July.

Praise God for our Christian Latvian language teacher. We have started taking lessons 3 times a week for an hour and a half each. We hope to eventually become fluent because Latvian is the language that the majority of people speak because it is the national language. Learning it gives us credibility and a wider audience in this country. Our teacher is also a worship leader too, so she is teaching me some cool Latvian songs as well as Bible vocabulary.

Praise God for leading us in effective street witnessing. We started sharing the gospel on the streets every Friday night. We started preaching n Russian but one night God led us to use English and we found more Latvians were interested in speaking with us. Perhaps this is because it is the required second language in school, for a third language they can choose German or Russian. This is a great opportunity for the gospel and blessing for us especially since most young Latvians can speak well and they like to practice speaking English. We also hope to start an English speaking club at the library soon as another way of building relationships.

Praise God for the fellowship that is starting in our home. Our vision is to start a Calvary fellowship by inviting people to our home Bible study. The last 3 Sunday nights God has brought people to minister to. The first week 7 young men who we met when street witnessing. They were unbelievers but asked great questions were interested in hearing our testimonies. The second week 2 young women from the Russian Baptist church came to fellowship with us. And last week the Lord added a believer who can translate from English into Latvian so we can now invite more Latvians.

Hurdles for Missionaries: Residence Permits

Today is the day we have been preparing for for the last year. The sun rose sometime around 3 am, so by the time we got up at 8 the sun was blaring straight through the windows and into our eyes. We were motivated to get to the Latvian Embassy in Tallinn and I am glad we were early because there was already a line forming outside. It is hard to get a residence permit to live in Latvia, especially as missionaries because of all the documents that are required for each person in the family. For those of you who want to be long-term missionaries in Latvia, here's a list of all the documents you need (some of which had to be reissued, notarized and then authenticated in Sacramento or Washington DC with an international seal known as the "Apostille")

1. Completed applications for each member of the family (10 pages each).



2. Marriage certificate (with Apostille).



3. Children's birth certificates (with Apostille).



4. My certificate of ordination as missions pastor (with Apostille).



5. A letter that we are sent by Calvary Chapel (with Apostille).



6. A letter that we are invited by a church in Latvia.



7. A copy of the Latvian church's registration certificate.



8. A rental agreement for 1 year proving we have a place to live in Latvia.



9. A letter from a Latvian Bank that we have $8700 of support minimum in our account.



10. Letters from a Radiologist that took our X-rays verifying we don't have tuberculosis.



11. Color copies of our passports and Apostille documents so we could get the originals back.

Praise the Lord that our documents were received without any problem, so within 30 days we should receive our official permits to freely live, evangelize, make disciples, and plant churches in Latvia. This is the culmination of a year of preparation, 2 short term mission trips, relationship building, a lot of diligence, and investing of personal and donated money, but the fruit of the long term ministry that is beginning will abound to all our accounts for eternity. As one missionary said to us back in February 2006, "There are a number of hurdles to jump to get religious work residency permits in Latvia... there are some challenges, but they are not impossible ones."

Trip to Tallinn, Estonia

We are in Estonia for a couple days to apply for residence permits at the Latvian embassy. This trip is essential to our mission because we had to apply outside of Latvia before our visa free time is up. We had all the documents ready and we were excited to see the capitol of Estonia: Tallinn!

We drove up yesterday with the Yeats family in a borrowed minivan to Tallinn, a 5 hour trip. With the exception of a tired, crying kids and some crazy drivers, the trip went smooth, especially on the newly paved highway that ran North through the forest and along the Baltic coast. Steven drove and I navigated our way to the apartment I reserved online. Last night, after we got our kids settled in bed, I walked around scouting for the Latvian embassy and found their hours for visa issues were only 10am to 12 noon. Then I walked up to the top of the hill where the old town is. It looks like you stepped back in time 6 hundred years to explore narrow cobble stone streets and quaint buildings overshadowed by majestic cathedrals. Then I found probably the best view over the city and took pictures until the sun set around 11 PM - so late because of the summer solstice and because Estonia is so far north.

New Sunday night meeting

Tonight, we hosted our first weekly meeting for people who we met when street witnessing. Seven long-haired, 17 year old young men came with questions about what we believe and heard Steven and I share our testimonies from 8pm to 10:30pm. They actually spoke and understood English very well, so we were able to share freely how Jesus called us to himself. They listened intently and asked a lot of the same questions we asked ourselves before committing our lives to Christ. I think we related well to each other since I too was a long haired rocker in my late teens. I let them take turns playing my guitar in the background while we all talked seriously and ate cookies our wives brought out to us. They said they would come next week to begin learning what the Bible has to say and perhaps bring some girls so that our wives could share their testimonies too. Our meetings will start at 8pm after our kids go to bed, and it doesn't get dark until about 10:30 this far north. We might set up a circle of chairs right outside our front door like we did tonight, although we are thinking of buying a couch so that more people can comfortably sit inside where there are no bugs. Anyway, we are trusting the Lord to save some of these guys and to see them begin to live for Christ.