Watch and Pray

"With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints" Ephesians 6:18

1. Pray for our home fellowship in Ogre as we finish teaching Acts and Mark this month that we'd all be built up.
2. Pray for the lost that we may be reaching them with the gospel on our Friday afternoon evangelism in Riga.
3. Pray for more laborers to be called to the harvest, as Brenten goes to speakers week at the Bible college in Hungary November 10-14.
4. Pray for our families heath, as it gets coooold in Latvia, the kids are starting to get sick again. Healing.
5. Pray for our furlough November 25-December 29, that God prepare us to be used at CCMB and CC Santa Cruz and with our families.

Team Monterey's Latvian Mission

My home church Calvary Chapel Monterey Bay has sent us 3 gifted men to help us with our mission in Latvia for 2 weeks. I am excited to see my dear friends again and I know that they will be a blessing to those they serve as they have already encouraged us. Let me introduce you to our guests:

1. Mitch Sorensen - the evangelist. He has had a street witnessing ministry in downtown Monterey, California for many many years and has been equipping other believers to join the team that goes out every Friday and Saturday night. Mitch will teach a class on preparation for evangelism here tonight for Latvian believers who want to learn how to share their faith. Mitch works at the Monterey Airport and was able to score some discounted tickets and brought us care packages and thousands of tracts in Latvian, Russian and English to share. He use to come to our home Bible study when we lived in Marina, California, now we are happy to host him and our other two friends, Dennis and Frank.
   
2. Dennis Vaus - The teacher. He comes to us with missions experience in Japan, the Philippines and Russia. He has been the leader of our care team in Monterey as also teaches a home Bible study in Salinas, California. A gifted teacher, I asked him to teach for me Last night at our Ikskile home fellowship, and he did a great job encouraging us all to "Abide in Christ" from John chapter 15.
   
3. Frank Amador - the prayer warrior. He has been a long time prayer supporer with great faith, compassion and vision. God's hand has been on this humble brother and I have counted on him for many years to keep us lifted in prayer. Now he is very excited to be with us on his first international mission. We are happy he is here and able to rejoice with us seeing the fruit of his prayers together.
   

So far, the guys have gotten settled, and are gradually overcoming jet lag, sleeping about 5 hours at night and 2 hours in the day. For the rest of our time together we will have morning and evening times of evangelism with rest time in between. I will be posting more stories, pictures and video soon, but for now you can see pictures at their blog: http://kathieanddennisvaus.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

Vai tu esi labs cilvēks?

Vacation Bible School

This is our second year doing VBS in Ogre with a team from Tennessee. I have been the music guy as well as overseeing all the translators. The first two days went well, setting a foundation of who Jesus is, we are praying that the kids will continue to be receptive in the last three days as we challenge them with the rest of the gospel, calling them to become disciples of Jesus Christ.

2 saved today

Today, I went out in the center of Ogre to share the gospel with Agnese. She is a good translator with a heart for evangelism who is faithfully serving the Lord. Below is a picture of us on an outreach.

So today we shared the gospel in Ogre with about a dozen different people and two girls received it, turning from sin and putting their faith in Jesus to be saved and begin a Christ-centered life. We prayed that God would lead us to people who were open and give us the words that they need to hear. The two girls are about 16 years old, we walked up to them and introduced ourselves and asked if we could ask them some spiritual questions. They were very open, one didn't believe in God at first and the other believed He exists but didn't know who He is. I can't explain it here exactly as it came out earlier but we shared how God created man good but the problem is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) but that Jesus came to reconcile us to God by taking the punishment for our sins on the cross (Ephesians 2:16) and He rose from the dead so that God could freely give eternal life to all who believe. We also shared what it means to become a Christian and about the Christ-centered life that begins when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in born again believers. After sharing the gospel, we asked, "Do you believe Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead? They said "yes" Then I asked them, is there was anything keeping you from receiving Jesus as Lord and Savior? No. Do you want to repent and pray now? Yes. So we sat down at a park bench and I shared an example prayer that I could lead them in or they could pray in their own words. They wanted to repeat the prayer after me, so we prayed together. Then I asked if they understood everything they prayed and they said yes. Good. Then I encouraged them to go to a good Bible teaching church in order to grow. I gave them my contact info and told them about our church in Ikskile and they said that they would go Sunday. We rejoiced and said goodbye. So praise the Lord and please keep our new sisters, Jolanta and Sintija in your prayers.



Also praise the Lord for Ieva, our new Latvian teacher and one of our translators, and her sister (above photo) who have been coming to Sunday services and are being blessed by the simple verse by verse studies through the Bible. May the Lord keep these services "real" and deepen our fellowship with these sisters.

Cultural Bonding and Witnessing in Riga

Besides hockey fanaticism, one of the cultural highlights of Latvia is the Latvian Song festival where a choir of 50,000 people is formed. Tickets sold out a few minutes after they went on sale but I was able to see a qualifier performance of a couple top choirs, thanks to our Latvian teacher, Zane, who sings in a group called "Balsis" (voices). Here are 2 of the songs I filmed last Friday.



Since I was in Riga on Friday evening, after the performance, I went out to share the gospel in the central park and train station. Our friend Agnese was there to pray and translate for me, but it turned out most the people we talked to either spoke Russian or English so she didn't translate too much. Many were open to talking with us until we brought up Jesus. One homeless woman we walked up to told us she was planning to commit suicide, she didn't ask for money so I think she was serious, however when I offered to share about eternity and how to be saved, she didn't want to hear it anymore! On the other extreme, there was drunk man we stopped in the park who wanted to hear how to be saved and thanked us for the gospel tract. But most were just out to have a "good time" and did not want Jesus to interfere with that. On our train trip back to Ogre, I had an interesting talk with Agnese about culture and faith in Latvia. There is much to learn about this culture, but one thing that is true of every culture is that we all need Jesus to save us from the corrupting influences of the world. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16-17) and there is power in the name of Jesus (Philippians 2).

English Club news

Our English Conversation Club continues to reach out to new people. Tonight, will have our monthly movie tonight, but we will not meet at our house as usual, but we will meet at Trisvieniba Baptist church along with the youth group to watch the film "A venture in faith" about Calvary Chapel's history and philosophy. Here is a clip with the testimony of Lonnie Frisbee, one of the hippies that God saved during the Jesus people movement in Southern California in the late 1960's and 70's.



We started the English Conversation Club last August in order to help young people practice what they are learning in School and to compare world views on different topics. We have discussed many topics from the alphabet and numbers to a Christian hard rock group "Flyleaf" that is popular here.






We will continue to meet Tuesdays at 6:00 PM as long as it is helpful to those coming. Those who come regularly have improved in their communication skills and becoming more fluent. It is also a nice opportunity for us to bond with their culture and share our faith. Praise God for the English Club. For more info go to www.englishconversationclub.blogspot.com or www.angliski.wordpress.com

Tas Kungs patiesi augšāmcēlies!

The Lord is really risen!

Thank you all for praying for our Resurrection Sunday service in Ikšķile, Latvia. We had a great turn out, over 100 people came to the culture house for our Christian concert and evangelistic message. There were even a handful of kids that enjoyed the children's ministry. Lena was part of the children's ministry team as I preached the gospel to the adults from 1 Corinthians 15.

I felt the Spirit give me boldness to preach the gospel, why Jesus died for us on the cross and how His resurrection is significant to our salvation. I preached about sin according to the law, about God's righteous judgment, about what Christ did to save us, and about the need to respond to the gospel with faith and repentance, but no one wanted to pray to receive Christ as there Savior and Lord. However afterward I talked with two teary eyed teenage girls who were invited by a grandmother in our church, it seems one was convicted but was not ready to commit to following Christ and the other is a professing Christian concerned for her friends eternity. I am kind of discouraged that no one responded right then and there but I am encouraged that so many heard the gospel and seeds were sown. I am reflecting on how I could have done a better job as a sower of seed, but I also know that only God is able to make it grow and the response also has to do with the state of the hearers' hearts (as in the parable of the 4 types of soils). Perhaps it is better that they didn't spring up at this first opportunity, they need time to count the cost of discipleship. Perhaps the double edged sword of God's word was tearing up soil of their hearts so that the seed of God's word would take deeper root.

Let us pray that the enemy doesn't steal the memory of this message but that God's Spirit will continue to convict the unbelieving world of sin, righteousness and judgment concerning Jesus Christ. So at the end of the day, after all the effort that went into the event, I am disappointed there were apparently no conversions and I wish I was a better communicator but then I look up at my God with assurance that His word will not return void (Isaiah 55:10-11) and our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). Please also pray for us to have God's perspective as we prepare for our 2nd Sunday at the culture house in Ikskile. Thanks, good night. - Brenten

True Love Evangelism

Something about the video... this is the view from my bedroom of the main walking street in Ogre sped up 4 times. I am sharing the gospel with a few russian speaking boys around 16 years old. This is actually the third time I have shared with them since I met them in the summer. They were open but not ready to commit to follow Christ. One thing I like about the video is how you can see all the people that walk by all the time, which is a big motivation for evangelism.

true love evangelism.wmv