Hello,
First of all we would like to thank you for your prayers. I will write more details later, but just want to say that this outreach was clearly led by God and your prayers were heard.
Main facts:
International Christian Social Project was held Feb. 26 – March 4, 2012 in Jekabpils, Latvia
We had a team of 315 people from 21 nations
We unloaded 3 trucks of clothing and food
We made 1375 food bags
We gave out clothing for 1455 people
We gave truckload of bedding, hygiene accessories and clothes for Jekabpils prison
360 children and 64 adults took part from children programs
265 youth took part of youth programs
27 people took part of program for people with mobile disabilities
286 prisoners and guards took part of prison programs
898 people took part of evening programs (our team included)
473 took part of Love Feast (our team included)
181 people took part of concert
We gave out 1211 food bags during house visits and other bags differently
304 people accepted Christ during the week
Kaspar testimony:
Our team wanted to see some real God’s miracle, especially that a day before, lot of people was not at homes. So we visited the address what was next in turn and there were one man in middle age – rough man, not shaved and strong built body. He was short with answers, but enough polite to invite us inside the apartment. He said that he goes to the church, prays and reads the Bible. But he has never heard about personal relationship with Jesus. As conversation goes on, it was possible to see that his face expressions began to change. He had tears in his eyes, but he did everything to hide it. After about 30 minutes conversation he was ready to give his life to the Christ.
Evelyn testimony:
It was my 6th time to be in this project leadership team and if I had a job title it would be Human Resources Manager. My task during the preparation was to be registrar and communicator for Latvians. During project me and my team was busy with making teams, sending them out to Jekabpils, hearing reports back, collecting statistics and making follow-up list.
I had really hard time before the outreach. I was so much under the stress that I knew I would not be able to work effectively if I will not get help. I asked people inside and outside of outreach team to pray for me. On Monday we started to make teams. It was not the easy task, because sometimes we even did not understand is the name in list male or female nor did we know some people age. We worked much shorter time like we usually have done, but surprisingly more work got done. Tuesday afternoon all the 70 teams were ready. We knew that Thursday and Friday 20 people are going to visit Jekabpils prison, but we had no idea who they will be. We thought that we will need to re-make many teams. Wednesday morning we got the list of people going to prison. When we marked all the people in teams, we realized that we do not need to make any changes. All the prison team members were put so well into teams, that if we took them out, all the teams were still functional. We just needed to find one Latvian translator for one team and this was all the change we needed to do. It was clearly God who had done the teams not us. I also have never been so calm, able to work 110% and able to solve the problems and challenges really quick. (One man said really funny way that I had really quick processor 😉 ). Thank you so much for the prayers! It was God who changed me for the week, because usually I am totally opposite person.
Rasmus testimony:
I had really great 8 days with granny and aunt family at Hiiumaa, Estonia. It was so good to play with my cousins and their dog every day. But I was jumping from joy when mummy and daddy came and I was happy to come back at home with them.
After the outreach:
This year we worked together with church planting team. After the outreach we gave them the list of approx. 200 names with people who got saved. 13th of March leader of the team writes: We had Love Feast here in Jekabpils last Saturday. We had food and spaces just for 90 persons, but 115 persons came. And other 40 people went away, because we are still learning how to feed people, as Jesus did it. On this Sunday we are expecting about 50 people to come. So, we got lots of testimonies, worship and prayers. I heard two more testimonies from people here, when I called to them. One is about blood pressure – somebody from Mission prayed for lady. Pressure is OK now, and she doesn’t take any medicines anymore. Another one is about job. Again, somebody prayed about job providing, and that lady has a job now!
God is in work in Jekabpils!
Please keep praying for this town.
Blessings,
Evelyn, Kaspars and Rasmus