Greetings from Riga,
So many things have happened during the last couple of months that I decided to write two newsletters – one speaks about our ministry before moving to Riga and next one will speak about our ministry in YWAM Riga. Otherwise it would be a super long e-mail and not everybody loves to read so many words.
Ministry for people with disabilities
During the last two months in YWAM Valdemarpils, we continued small group ministry for people with disabilities. Kaspar also started to do physiotherapy for one of our small group members and Ailita’s strength started to improve; even that usually there is no improvement for person with muscle dystrophy. Because of his bachelor thesis, Kaspar will regularly do physiotherapy for more people with muscle dystrophy. This is a really good way to get to know more people. We also started more intensively to prepare for the camp for people with disabilities which at the moment is called „Challenge“ and will take part in Talsi Christian School from 29. of June still 5th of July. There are not all details in place yet, but sure there will be seminars, art workshop, rope course, fun, games, sport, fellowship, music etc. At the moment we have 17 participants, but our limit is 20. We do not have all of our staff (we need for example a chef and a medical person), but slowly things are working out. We have some problems with finances for the camp (it means, at the moment we do not have any), but we have written a project and hope that it would be at least partly covered. If you are interested to receive this project or to support this camp, please contact us.
International Christian Social Project in Balvi (close to Russian border), Latvia
There was a humanitarian and evangelisation project organized by YWAM Sweden, YWAM Latvia and local government from 24th of February still 3rd of March. My part in leadership was to find and registrate Latvian participants and help with paperwork. We had 127 participants (16 different nations: Estonia, Latvia, Iran, S-Korea, Norway, Australia, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Ghana, Zambia, America, Canada, Philippines, Germany and Sweden) teams with four-five people in it and sent them for different ministries. Because we had too less Latvian translators, around 30 local students from age 14-18 joined us. Most of them were non-Christians, but in the end of project many of them gave their heart to God and at least half of them have written to me asking to participate in the next year’s project.
This year’s statistics: we ministered to about 118 children and most of them received Christ in their lives. We ministered to 250 visitors during the 3 evening meetings. We made a total of 560 food bags – we visited 413 houses; about 100 food bags went to the village and we left about 26 bags to a kindergarten. We gave 30 food bags to the social department and we left 17 bags in the rehabilitation centre. We handed out clothing to about 1500 people; we also brought 40 bags of clothing to the village. We visited old-peoples home that housed 250 people. We went around with groups of 3 people and we prayed for all of them. We brought 35 bags with clothing, 24 cakes, lots of candies and chocolate. We saw 118 people making a commitment to the Lord. We prayed with many physical sick people, about 12 got immediately healed. We had a love feast with about 160 people.
For the first time (this project has been in Latvia more like 10 times) we reached out to the people with disabilities. Me and Kaspar were responsible for this program, where took part 7 guests with disabilities. We took 3 of our small group members and brought them to Balvi. Two of them gave really powerful testimonies; we also had short preaching, music, game and a fellowship. Because in this area was no handicap transport, our team decided to buy it from Stockholm and after program we gifted this van to the local social department. It was a really touching moment, because social worker had no idea what we are doing. It was a really good time, especially for our small group members who where able to give and take part from ministry.
Left over time in YWAM Valdemarpils we tried to finish up our projects we started during these six years in YWAM Valdemarpils (but actually I am still responsible for YWAM Valdemarpils library until they will find other person to take it over). Kaspar was also completing his sport education session in university and during this academic year he has only one session left. Of course all this time we tried to find apartment in Riga or in Riga’s region, but didn’t find it still we actually moved out. We lived shortly in Kaspars temporary apartment in Riga and I spent some time in Estonia. Starting from 30th of March we are living in Riga and we have joined YWAM Riga. More details next time.
I have left the best news to be the last one. During a couple of newsletters I have been speaking about Viktorija, whom Kaspar was teaching English, who was 2 years ago atheist, but during these lessons got close to God. She had really a lot of theological questions (she still does) and it took a lot of time to get so far, but during this Easter she gave her heart to God. This was really great news and shows that God can use us even if our primary activity is not evangelization. Thank you everybody who prayed for her!
Prayer requests:
- Give a praise for Viktorija
- Give a praise for our apartment in Riga
- Give a praise how God was working in Balvi
- „Challenge“ – camp for people with disabilities and finances
- Kaspars studies
- Personal financial situation – during a couple of months we have had a lot of irregular incomes and life in Latvia has become more expensive.
Blessings,
Evelyn&Kaspars Apinis