Greetings from snowy Riga!
Concerning the calendar spring will soon start and for Apinis’ family is time to wake up from winter sleep. Our last newsletter was written in October, but so many things have happened to make this letter long. Still it would be good idea to read till end and find a surprise 🙂
Evelyn’s Administrative Work
My talent to handle office work is greatly appreciated in mission field. Even during global financial crisis unpaid missionary does not need to worry about getting fired or getting reduced salary! 🙂
YWAM Latvia is planning short-time mission trips during this summer and I am outreaches registrar – to answer participants’ questions, send out information and applications. We are accepting also foreigners and if you are interested ask of me more information or look up outreaches on YWAM Latvia webpage. In addition to administrative work in YWAM Latvia I have also agreed to help in Global YWAM communication team as data steward. Starting from this spring or next 
winter my work will be to help YWAM bases to fulfil survey in internet – nothing really complicated, but what a title and career jump 😉
Humanitarian Project in Rezekne
Every year during ninth week (this year 22. of February till 1. of March) YWAM Stockholm and YWAM Latvia are organizing International Christian Social Project together with local government, social office and local churches (this year Rezekne, South of Latvia). During this project we gave out 700 food bags, big truck load of clothing; visited needy homes, elderly home; had programs for children and handicapped people; organized concert and evangelical meetings. This year we received a lot of help from Rezekne churches (Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal and Orthodox) who worked well together and for the first time in YWAM Latvia history our work was blessed by an Orthodox priest. I (Evelyn) am in this project leadership team already three years and my task is to do administrative work (to be a registrar for Latvian participants, make up teams, send them out, keep statistics etc). This year also Kaspar got free time from school 
and was able to take part in this project. You can look more photos from here.
“Wings for Wheels”
At last we have got name for YWAM Riga ministry for people with mobile disabilities – “Wings for Wheels” or shortly W4W. We have continued with small group ministry even if our small group has been lately very tiny. We also took part in handicapped program in Rezekne and Ailita and Baiba from Riga came to give their testimonies.
In February we helped Sintija (summer camp participant) to have a memorable day by bringing her from Saldus to Riga (1,5h drive) to look around in shop, go to cinema, to eat in Lido (Latvian famous eating place) and to take part in the small group. For us this wasn’t anything really special, but Sintija wasn’t able to sleep almost a week before waiting for it to happen. Sometimes we can do something really small, but this person who receives it can remember 
it till the end of his life…
Kaspar have started new form of evangelism – physiotherapy – that is opening doors for these people with mobile disability who would otherwise not come to Christian events. At the moment Kaspar has three physiotherapy clients and one whom he is teaching English. During exercises Kaspar is giving possibility to speak about spiritual things and so he is helping to improve both body and the spirit. Two of them have showed interest to take part in our small group and we hope that it will happen soon.
Slowly we have started to prepare for our summer camp which will be run during 5.-10.of July in Talsi Christian School. We are need people who would pray for this camp and participants; we also need people who would support this camp financially; and we would like to see people who would come and help us practically (we still need a cook, a kitchen worker, a sport game leader, personal assistants etc). If you would like to help us in one of these categories, please let us know.
We have started to understand how important it is to work among people with disabilities and how brief can be the possibilities to speak with them about God. During last December two of our summer camp participants died unexpectedly. One of them was a Christian and visited our small group regularly, second had her opportunity during camp time, but decided not to accept it (yet). They both did not have very bad health and it was shocking to hear them die, but this is reality in our ministry.
Kaspars’ Studies
Kaspar has at the moment his last sport pedagogy session before defending his thesis in September. After that he will have just physiotherapy and two more years to specify. Writing thesis for Kaspar is really challenging and he would be really grateful for prayers.
Mission Days 2009
During last weekend of January there were ecumenical Mission Days held in Riga. YWAM Latvia was one of the organizers and also me and Kaspar took part in it. Traditionally I (Evelyn) was asked to help with YWAM Latvia information table, but additionally we helped in Mission 
Café (which meant that in menu was Estonian National Food – kama) and in seminar about Myths in Mission. We also helped Baiba to participate in mission days, because this church was really not wheelchair accessible, but fortunately there were many strong men around.
We Moved
No, physically we still live in the centre of Riga and seem that we have this apartment for longer time. We moved in virtually, because our old website refused to work normally. Now it is possible to find our newsletters, photos and some other writing in this page here. We hope to update it more often than we send out newsletters.
A Little Missionary
There is a little missionary who is waiting to join Apinis family in July. He/she is already trying to say something in our meetings, but unfortunately we are not very strong in reading the code of Morse… 🙂 I did not feel good in the beginning and this is reason why our news was held back so long. I am planning to spend all the summer in Hiiumaa, Estonia and will not be able to take part in W4W summer camp this year. Kaspar will spend his vacation together with me (hopefully this time arrives also our little missionary) and will make trips between Riga and Estonia. Please pray for our little missionary and also that he/she would wait with arriving still the end of the camp (our due date is 23rd of July).
Blessings,
Evelyn&Kaspars