MISSION TRIP TO LATVIA & LITHUANIA

[Photos: Missions trip to Baltic Countries]

Greetings from the heart of Europe from Prague, Czech Republic. By the end of this summer, we have finished our journey throughout Europe and we would like to share our experiences. We went with our two sons (aged 7 months and 2½ years) in our car from Prague to Frankfurt Oder and then to Latvia and Lithuania (via Poland) to visit our Hope churches and contacts. Altogether we were on the road for 15 days and travelled 3,650km.


Faith project at the German–Polish border (Slubice)



We started our journey by travelling to Slubice, Poland through Frankfurt Oder (Germany). The town used to be part of Frankfurt Oder until World War II when it became part of Poland. We went there to observe a project by some German brothers: evangelism in an unreached town. I truly admire the faith of Martin (leader of Hope Frankfurt) and Krystian (Polish student and a member of Hope Frankfurt) as they decided to organise a hip-hop concert in one of the squares of Slubice, rather than in a smaller town.

After personally inviting the people in the streets of Slubice, there were more than 50 people attending the hip-hop concert featuring Czech dance crew Wessani from Hope Prague.

The next day, the outreach programme continued with a garden party and a barbeque. Although it was not easy to communicate with the locals, some did speak English and Krystian had a chance to speak with the locals in Polish. However, Slubice was only a short stop for our main destination: the Baltic nations.

Riga, the capital of Latvia



We continued to Warsaw and found a small hotel by the road in the late evening. The next day, we reached Kaunas, where we met with Deividas, a Lithuanian brother, who accepted God in the Czech Republic about five years ago. He hosted us for one night and then we continued on to Riga, the capital of Latvia. It is situated at Riga Bay alongside the huge Daugava River. Our first impression was “Are there any people here?” We only saw a few villages on our way to Riga.

The population of Latvia is only 2.3 million and there is low population density; half of the population lives in Riga itself.

I was surprise that there was a significant Russian influence and the Russian language being widely spoken, especially with the Latvian language and culture being very different. A consequence of Latvia’s Soviet legacy is that Russians make up 30% of Latvia’s population with this proportion higher in Riga.

Local revival in the ancient city of Riga



Our goal in Riga was to visit three girls who just came to know Jesus last year. The first accepted Jesus after many discussions with her colleague from Wien, Austria. During her baptism in December, 2008, a friend of hers heard the gospel. Shortly after the baptism of the second friend, their third friend accepted Christ. They all come from different religious backgrounds: Lutheran, Catholic and atheist. We only managed to get into contact with one of the girls via Skype, three months before our journey. We were trying to find out more information about the situation over there and to suggest our visit.

Right after our arrival, all three girls were very keen to hear our personal testimonies about how we came to know Jesus. We set appointments to talk every night about faith and about church. We stayed our five days in Riga in the room of one of the girls, who sacrificially offered her room to us, right in the middle of the ancient city centre. We were astonished by their warmness and hospitality and eagerness to learn more about Jesus. It reminded me so much of disciples in Berea in Acts 17. So we stayed in their flat and spent days visiting the old town, trying to amuse our two sons in the playground etc. and using evenings to meet with our hosts.

Prayer for healing & Holy Spirit baptism

On the second day, we had an opportunity to pray for healing for one of the girls. She testified on the next day, that after one month, she was finally able to walk again, even though she still had some swelling in her foot.

We kept encouraging them to study the Bible. In the following two days, we met with two other boys, who came to our evening sessions. We also learned how the mother of one of the girls was baptised after talking to her daughter.

We encouraged them and taught them about the Holy Spirit and prayed for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that they are equipped for a life of faith.

They also decided to hold regularly meetings every Friday evening, where they want to invite friends who want to learn more about Jesus. After this exciting experience in Riga, we left them promising we would keep in touch through Skype after we returned home.

Kaunas ( Šiauliai) Lithuana – international group



On the way to Kaunas, we met with some people from the Kaunas group in Šiauliai. It is a town known for its hill of crosses. Unfortunately, we did not manage to visit this place, as our goal was the city centre where there was an evangelistic concert scheduled. We enjoyed lunch and fellowship with four Indian medical students together with Deividas. It was our first time meeting others from the Kaunas group. Later we continued to Kaunas, where we met three other people from their group. We met them at our flat which we rented in the middle of the old town of Kaunas. In this flat, we could hold all our evening meetings while putting our sons to bed.

On the next day, we had the opportunity to speak at their Sunday meeting. I spoke about God's calling to build His church and I shared about our vision to support church planting in every part of the world.




There are currently about 12 people gathering regularly on Sundays and some also during the week for Bible study. There are three Lithuanians, seven Indians, one Italian and one Brazilian in the group right now. There were also some more visitors on that Sunday. Besides my sharing, there was worship, prayer, a lot of personal testimonies of what God is doing in this group.

Vilnius, capital of Lithuania



On the next day, Deividas took us to Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, 100km away from Kaunas. We were intending to meet some people who are in contact with the group in Kaunas. Deividas was our guide the whole time, and I had the opportunity to speak with him a lot about church. He came to know Jesus some five years ago in our church in Hradec, Czech Republic and we stayed in touch through Skype with Dr. Martin who used to lead that group.

Spiritually hungry for God

In Vilnius, we unfortunately did not meet with the young man who was interested in starting a group in Vilnius. We did meet with a young female lawyer who is active in a Baptist church. She shared with us about the projects the Baptist church in Lithuania was organising: concerts in many towns, attracting the young people and giving out Bibles for free. It reminded me that we need to think about the bigger picture: some parts of Europe are still very spiritually hungry.

The next day, we visited an Indian preacher who has lived in Lithuania for some ten years and is married to a Lithuanian woman.We visited them in their farm close to Kaunas. He is an independent preacher teaching in different churches, travelling in Lithuania and in Europe. He holds meetings in his farm once a month as well, and people travel great distances to come to his meetings, and people make their decision to follow Christ there. I hope I can have more opportunities to speak with him in the future and to share more about our vision.

Working together with the body of Christ

On that evening, we shared to four people about the importance of follow up and one-on-one discipleship. We continued and expanded on this topic to more people the next day. They told us afterwards that they understood the need of not only leading people to Christ, but to also disciple them. We concluded with an invitation for them to train at our churches. We shared openly that we would like to serve together with them at Hope Church.

We travelled for two days back to Prague, and reached safely home. Now we are considering the next steps to continue with this work in Lithuania and Latvia, as God has given us unique opportunities to enter into these two countries.

Dr Ondrej & Dr Jana
Hope Prague, Czech Republic