Short Term Team Training in Estonia

Today I was at Short Term Team Training in Estonia! There are four camps happening this term - three English camps and one football camp. It started with Innar welcoming everyone to training. In addition to the American teams and the interns there was also a group of people from Czech to serve at camp so I got to see some friends.

Märt is the country leader for Estonia and it was such a joy to hear him share the vision for JV in Estonia. Estonia is one of our smallest countries with a population of 1.4 million. Less than 1% of the population are evangelical believers.

Due to communism the church is missing a lot of the older generation. This means a lot of the leaders in the church are young and have such passion and vision for their nation. But it also means, as Märt shared this morning, that there are approximately twenty healthy churches in the country. They believe that in order to transform the country and reach this nation they need two hundred healthy churches, ten times the number they have!

It was wonderful to hear Riina share her story of coming to Christ, and an English camp five years ago was a huge part of that. Riina is one of our amazing summer interns and it is such a joy to see her joy in Jesus. One of my favourite things about travelling around is that I get to reconnect with our interns, ask how their summer is going and encourage them.

The training in Estonia lasts for a day so this afternoon we prayed for each team individually and commissioned them. They set off to their camp facilities tonight and the campers will arrive tomorrow.

I am very excited to see what God continues to do in this nation!

Short Term Team Training in Latvia

When short term teams arrive to do a camp with Josiah Venture there is typically a day or two of training for them. The majority of our teams come from America and this also gives them a couple of days to get over jet lag before camp starts. 

But, more importantly, it gives us time to talk about the culture of the country, what will happen at camp, and how to share the Gospel and testimonies. There is also time for worship and devotions. 

This is David and he leads the camp ministry in Latvia. He started the day with a devotion and then shared the story of Josiah Venture, our mission and vision and the values of our camp ministry.  

One of the things that has given me the most joy is to see our wonderful interns, both Americans and Latvians, being part of the training as they talked about roles at camp, the history of Latvia, the discipleship continuum and about the culture. 

These are five of the six interns serving in Latvia this summer. They had some free time and so I was able to take them out for some really good doughnuts and coffee. 

It was so good to catch up with them, find out how their summer is going, and how to be praying for them as they go into camp. 

I'll be at short term team training until it ends around 3 today and then I'll be driving alone to Tartu in Estonia because their short term team training is tomorrow. 

This week Latvia has two camps - one is a Fusion camp which the American team is serving at, and the other is a day camp where the interns will be serving. I'm hoping to visit the day camp next week. 

I'm so excited to see what God does in Latvia this summer! 

Driving to Latvia

After a couple of hours of sleep Katka and I got into my car a little after 2am..

I drove for the first five hours so I don't have any photos of the beautiful sunrise and the ribbons of fog that lay on the fields. It was so beautiful. 

In Poland there was a lot of this. 

And a lot of storks. 

And a lot of this. 

Poland is long!

We started to see signs for the Belarus border but we were actually heading to Lithuania. 

Lithuania seemed so empty. Just lots of heavy goods lorries and not a lot of space to overtake. 

We got into Latvia and arrived in Riga at 6pm, in perfect time for dinner. There is a one hour time difference so, including breaks, the drive took us 15 hours. 

Although the drive was long but it was good! Getting to Warsaw by 7 meant we missed a lot of traffic. 

Very thankful we got here safely!