kolmapäev, aprill 27, 2005
Moving Ahead
I've been busy the past few days following up on the people I met at the meeting on Sunday.
Yesterday afternoon I invited one man, Tiit, to the house to chat. He had been to the opening meeting and to the follow-up meeting and was interested in learning more about the Army. It turns out he comes from a Methodist background. He has seen that there are many needs in his community and wants to do something about it, and feels that maybe he could to this by helping the Army. He was impressed with the Army's approach to meeting human needs. He seems to be a capable and intelligent guy, so I will be keeping in touch with him as our work develops.
Shortly after that Ermo (who had been translating in our first meeting) and I headed to a meeting of what I thought was a group of pensioners. I have felt a deep concern in my heart for pensioners here and thought this would be an opportunity to see what their needs really are. Well ... Leonid, who invited me, is a pensioner, but it turns out that it was actually a prayer meeting of his Russian-speaking church group! It worked out fine, though, because the people there (six of them) were very interested in hearing about the Army. They are a young church and are interested in reaching many of the same groups I am, such as the homeless, and one woman has an active outreach to people in the prisons. So although it was not what I expected, it was still great and I think we may find ourselves working together.
One funny thing was watching Ermo translate. When we first hired him, I did not know he has a conversational knowledge of Russian as well as his native Estonian, and this has been an immeasurable help. But he told me that he has not used his Russian as much lately, so it was a challenge for him in the meeting. At times he would stop, smile and say that his head hurt from the effort. Sometimes after a person spoke in Russian, he would turn to me and start speaking to me in Estonian, going on for several sentences not realizing he was using the wrong language. We had a great laugh after we left there! Since I have only one language right now, I can only admire his ability to juggle three.
This afternoon, I had another man come over. He is an older gentleman who is involved with several pensioners groups here. He told me that many pensioners have it very hard because their state pension is not enough and there are few resources to help them with things like rent, wood for heating, food and clothing. He told me that most of these people are too proud to beg for help and so they simply go without things they need, like food or medicine. This is clearly a group the Army should reach out to! And many of these needs are things the Army can get via humanitarian aid, so we can help with the short-term need, then look into what will help with their overall situations. I was even invited to speak to one of the groups and tell them about the Army and our work. I feel very excited about this meeting and think it will open many more doors to serve the older population here.
Tomorrow I am meeting with another man who came to the meeting. He said he would like to preach for The Salvation Army, but I don't know much about him. We will see what comes of this meeting.
I'm so happy because I feel like all of the ground work and relationship building we have done up to this point are bearing fruit and we are moving ahead now. Please pray that we will listen closely to God's leading as the opportunities present themselves so that we can make the best choices about what we should do and where we should begin.
--Tim
Yesterday afternoon I invited one man, Tiit, to the house to chat. He had been to the opening meeting and to the follow-up meeting and was interested in learning more about the Army. It turns out he comes from a Methodist background. He has seen that there are many needs in his community and wants to do something about it, and feels that maybe he could to this by helping the Army. He was impressed with the Army's approach to meeting human needs. He seems to be a capable and intelligent guy, so I will be keeping in touch with him as our work develops.
Shortly after that Ermo (who had been translating in our first meeting) and I headed to a meeting of what I thought was a group of pensioners. I have felt a deep concern in my heart for pensioners here and thought this would be an opportunity to see what their needs really are. Well ... Leonid, who invited me, is a pensioner, but it turns out that it was actually a prayer meeting of his Russian-speaking church group! It worked out fine, though, because the people there (six of them) were very interested in hearing about the Army. They are a young church and are interested in reaching many of the same groups I am, such as the homeless, and one woman has an active outreach to people in the prisons. So although it was not what I expected, it was still great and I think we may find ourselves working together.
One funny thing was watching Ermo translate. When we first hired him, I did not know he has a conversational knowledge of Russian as well as his native Estonian, and this has been an immeasurable help. But he told me that he has not used his Russian as much lately, so it was a challenge for him in the meeting. At times he would stop, smile and say that his head hurt from the effort. Sometimes after a person spoke in Russian, he would turn to me and start speaking to me in Estonian, going on for several sentences not realizing he was using the wrong language. We had a great laugh after we left there! Since I have only one language right now, I can only admire his ability to juggle three.
This afternoon, I had another man come over. He is an older gentleman who is involved with several pensioners groups here. He told me that many pensioners have it very hard because their state pension is not enough and there are few resources to help them with things like rent, wood for heating, food and clothing. He told me that most of these people are too proud to beg for help and so they simply go without things they need, like food or medicine. This is clearly a group the Army should reach out to! And many of these needs are things the Army can get via humanitarian aid, so we can help with the short-term need, then look into what will help with their overall situations. I was even invited to speak to one of the groups and tell them about the Army and our work. I feel very excited about this meeting and think it will open many more doors to serve the older population here.
Tomorrow I am meeting with another man who came to the meeting. He said he would like to preach for The Salvation Army, but I don't know much about him. We will see what comes of this meeting.
I'm so happy because I feel like all of the ground work and relationship building we have done up to this point are bearing fruit and we are moving ahead now. Please pray that we will listen closely to God's leading as the opportunities present themselves so that we can make the best choices about what we should do and where we should begin.
--Tim
