March Forth! Marssige Edasi!

This past week was an exciting one.

On Saturday, be brought eight people (plus me) to Narva for a regional "Days Before the Word" worship day with the territorial commander. It was a wonderful day for us all, bringing us together with other Salvationists from the region and drawing us together as a corps.

Shown in the picture is the Tartu group in Narva on the Russian border (you can just see the Russian flag on the castle in the background, which is just across the river). They are Taisi, Elizabeth, Andrei, Maret, Karl-Gustav, Ülle, Chris and Liis. Evelyn didn't go because Peter was sick with a cold.

On Tuesday, it was Vastlepäev in Estonia, and the tradition on this day is to go sledding, so we brought the youngsters from our childrens' program sledding on a large, bowl-shaped hill in town. It was a lot of fun as we and several hundred other people slid down the bumpy hills, although Elizabeth ran into a tree and bruised her knee.

One special thing for me was that Andreboroughtgh two younger boys, probably around 5 or 6 years old. They had never come before and didn't know me very well, but Andrei was off enjoying they hill and they were a bit more shy, so they kept coming up to me and saying in Estonian, "Onu, push me," "Onu, I'm cold," "Onu, look!" It was touching because Onu means uncle, and I was glad they felt comfortable enough to speak to me with such a term of endearment. They really wanted to talk to me, but because of their age just couldn't grasp the idea that I don't speak much Estonian. One boy would ask me a question very quickly and I would say, "Vabandust, ma räägin Inglise keelt aga ainult natuke Eesti keelt" (I'm sorry, I speak English language, but only a little Estonian language). He would give me a very puzzled look and then say the same thing at the same speed. It was very cute, and I was able to pretty much figure things out until Maret came along to help with translation.

Thursday night, we had 13 in our teen group. Almost all of them are not Christians and admit that they have no real desire to be one, but they still ask lots of good questions that polite church kids would never dare ask! Lately, the questions have centered around what they consider to be the rules of Christianity, showing that they feel it is mostly about a list of dos and don'ts. So Evelyn led a good discussion on how faith in Christ is about Jesus setting us free, not binding us to a list of rules, and that being a Christian is about a relationship with God, not about what others think you should or shouldn't do. Please pray that God will speak to these young people, that He will break through their misconceptions and make Himself real in their lives.

We are grateful for the way we continue to see God working every day here in Tartu.
--Tim