Latvia (Day 3) Talsi Baptist Church and Day 1 of Basketball Camp

Sunday morning in Talsi, Latvia was a beautiful thing.  The sun comes up at about 3:00 AM and by the time we left the school and walked the three blocks to Talsi Baptist Church, it was a balmy 61 degrees and a beautifully sunny day.  Our group and another group of foreigners (Texans) who are here to do a VBS at the school joined with the regular crowd to fill the little church to capacity. 

The church looked like it usually runs around 100 in attendance.  They had a wonderful Choir and several extraordinary instrumentalists and they did hymns and praise songs that we were familiar with, although the lyrics were in Latvian, making them a little hard to follow.

God had been working ahead of time to prepare the way before us today.  While we are here in Latvia to present the Gospel to a Gospel-starved people, we found ourselves in the midst of a wonderful church full of Baptist people who know and worship the same Lord and Saviour that we do. And not only that, but the guest speaker today was a young Latvian preacher who went to Denmark to start a church.  He spoke of many of the same struggles that we experience back home; the struggle between ritual and relationship, the division between Christians over music and standards, and the loneliness of ministry in a difficult place, relieved by the visit of praying, encouraging friends from home.  As I sat in the service listening to him preach in Latvian and hearing a sketchy translation from one of our new Latvian friends, it made me aware of how those that we have come to minister to must feel when we speak to them of their need for Christ when they know nothing about him.  We have come to be the translators of the Gospel to their darkened hearts. 
The church service was a real blessing and it got our day off to a great start.
After lunch we made our way to the Gym for the first day of our Basketball Camp.  This is a holiday weekend here in Latvia, so we didn't have as many as we expected for the first day.  We had 42 kids show up, less than half of them had been at the camp last year.  The kids were very enthusiastic about learning basketball.

My main job at the camp this week will be to help those kids who received Christ at last year's camp to grow in their walk with the Lord.  Today, we reviewed what they had learned last year and introduced the things that we would share with them over the next three days.  I had 14 kids today and was able to converse with more than half of them in English.  My young friend, Janis, our host's son, served as my translator with the rest.  It was exciting to see their continued commitment to the decision that they made last year to follow Jesus.
We even had a slam dunk contest on a slightly lowered goal and I competed with the kids and made it through the first two rounds, so I guess I didn't embarass myself too much.
When the camp was over for the day, I had the opportunity to Skype into our services back home.  Even though I have only been gone a few days, it was great to see everyone there.  It is amazing to me that we can be 5,000 miles apart and be able to see and hear each other live. 

Supper tonight was a hotdog from a local gas station, which normally wouldn't seem like a very appetizing prospect, but the bun was really unique, almost like a French Bread that was hollowed out for the hot dog.  The filled the hole with ketchup and mustard and then slid the dog down into it.  Very nice and neat, and also very tasty. 
Well, it's only 11 o'clock, so I must be making progress on getting this blog posted.  Keep praying for us.  God is working and lives are being changed; our team's as much as anyone.