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ISSION

: CESIS

INTER

RRIVES

ESIS

Our Latvianfriends tell us that we can’t be trueLatvians until wehave stayed here anentire winter. Weare beginning tosee why!For the past ten orso days we have nothad any tempera-tures above freezing. Tobalance some of thatout for us, we have seenthe first of many snow-falls. After a few flurriesduring the weekend, itreally started coming downon Monday. After about 18hours of snow, everything was pretty well covered. Asnative Texans, it is enjoy-able to watch the snow andsee how different every-thing looks.For the Latvians, it is just a way of life. Nothing slowsdown, nobody stays homeand they certainly don’tclose the schools. When wetold them that if Texas hadreceived the amount of snow that Cesis did onMonday, we would haveclosed the schools andcleaned out Wal-Mart.They just laugh and can’tfigure out why snow would cause such a change in life-style. We seem to be adjusting well to the temperaturechanges. It could be that the parka, hat, gloves, scarf,sweaters and long-johns that we wear outside have someeffect on our adjustment. Our flat is relatively warmand we just keep feeding the wood to the stove.The biggest adjustment has been after the timechanged. It is completely dark here by 4:45pm. The sundoes not get very high in the sky during the day andnight comes very quickly. Everything has a trade-off as we were enjoying day-lightuntil 10:00pm in thesummer. Most Latvians warn us more aboutdepression from thedark days and longnights than about thecold weather. We aredoing great and don’tforesee a problem with that. OurCesis friends go outof their way to check up on us and help us out. We are privileged to havesuch fine people to work with.

Youth Service—November 25

The next big push for our youth will be a city-wide youth night tobe held at Cesis Baptist on No- vember 25. We have tried to letthe youth organize and plan theservice the way they think it would appeal to other Latvian young people. There will be aChristian band from a church inRiga, student-led Bible-study andmusic from some of our members. We are glad they are taking such anactive role in getting this type of meeting started. Being a Christian inLatvia is very much different frombeing one in the US. Most youngpeople will not admit to their peersthat they even attend church. Sincemost of their parents and grandparentsdid not practice Christianity duringSoviet times there is usually no family tradition of attending church. We havebeen encouraging our youth to becomemore open in their Christian walks and we hope this will be another good stepfor them.

Volume 1, No. 6November 15, 2007

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MISSION NEWSLETTER 2007—2008

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First Baptist ChurchAthens, TexasCesis Baptist ChurchCesis, Latvia

The ‘monk’ sculpture atSt. John’s LutheranSt. John’s Baznica

The elderly and the poor suffer inLatvia for a variety of reasons. Forthe elderly, some of the problem isthat they ex-pected to havea pension after working for somany yearsunder Sovietrule. SinceLatvia becamea free nation,the pensionsthat the elderly receive are very low.It has been our privi-lege to help serve in alocal soup kitchen.This kitchen is a joint-effort between theLutheran Church and the Cesis BaptistChurch.There is acore-groupof elderly and down-on-theirluck peoplethat arethere every week. They are ex-tremely niceto us andtry to talk with us atevery oppor-tunity. Ithink they understand we don’t speak Latvian very well but most of them loveto chatter just like we knew the lan-guage. We just nod and smile!The soup is nearly always beet or cab-bage based, not our favorites but they seem to love it. They only get soup andblack bread … no tea, coffee or desserts.Laura has been making cookies to takeand they love them. We have also triedto buy fresh fruit at least once a week and distribute to them. They are sothankful for it. We wish we knew thelanguage better because a lot of themprobably have had interesting lives.Some are battling alcohol problems orhave had other difficulties but we arenever more appreciated than when weserve there.

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Mission: CESIS

termine the best course for its future, how it will be able to meet the financial obligationsand what their vision for Cesis BaptistChurch will look like.

A H

OME

ESIS

APTIST

HURCH

? ? ?

It has long been a dream for Cesis Bap-tist Church to have their own building.They currently worship in a church thatis owned by the Lutheran congregation.Not since the late 1930’s have the Bap-tists met in their own church building.Cesis Baptist has recently begun tostudy in earnest the possibility of con-structing a new church building. We will have a meeting this Wednesday totalk with a pastor from another part of Latvia that is currently building a smallchurch with a congregation the approxi-mate size of Cesis.There are many obstacles still to over-come for this to be a reality but if thischurch is ever going to grow and havean identity of its own, they will have tohave a building. Planning all of onechurch’s activities around the calendarof another congregation is very hard todo. There is a need of Sunday Schoolrooms, parking and adequate restroomfacilities at the current church. Pleasebe in prayer as our church tries to de-

A few of our soup-kitchenfriends . . .Current meeting place for Cesis Baptist . . .

CONTACT INFORMATION:MWimberley2005@yahoo.com www.cesislatvia.blogspot.com

www.picasaweb.google.com/MBerley