Endings and Beginnings
June 29, 2019
After a long day Friday that involved a seven mile hike a powerful movie and a campfire we began our final day in the Latvia Teen Life Camp 2019. Our first experience with this in Latvia has been very positive. We were blessed with access to a great facility (St. Gregors) and the best team I could have wished for. Events like this always feature on-the-fly changes. We train our team to be ready for this with a simply phrase: welcome to the mission field. There are inevitably miscommunications, changing circumstances and the ordinary things one encounters when making a plan from far away and then showing up in person to act on that plan.
Our participants have become friends. Our lives and theirs have been impacted. We once again been re-introduced to an amazing country and an amazing God who supplies all out needs and more!
Today is the second day of our Bible Camp for younger students. We have about sixty students ranging from grade 1 through 6. For this camp that works out to seven classes. We start each day at 9:00am and close at 3:00pm. In the afternoon the team debriefs over the day’s events, prays for our camp participants and spends some time re-tooling lesson plans for the next day.
This week the team team will get to visit and historic city, Kūldīga, spend some time with a local church youth group and be hosted for an evening at the home of a teacher at Strukí Primary school. With all this going on, we certainly could use prayers for:
- Continued health and healing (another team members has the cold).
- Strength and mental tenacity as we enter week two.
- Opportunities to see The Lord do amazing things as we share the hope of Jesus.
- Discipleship opportunities for team members as we lean about faith journey while we interact in another culture.
Team Leaders
PR. MARK & JULIA WILHELM
Mark and Julia Wilhelm have been married for 28 years and have two children. Julia is the Worship Director at Spirit of Church where Mark serves as Pastor.