Camp and my health

This past week we had out annual Risttee Winter Camp. About 125 of us gathered as a family to worship, learn and encourage one another. This year we focused on the Holy Spirit and talked about Why we need the Holy Spirit, the presence, power and the Holy Spirit and his role leading the church. We also celebrated the baptism of 3 guys, Sander, Silver and Lembit. Here are some pictures.

On a more personal note, I have had some problems with my vision since we returned from the states. It came up just as we got back, but I figured the blurred vision was just tiredness. After two weeks I went to the doctor and found out I have a cataract on my left eye. I had a cataract on my right eye just a year ago. The doctor is concerned since its very rare for this to happen so I need to get some more test to figure out what the root cause is. Right now I am praying and ask you to pray for healing. I would prefer a miracle healing, but if not, then I will go to surgery on 1.february. Its kinda scary to go through it again and what it means in the future with having two fake lenses in your eyes and how my vision will be in the future. I have a lot of anxiety about this, its one to know that God is in control, but another to believe it and walk in that. I found myself walking out of the doctor singing the old hymn and will close with those words:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Camp this weekend!

This weekend we are having our annual winter camp. This is where the church family gathers together for 3 days/2 nights to worship, learn, pray and play together. I am super excited about this years camp because we are focusing on the Holy Spirit and the spirit filled life. I am super excited to be together with our family church family. Please pray for this weekend and all the people who are attending.

The camp will be at the Kopra Tourism Farm. Its a great large facility near Viljandi. Its getting tough to find a facility for over 100 people in the winter. Also, we have 16 families with young children and that means we have to have a chidlrens program and facilities for them as well. Despite all the different challenges, this all helps to make this time even more special.

The weekend will be building up to baptism on Sunday morning where 3 young men will get baptised, Sander, Silver and Lembit. We look forward to hearing their stories. The baptism will be outside, in the cold in a wood fired hot tub. Here is a picture from last years baptism.

Back home!

The Hamer family returned from our 6 week trip to the states. We made it safely home yesterday around 16.00 local time, after they changed our tickets to fly directly into Tartu from Helsinki. This was a major blessing after the long trip across the Atlantic.

I just wanted to say a general thank you to everyone that help make this trip possible. Thank you to everyone whom we got to spend sometime with and you are all so dear to us. We wish we had even more time to see even more people and to visit multiple times, but we thank God for what time he gives.

I will write some more about the trip but a big thank you to all the churches that welcomed us. These are listed in the order we visited
Northwest Bible Church
Grace Ridge Bible Church
Crossroads Community Church
Eagleville Bible Church
Bailey Road Baptist Church
We keep each of these churches in our prayers and hope that 2012 each church sees the kingdom increase.

Also, biggest thanks for my family, Ma & Pa Hamer, Keith & Morgan, Matt & Lisa & Brenton & Scooby Drew for putting up with us all that time, for your love, generosity, cups of coffee and everything, you are all so precious to us and we hope to see you all again soon.

Estonia in a good place

There has been a lot of talk about all the debt around the world. In the US, it has been a very heated debate that basically brought the country to a halt. People on both sides of the debate have their thoughts and statistics and history to show how their side is correct, but everyone agrees that debt isn't good, it maybe necessary and can help expand quicker, but long term its not a good thing. This brings me to a story I found on CNN.com. It was about debt in Europe. Everyone knows Greece has had some major problems and there is talk about Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. All of the Western European countries are facing some tough times, but in this graphic you can see just one country in light blue and thats Estonia with 6% debt of GDP, the lowest in Europe. Estonia has made some tough decisions and cuts to avoid problems. Also, it has chosen a slower, conservative path to economic growth that I think is putting in a great position for the future.
Check out the story here.

Alex is 5!

Today Alex Adu Hamer turned 5 years old. I am so proud of him! He is a bundle of energy, excitement and passion. The loudest voice in the room is usually Alex. The first one to do something, is usually Alex. His adventerous spirit can sometimes get the best of him, but he has such a softness to him. Alex is the first one to share his candy or presents. He isn't possessive. When other kids start to cry, or are sad, it takes a few seconds before his eyes tear up and he wants to help. Alex is the one who loves to pay compliments and give hugs. He is a special creation and I thank God for him everyday.

This morning he was up at 5.30 and at 6.00 we all celebrated with some cake and Alexs favorite tortilla chips. We sang Happy Birthday and spend some time in prayer. You can see the picture above a snapshot of our party this morning. The scratch on Alex head was from Sunday School today, nothing major, but makes these pictures memorable!

What God is doing at Risttee!

I am excited to write about some exciting things going on at Risttee here in Tartu. This past weekend we went on a one night retreat with many of the leaders of our groups. We really believe that life and life change happen in small groups so taking time to train and equip leaders is absolutely necessary. I was just blown away by the quality of people that were there. Young and old (me me the oldest) together, singing and worshiping, praying, listening to God, studying his word, was a very encouraging experience for me. Before the retreat the leadership team took a few days with some of our good friends from Atlanta and worked on our identity of Risttee. We found that we need to work on things, simplify our language a little bit and really refocus our efforts on making disciples. Through this, we reworked things and got to a really simple statement to identify our church and do so in simple language that people can understand, pass along and get excited about.

Another thing that I am excited about is this weekend and our upcoming baptism service. We have 8 people for sure that are getting baptised and a few others are still making their decision. I am blown away by what God is doing in the lives of people in our community. We will celebrate our baptism Sunday morning as we all travel a little out of town to a small picnic area with a small lake where we will baptized these people who have responded to God's invitation!

I am also excited about next week when we reach out to the college students of our city in a week of events. We will head out into the city to serve free lunch to students and use this as an opportunity to build relationships. In the evenings we will be spending time together in a local cafe and hoping this all leads to a group forming to learn more about God and then flow into our small groups. Its a daunting task knowing that we have about 20,000 students and a huge majority of them don't know Christ. As this week approaches, you can take a moment and pray for Tartu, Risttee and our Bear week event next week.

What happened last week!

Last week I helped to lead the LIFT summer camp, Recycle Your LIfe. The camp was set up as an adventure camp similar to "Amazing Race". We divided the youth in to different teams. we traveled quite a bit, even crossed the Baltic Sea to Helsinki for a day. The camp was a big success. God really moved amoungst all the people there and we saw some really cool things happen. In this type of camp, where people are having to work a lot together and travel and sleep on the floor together, you are going to get some conflict and problems, but this isn't a problem, its how they are resolved adn what happens after that. I was blown away at how the leaders from Buckhead lead throughout this week. It was a very busy, fast week and they were great throughout the entire situation. The theme was Recycle your life and we focused on 4 areas of our lives that need recycled by God, Questions, Relationships, Master and Worth. We tried to have each game address these type of issues, sometimes it worked and other times it didn't. I think one of the highlights was our Pizza Begger Night in Rakvere. We sent out each team with an unbaked pizza dough and they needed to come back in 2 hours with a baked pizza, and they couldn't visit the homes of anyone they know or resturants and shops. The teams all seemed to be shocked by this task, but they tried and all the teams did an awesome job. We wanted they to see how they can sometimes create fast relationships with people. Many teams were invited into homes to bake their pizza and were served food and tea. People were very friendly and generous and it was one of the biggest highlights of the camp.

The last day we spent at Nutsaku, a great camp owned by the baptist union and after being in cities for a few days running around and sleeping on church floors, this place was like a 4 star hotel. On the last night we asked the students to consider their worth and where are they getting it from. Daniel shared passionately about how their true value needed to come from God and Him alone. To mark this, the students wrote what things are controlling their value other than God on sky lanterns and then we sent those off into the sky. It made for a beautiful and fitting end to our camp.

I look forward to hearing more and more about what God does and will continue to do in the lives of the young people at LIFT. I would ask you to pray for these young people over the next couple of weeks!