Tons of Prayers Needed

This weekend is a huge one for our ministry and we need your help.

Friday will be Going UP. This event is for junior high and high school students. This is going to be a very big event for us and we are praying for 600 students to come. The last few days we have been traveling around with our band playing at schools to advertise the event. The theme is "Death Trip" and it tells the story of a plane crash and one survivor and his after life experience. I know, it sounds like Lost, but its not the similar. The talk after the drama will be about life after death and we will present the Christian view point on this.

After the event, we have an After Party where our youth normally meet. This will be a place for people to talk and connect and we hope it leads to more and more of them coming back the following Friday for LIFT, our weekly youth event.

Friday night and all day Saturday is our first Going UP conference. Almost 50 youth workers from all over Estonia will be coming to learn about our event and ministry. We are most excited about this. I will be teaching 2 of the sessions on Vision and event planning and also one on how to create relevant events. The coolest part is the people coming are already doing this work and its a great chance to network with people form all over Estonia who have all felt Gods call to go out and reach youth with his message.

Saturday evening is our first "Back Yard" childrens event in our new location. We have been out doing a lot of advertising to see new families come and try to make new contacts. The childrens ministry has been working very hard on this and should be a great night.

Sunday we finsih our series on giving called "Fields of Gold" It has been very life changing for me to be part of this. I really think its having a profound effect on our church. We will finish up by challenging our people to live generous lifes, by giving well beyond their tithe and turn their financial lives over to God.

Also, we have a new team memeber. Jordan Conti, is here serving for the next 6 months. He is working under me, so I can finally get some rest...just kiding. Jordan is already working hard helping us with lots of behind the scenes stuff and gave out well over 1000 flyers the last 2 days. He is also making 3 videos in the next 3 days. His arrival has been Gods timing, The busiest weekend of the year and someone by my side to help make it happen.

Please, please, please pray about these things. Pray or the many lives that will be touched. Pray that God will move in peoples hearts. Pray for the many volunteers that will be pushed this weekend harder than ever.

Thanks!

Language Exam

This past Sunday I took my Estonian language exam. It went pretty okay. I was able to do well in speaking and listening and a little weaker in writing and reading. I only need to get a 60% to pass the exam. Once this is done, i will be able to apply for a long term living permit and also vote and enjoy some other benefits. I will hear from them in about 30 days, so I will let you know!

Ups and Downs

One of the more interesting things about living over seas, but getting paid in America, is you have to play the exchange game. This is where you have to take your dollars, turn them into crowns and see what you get. Usually I do this at the ATM machine and its kinda like a slot machine. You put the card in and then select an amount and hope it comes out, sometimes the exhange rate is down and a dollar doesn't mean as much and other times is looking up. Right now is the worst it has been since i have been in Estonia. The dollar has now slipped to 10.6 crowns. This time last year, it was around 12, so that means I have took a pay cut this year.

Now, one other interesting thing is how prices are raising like crazy in Estonia. At the new year, new taxes on fuel went into place and diesel went from $5.50 a gallon to now $7.00. That was over night. Its funny cause on new years eve the gas stations were really full and I wondered why. The next morning when we drove by and saw the price increase, I figured it out, I guess I need to read the newspaper a little more. The other area is with food. Remember that they average estonian salary is around $800. A package of butter or a liter of mile has gone up 50% in the last 6 months. Meat has increase 25%. Building supplies have gone up around 15% on average in the last 6 months. There is no really reason why except that EST is trying to get caught back up with Europe and especially Scandanavia which has really high prices, but even they think its crazy. Estonia has long been a place finnish tourist have come for long weekends. I recently talk to one man who said that with the increased prices in hotel and food, that its almost cheaper to stay in Finland for a short holiday rather than cross the baltic. That was shocking to me.

All of this is to say, as you think and pray for us, pray about the value of the dollar. Its not something you usualy think about but I look at it everyday and then pick a good day, run to the ATM and take out money to try and make a little increase. Also, the election is important because its been a Bush policy to keep the value of the dollar really well and this will certainly change, but I hope we can get a candidate who is morally sound as well and fiscally responsible.

Doing your homework

When I was in school, a long long time ago, I hated homework. To be honest, I don't know anyone who was particularly fond of it. I wasn't the best student, but I almost always got things done on time. But homework was an important part of school and ultimately life.

Do you ever get homework at church? Does the pastor or speaker, help you to apply the message in the following week? At Risttee its one of the things we have been working on. Peep, one of our pastors is especially good at this. This past week we talked about 2008 and some goals we have as a church and Peep gave us a sheet of paper with different categories. He challenged us to take time and pray and as God to reveal these things and then write them down. Keep them handy and see if you can't make them a reality. I have my list out before me and I will be taping it up in my bathroom at home. I am hoping that seeing it each day will help spur me on.

I don't know how often you do, but homework at church is real life! I believe that each Sunday God wants us to learn something and apply it in our lives. Sometimes is something deep and significant, sometimes its just a small attitude adjustment, sometime is something crazy like radically alter our finances so we can make a great impact for the kingdom and sometimes its just as simple as filling out a piece of paper and putting it on a wall, but I believe if we all did something each week that we learned on Sunday, we would be a lot better off, a lot more like Jesus and lot more effective in spiritual lives.

I challenge each of you to put this into effect in your life in 2008, lets be good students, do our homework on time and maybe we start to enjoy or even love it!

Happy New Year!

Hey Everyone,

Want to wish you all a happy new year! We hope 2008 you find yourselves, closer to Christ and full of his love! I think its going to be a great year. Lord wiling, our family will increase sometime in July. We uploaded some pictures and will start to use picasa to house our photos, here is the site for the pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hamersintartu/Christmas2007

Hope you enjoy the pics!