Early June Newsletter

Out of the North – blog: nordictexan.wordpress.com; Twitter: www.twitter.com/nordictexandb/; email: breatheonmespirit@yahoo.com

Howdy from Finland!

I would like to take this time to thank you for your continuing prayer support of the work that is going on in Finland. It is slow work, but we are seeing some progress.

For starters, let’s take a brief look at what has happened since my last newsletter. I had the pleasure of helping in the refurbishing of a wooden sailboat with Mika and his fiancee Susaan (spelling?) on the fortress island of Suomenlinna. I have tried to garner support for a prayerwalking ministry over the last month. A driver’s license application has been started at the absolute last second before I would have had to attend a driving school. The Baptist workers’ days saw me in the campsite near Jyväskylä for a couple of days of connection with the leaders in our churches. I attended a showing of two German films (both utterly depressing) at the Helsinki Goethe Institute. I am just coming off of a theology weekend called 2 Timothy 2:2. I held the first meeting for a street ministry that I am hoping to start in about 2 weeks. Prayer requests happen throughout the newsletter.

So, I’m not going to promise any crazy stories in this newsletter. One may come, but only by extension through part of one of my updates. Sorry to dash any extreme feeling of elation from the anticipation of such stories, but there you go.

The sailboat: I am convinced that I am one of the few, if not the only, American whose first trip to the fortress island of Suomenlinna was for the purpose of working on a sailboat. Usually people go for the tourism. The island defended the Finns from attacks by sea from Russia, and now serves as a picnic area. Most people take a sightseeing boat around the island, or are part of a tour in which they are herded like animals through certain points of interest. I got the one-up and saw a part of the island(s) that few of the tourists ever get to see…the ugly part that the locals hide away. Well, I say ugly only because no one was trying to impress with the shape and condition of the buildings. It was an area to work in, and therefore, pardoned from the kind of upkeep that draws those kinds of people willing to throw money around. To tell the truth, the path to that area was so inconspicuous that if my friend hadn’t walked out from it, I would have never taken it. This particular friend, Mika, was the first Finn that I met after arriving in Finland…and it was on a plane…to Zürich, Switzerland. I thought we had lost touch, but he had promised to invite me sailing, and dadgummit if a Finn doesn’t keep their word. I had a prayerwalking time before I went there, but I was overjoyed about the invite. After I had arrived, he introduced me to his fiancee, Susaan (I’m assuming this spelling from the pronunciation), her friend, and the carpenter that he had hired to do the majority of the labor on his boat. We had some lunch, sat around halfway testing my Finnish knowledge, and then got to work. Mika had just had the deck of the boat redone, so that meant that there were hundred of holes in which the securing screws had been drilled. Our task was to take these little wooden pegs, dip them in this kind of glue, and hammer them into the holes with the wood grain pointing in the same direction (because when the wood gets wet, it will expand, so it’s better that it expands in the same direction). This took a few hours, so we got to talk, and joke, and talk, and point out that neither of us knew exactly what we were doing. It felt really, really good to swing a hammer again. Mika is an engineer of cheese-making machines, so this kind of work was a bit of an offset for his mind, using a different part of this brain…even though some of his colleagues found the passion for a wooden sailboat a bit peculiar. At the end of the day, we were chilling (ok, Finnglish word is chillailla: minä chillailen – I chill; me chillaillaan – we chill) at the restaurant near where we were working, and out of nowhere, these two guys on a boat, the guitarist who looked like an old-fashioned rock star and a the drummer who was older than the Mississippi River, began to rock. It was surprisingly good. After a while we all got back on the ferry and headed for Helsinki. It was pretty awesome. I am hoping for more encounters with them and that they will be open to the Gospel message. I laid the groundwork for it during the conversation on the ferry, but now, I need to see it through. Pray for this relationship and for this couple that they will come to know the Lord in a personal way, not just the member-of-the-state-church way. There, I guess that counts as a story.

Prayerwalking: We’ve come to realize that prayerwalking is very much a missionary mindset kind of ministry. It is very valuable in spiritual warfare, but we don’t always do it in the States. It is still a bit of a new thing to me. During the month of May, I had been working with a local international church to both support their month of prayer and fasting and to launch a prayerwalking ministry. I met with the lead pastor and the site leader, presented my idea, and eventually shared about it in both their Leppävaara church (a part of Espoo) and their Kaisaniemi church (a part of Helsinki). I only received two contacts who were interested in it through that sharing. So, then I realized that we had a list of people from the Gospel Cinema ministry that we had over this past fall and spring. I asked the leader of that ministry to send an invitation (that I wrote in Finnish, he said that he only changed a couple things that I wrote) to those people. No response. One member of my church walked with me going east-west through the lower part of Helsinki. We will be taking a break after June is over. I will be in camps during July, and I will never know when I will be around either. Pray that God leads us to the people that we need to meet during these prayerwalks and that we will continue with this spiritual warfare.

The driver’s license: Yeah, so last second. The rule is that you have to exchange your previous country’s driving license within the first year of your time in Finland. With the way that the EU travel rules are set up, I didn’t have a stamp that marked when I was physically in the country, and I had only registered at my address in August of last year. Soooo, they were going off the starting date of my residence visa. May 19th. My driver’s license appointment, May 17th. When did I get all my paperwork in? May 24th. Yeah, right under the gun. If I wouldn’t have gone when I did, I would have had to attend driving school…with a standard transmission car instead of the automatic that I know how to drive. The ladies helping me were very kind and a blessing. They could have pulled the governmental bureaucracy on me and thrown me to the lions (leijonat, in Finnish, leijonaille – to the lions). I have to call at the end of June to see where my application is in the process. Then, I get to drive Clifford, the Big, Red Van, legally in this country. That and have something that has my picture and my Finnish social security number on it so I don’t have to carry my passport around. This is worth a prayer of praise.

Baptist Worker’s Days: Työntekijöiden Päivät were held at the campsite, Kesäranta, near the town of Jyväskylä. I believe that four of the Finnish-speaking churches and two of the Burmese Baptist churches were represented there. It was a time to share ideas, successes, failures, and a sauna. All in Finnish, I kept up pretty well. My team member, Jason, hasn’t learned much more than survival Finnish, so he was mostly sitting there being a pretty face. I was distracted once I noticed the smoke coming out of the savusauna (smoke sauna). Unfortunately, that distraction was during the most interesting brother, who had grown up in Estonia and had served in the Soviet army. He told his life story, but I was just watching the smoke come out of the sauna. Maybe I will get a chance to listen to him again. The next day, we went to my roommate’s family’s home for a lunch as prepared by his parents. While we were waiting there, the Burmese brother, who we had brought with us and lives in Vantaa, was sharing about the problems in Burma (all in Finnish, but since he is a foreigner speaking it, I could understand it all). Yeah, he got into naming the countries where the weapons had come from…way to go, U.S. It was kinda rough to listen to his country’s problems and how he and is family could probably never return there. I am glad, though, that I had attended those days. Pray for this leadership that they will lead their churches in service to God and that they will be fearless when it comes to proclaiming the Gospel to their families, their cities, and their nation.

Goethe: I went to watch those German movies with the intent to meet people, but when the mother of an unbelieving friend walked in, that turned into relationship building. She is a believer herself, but her son, Tomas, my friend, is not. She thought that Tomas had invited me to watch the movies, but I assured her that it was purely a coincidence that I was there. Pray for Tomas. He has a hard time dealing with people, especially in large groups. Pray also about his future. He has an amazing passion for electrical engineering and in particular, the work of Nikola Tesla. He will be seeking to study this in the near future.

2 Timothy 2:2: www.yksinarmosta.fi, This is the website of the organization that took shape at the theology seminar this last weekened. I’m in the video twice, well, the back of my head is. Ideally, we are going to make thousands of copies of this DVD and deliver them to every household in Espoo. That’s the plan, and now we just have to see it through. The weekend itself was really good. I worked in the kitchen the entire time, which kept me from playing guitar with Jere, but I believe that I was forgiven. We tried to keep it close to the typical Finnish fare, but small Americanisms worked themselves into it. Sandwiches AND chips. Typical in the States but very separate things here. Chips are for parties. I had to explain that we would send children to school with a sandwich and chips. We got a joke about the presence of bananas at every meal. Hey, potassium is good for you. There were 5 teaching times. 3 from Finns, and 2 from Americans who serve in Finland, one of which has been here for 30 years, but I am not sure in which language he presented. I was only in the sessions after all the cleaning and further preparation had taken place. We had sauna. I skipped the one Friday night because I was worn out, but Saturday made up for it. I think that we had one of the sauna rooms up to 110 C (230 F). It was great…until someone started throwing too much water on the furnace (kiuas), then it was as though we were lobsters. I was thankful that the lake was around 40 F for a quick cool-down. At the highest point we had 23 guys there, including the 3 of us in the kitchen, a Romanian brother, Costel, an IMBer on Team Finland, Jason (the same Jason from earlier), and me. We cleaned up on Sunday morning and headed out to our respective cities. It will be next year, I believe, before the next seminar, but the guys have a passion for the Lord, for the Bible, and for the Truth of God. The seminar was designed to instruct, lead, and encourage the future leadership of the Finnish Baptist Union. I think that it’s working. Pray for future meetings, for more men to join the group, and for all the leaders here in Finland.

Street Ministry: On Monday, May 7th, we met for the initial meeting for an street art ministry. One couple from my home church here, a young woman from a college-age church in Helsinki, and I met in Helsinki and had a small picnic at a place called Temppeliaukio, referred to as the Rock Church in tourist books (not the actual translation). We shared some ideas, some that we may need to research licensing issues about, and set up a general time in which to begin. Two of the ideas are to show a video on the wall of a random building in Helsinki, but one idea that I had was much simpler and only needs two dry-erase boards. Pray that we hold tight to the vision of the ministry, to share the Gospel with the lost and perishing in Finland. Pray also that those of us participating with be encouraged and inspired by and through ideas and responses that come out of this effort.

Finally, I have had contact with a small church in Marion, Texas, near San Antonio. They have asked me to share with them as a part of an upcoming July Bible study. Please pray that I encourage them and that God may bless their study and the other missions stories to be shared there. Also, pray for Cheri, my contact there. She has already blessed my life by asking me to participate, and even more so because she has an as-yet incurable form of cancer. Please pray for her and her family.

God Bless You, and Keep Praying For Finland!

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