Summer

We estonians like summer.

It is a time for eating, resting, recreating, hanging out. And of course watching the World Cup. Some random thoughts that i have in my mind right now:

1. English Camps are going on with 3 different local churches. You definitely can pray for the Koma, US and local church teams. And of course for the students.
2. Anna's pregnancy is going well but it is getting tougher for her as the time for delivery gets closer. 17th of August is right now the date for our second son to be born.
3. We have a baptism service this sunday and after that we will be meeting in a park through out the month of July. It will be a great opportunity to bring our friends to these celebrations.
4. There's a whole list of household chores that need to be done. Somehow the time seems to be slipping so fast out of the hands that it is hard to get to them...
5. This summer is a summer of weddings. I will be doing 5 weddings - 2 have been done and 3 are still ahead. Love it.
6. It is tons of fun to see the kids growing up. Here is a quick sample of Emma stylin'

Ordination

Last Sunday was my ordination. It was a special day. Since Risttee is part of the baptist union then the president of the union, Meego Remmel (who is also the pastor in Salem church where i grew up) and Toivo (he is currently the other pastor in Risttee but he will be going to Salem to help Meego pastor that church since summer) did my ordination.


Many people have asked me "Do you feel different now?".
I think that i do. Its not that my role or responsibility has changed or increased. But I do feel more confident in working/living as a pastor. At the same time i feel so honored to be able to work in the calling of God among the wonderful people of Risttee.

Family photo shoot

It is good to be have a family where there are 3 models. It takes the pressure off from the dad to look handsome ;)

Here you can see the pictures that our friend took this last weekend.
www.mustvalge.com/saared

Estonians least religious in the world

I dont know if you happened to read this article about a study that was done among the countries of the world. It is definitely an interesting read. Here is the beginning of it.

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Five EU members figure among the world's top 10 least religious countries, with Estonia leading the list, a new poll has shown.

Just 14 percent of Estonians answered positively to the question: "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" according to a poll released by Gallup earlier this week.

Estonia is followed by Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark, where 17 and 18 percent of those asked answered positively to the same question.

The survey was carried in 143 countries, with an average of eight people out of 10 saying religion was an important part of their lives.

You can find the rest of the article from here.

Family car

We have had our old car Audi for 5 years now. I like it. I mean, i like it when it drives. Unfortunately last months it hasn't been that often. Just a week before Elliot was born and i hadn't been able to pass the car inspection twice (inspite of spending couple of thousand krones on fixing it), we understood that it is really time to start looking for a bit better car for the family.

Well, a week later we had found what we liked - more functional, reliable and comfortable car - Toyota Avensis Verso.


The market right now is in such a bad shape that we were able to get quite a good deal (more than 4,000USD off the original price!). Of course it was still expensive so that our family will be on a tighter budget for a while.

PS I dont think we will allow Porsche to ride along in this car. At least for a while.

Elliot Leevi

27.01.2009 06:08AM Elliot Leevi was born.

The labour with Elliot was much easier than with Emma. Also when Emma was born we went to the hospital around 4am But the difference was that Emma was born 7pm while Elliot at 6am. Well, of course this time Anna knew much better what to expect and so we didn't hurry to the hospital too early but just in time. Also what was fun was that Elliot was born into the water.

The miracle of new life never gets old.


Elliot is so handsome and cute. He has at least one dimple. Maybe 2, but im not so sure about that. One difference we have been able to tell so far with baby boys and girls is that Elliot is almost every time able to pee himself all the way wet. It doesn't matter how well you put on the diaper, he still finds a way to do it.

So life is busy right now with family. Emma was also sick for a couple of days, so during that time she became a daddys girl while Elliot was mamas boy.
Anyways, it is a lot of fun. You should come and visit us.

Things you can do with the snow

Today Emma had fun for the first time in her life playing with the snow.
According to her the best thing you can do with snow is:

1. Eat it
2. Chase the snowballs that daddy makes

Proud to be an Estonian

Estonians dont have a lot of patriotism. At least it doesn't show most of the time. Except in song festivals when thousands of people get together to sing, and tens of thousands come to listen. Sometimes we sing for freedom. 20 years ago thats how we got our independance (Singing revolution).
Yesterday night we celebrated Estonian re-indpendance day. The key event for that was a night song festival, just like the ones 20 years ago. We couldn't miss it and drove up to Tallinn with a car full of people to joing the thousands of people singing once again for freedom. It was quite amazing night. There were more than 100,000 people gathered. Although there were also 5000 singers you really couldn't tell a difference between the choir and the audience. We were united, holding up hands and waving Estonian (and Georgian) flags.
It was 6:30 in the morning when we finally got back home. Proud to be an Estonian. But more than that I am thankful for the freedom that we have as a country. Thank you God!

PS You can find a really good post written by an american living in Estonia about the songfestival night here.

Here are some pictures of the night.

Our family is growing

We have some very exciting personal news to share with you all, as proud and as pleased parents that we are, even more so are we to announce that the end of January Emma will be having a new baby brother or sister!!

Anna is 12+ weeks along in her pregnancy and feeling better everyday. She has had a whole new experience of some mild nausea with this baby that she didn't have with Emma. Emma is already giving mommy's tummy kisses and I am also very excited about becoming a dad again.

We had our 12 week Ultrasound today, so attached is a picture, even though it's quite hard to read anything out of it! We would appriciate your prayers and support during these next months, as the baby grows and develops and for more patience as parents to train Emma to be a loving and obiedient sister.

where are your eyes

You have 2 options what to look at this picture:
1. My receding hairline
2. Our cutest daugther Emma


The picture is taken at Kuldar and Kristel wedding. Congrats my friends!

Rat Race 2008

Here is Risttee Rat Race team in our catholic/high-church uniforms running for charity in the center of Tartu.

baptism

Risttee church has only one mission - to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
This Sunday we had a big celebration as 7 young people gave a public confession that Jesus is their King and Saviour.

Click to see pictures.

that made me think

"Die to the dream of being a success and live to be a blessing…”
(M.Barnett)

I am wired to setting goals and achieving them. Success is sth that is visible to many.
Being a blessing can be much more of a hidden thing.

Am I still attached to the idol of pride?

reflections from Soma

Craig and I returned in the end of last week from Soma school in Tacoma, WA.
It was a great time. Definitely very stretching.

There were 11 international guys attending Soma School (+ around 10 americans)

Most lasting impression on me was left by Jeff Vanderstelt and his talks about the Gospel, what is church, and the identities of church/christian. It was specially powerful to me cause trying to understand the Gospel has been an area where God has working in my heart the most. I am convinced that the understanding of Gospel (and the full gospel) has to be the foundation of everything that we do, and everything we are.
I am still trying to process some of the things Jeff said about the gospel. For example the full gospel (means+purpose):
Means of Salvation (Gospel power): God-Sin-Jesus-Faith not works
Purpose of Salvation (Gospel story): Creation-Fall-Redemtion-Restoration

It was great to see how their church model worked. Instead of "come to us" (attractional model) they are definitely hard-core "lets go out to them" (missional model). They are really gospel based. people in their communities really get that the church is the people. And it was also interesting to observe their dialogical story-based teaching style. People in Soma really know the Story (their term for the bible, more specifically for the redemptive arc of bible stories).

Missional communities (small groups) are really on mission, that can be the specific neighborhood or target-group specific mission. Besides that very many people had their own personal mission projects. That was really great to see.

We are starting to process everything that we heard during that week to see what can we learn from it for our local context.

Seattle skyline

Appart from everything I learned there, it was hard to be away from Anna and Emma. But I have to tell you, NW seems to be a great place to go back to. I love the nature there. Totally my type! Maybe one day I can go riding the bikes in the mountains with my family there

Czech-Estonia-USA

We just returned from spending a week with Josiah Venture family in Malenovice, Cz. It was a refreshing and a stimulating time. Starting with JV council meetings where we concentrated on what is needed in different countries to double the fruit in the next 3 years.
The theme for this years spring conference was spiritual warfare. So often we forget that we are soldiers in the battle field filled with unexpected attacks. Instead we have the mentality of retired bum who has got a free ticket to heaven and doesn't know what to do with his time.

JV council members

Emma loves two things above all other:
1. Animals (furry and moving)
2. Babies (not so furry but also moving)
She went hysterical in the conference when she saw another small kid.

We got back today evening.
At 3am i will catch a bus to Tallinn to fly to Seattle, USA. Craig and I will spend a week and couple of days in Soma school (church planters school that Acts29 network Soma school is organizing). I am really looking forward to that time. It will be great. But at the same time I really would want to go right now since I see that there are many strategic things that would need my attention here. And i dont want to leave Emma and Anna behind.

You can be praying for all the travels and that the time there would bear kingdom fruit in the years to come in Estonia.


These are some pictures from the JV spring conference

Protecting my head

Last week I realized my long-time dream and bought a bicycle.
And a helmet to protect my head.

My calculations were, that
1) having a bike enables us to go for nice bikerides as a family on warm summer nights
2) I save money on gas by riding the bike to the office. That way Anna can use the car

Well, the truth probably will be that if we go on a bike ride once in 2 weeks then thats pretty good. And brief calculations also show that i wont save tons of money on gas. So financially it makes no sense to spend the money. Probably it is more feasible to rend a bike or sth.


I guess i spent the money on bike as an investment into emotions. Emotions of feeling good after working out. Emotions of spending an evening together with the family while emma is sitting behind me in a baby chair lauging. Emotions of feeling the wind and sund, or rain and cold while driving the bike through the city.

Selling emotions - thats where there is the most money.

Confessions of a pastor

This Sunday we will start a new series in Risttee church called "Confessions of a pastor". Throughout 4 weeks I will be talking about the areas in my life where I am struggeling the most. There are of course more than 4 confessions that i could make but after choosing among them here are the ones that we will talk about:
- I can't stand of lot of Christians
- I have to fight hard to keep sexually pure
- I am a slave to time
- I worry all the time

On one hand i really look forward to these weeks cause i know that God wants to use these weeks to deal with a lot of stuff in our church. On the other hand i feel scared, cause being open like that wont be easy for me. I have never been good at showing my emotions, specially communicating them.

You can pray for me that God would give me the right words and courage to be open. And that the horizontal confessions (between me and the people) would turn into vertical confessions between God and everyone.

Fried brain

I don't know if you have ever felt that your brain is so full of information, that it can not take any more. ALl the places that we have visited and things that i have heard have pushed me into this limit and now things are starting to mix up in my head.
Today was a great day that we spent around the Sea of Galilea - the center of Jesus' ministry on earth. While I am still processing everything in my head, i will share with you a picture of my friend from South Africa. Watching him dancing and singing makes me feel sad that i dont have any black peoples blood in me!

Strategy

In Jerusalem you can see almost on every step the conflicts between Christianity jewish and muslim religions. That has been going on for centuries. One visible element of that is the fate of different building through centuries when they have switched sides. It is not uncommon for a church to become a mosque and then a church and then a mosque.

Golden gate is in the middle of the wall. Around and below that you can see the cemetary

One specially sneaky thing that the arabs have done is visible if you look from the Mountain of olives to the temple mount. There is a big sealed gate leading to the old city. It is called the Golden Gate. According to the jewish tradition (based on some bible texts) that is the gate from which Messiah will enter the city of Jerusalem. To prevent that from happening the muslims have sealed the gate and created a muslim graveyard in front of that gate. And of course no jew will step into the muslim cemetary. You can call that preventive strategy. Or cheap play.

Looking for my master to return as the King of Kings,
Peep

Life-changing contrast

It hit me yesterday, looking up to the huge and massive archways of the Holy Sepulture church - the huge power of religion.
What has been done in the name of it. How many lives have been impacted for better or worse through out thousands of years. Were they jewish, muslim or christian. Intimidating and saddening.

The power of religion from one hand - and the Message and Way of Christ on the other hand. I wonder what would Jesus feel and do if he would come to nowadays Jerusalem. What would he feel and do if he would come to our church. If he would come to me?

Yeah, i cant forget the contrast between religion and the person and work of Jesus...

Holy Sepulture church - possible location where Jesus died (catholic and orthodox tradion)

Jews celebrating bar-mitzvahs by the western wall

Group of israeli soldiers (they are so young) in a bible-study group in the old city