Latvia, China, Kosovo, May 2008

The Riga ecclesia continue their work with the women living in the women's shelter. Today we were pleased to finally baptize SVETLANA. You'd never think she lived in such awful circumstances from how she appears. She's an intelligent woman whose drug addicted daughter deceived her of the deeds to their apartment and sold it; now she is left with nowhere to live, nobody to care for her, and failing health. Truly "to the poor the Gospel is preached". She takes a keen interest in our work in Kosovo and elsewhere, having travelled widely in Eastern Europe in more prosperous times. We have earlier published photos of the woman's shelter, with women sleeping on the toilet floors, staircases etc. and thieving from each other, so that the women gather their posesions under their coats and sleep hugging them to themselves. Here are some of our file photos of the situation there:

Woman sleeping with her belongings by the stairs
    

Woman sleeping with her belongings on the toilet floor
    

Women sleeping on chairs in the entrance lobby. Note the old lady on the right awkwardly stretching her leg on the chairs, with her walking stick to her right.
    

These women aren't alcoholics, druggies etc. Many of them have low paying jobs, but can't afford the high price of rent, or they have medical needs they must pay for, and with no families they just have nowhere to live.

The truly poor, the persecuted, the dying, the sick and forgotten... long for the end. It's this 'longing for the end' which provides a great opportunity to preach the truly good news of God's coming Kingdom on earth. We're therefore delighted to report Svetlana's baptism this morning.

We gave her some new glasses as she'd slept on her old ones and broken them:
    

We gave her a blanket knitted by sisters in the Bodalla ecclesia, Australia:
    

In the process of baptizing her, we noticed the reason why she walks with such difficulty is because her toes are seriously deformed and eaten away by various gangrene episodes. With no spare cash for medical attention, Svetlana had not been able to get any care, and wearing too small shoes which she found in the garbage cans has exacerbated the problem. Despite having been associating with us for some time she's never asked for any help and we were unaware of the state of her toes until the baptism process revealed them. We'll do what we can to provide decent footwear and Cindy will investigate getting her compression stockings and working out some program of therapy.

Photo: Sis Svetlana's toes
         

Please pray for our sister, and help us do what we can for her.

CHINA

Our zealous brother Donald and his helpers keep at it in spreading the Gospel. We have produced our booklet "Bible Basics for Buddhists" in Chinese, and Donald is seen her reading it to one-eyed He Dong:

KOSOVO Brother Dani reports his gratitude for the apartment we're renting for him, and that now they are assembling there for weekly Bible study. Also, he's received the first package of Bibles which Carelinks readers kindly sent to him in response to our appeal, and the group are using them. He writes: "Today I Got 6 BIBLE in one box. We thank God for His Word. We meet with all to reading and study Bible togather once a week. Pray for good progress of our "Home Group"! We thank God for Br Tefik he start to work in same place that he worked 5 years ago, thank God for blessings in this family. Pray for me, June is exams time. Pray that i can finish soon my university and to find a Job".

VARIOUS

- A young sister from Canada is hoping to spend 3 months in Latvia doing intensive mission work in the latter part of this year, God willing. Is anyone interested in joining her?

- We have updated our video about preaching in the Moslem world and moved it to a different site. You can view it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOed0UUHH4o

- Our Aletheia Bible College has a large number of old Christadelphian magazines from the 19th century and earlier 20th century. We're happy to give these to any interested- please let us know if you'd like them.

With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks