29
their own cookies with their names.
Temperatures get very low in Riga now,
often down to -20 C [about -4 F]. Really
we do warm up their lives and hearts, for
their lives are as bleak as the weather
and the grey Soviet block environment.
It’s really no fun living in night shelters
when you are elderly, and having to
tramp the streets all day with your bag
of possessions. Some aren’t even in the
night shelters. You can see a heart
warming video of the winter warmer
packs being handed out, and our modest
New Year’s day celebration at the
ecclesia - link bottom of page 28.
Daily Bible class and feeding meetings are run
on weekdays in the Winter from 4-8pm. There
are many touching stories. Ilya is an invalid
with spinal and other palsy issues, who lost his
parents when young. A woman who now
attends our meetings regularly kept an eye on
him, and introduced him to us. Then there was
Viktor, a man who first came to Jesus Christ
from attending the Salvation Army over ten
years ago. He got a Bible and has read the
Bible from cover to cover every year for eight
years. He absolutely loves the Russian NEV
Bible with commentary. He has a great Bible
knowledge and so appreciates how our
teaching has put everything in
place for him; we were all
really so happy at his baptism,
pictured above right.
Brother Jesse Andrews
reports: “It’s hard to put into
words the need of the people
who come for a cup of coffee
and a bowl of soup daily at the
Riga Bible Center. The area
allows for the reception of a large population
- being in proximity to innumerable soviet-
era-style apartment buildings. What is there
to say about the great work that’s being done
here? Volunteers from the west come and stay
for extended periods to support the efforts of
Duncan Heaster; the former preparing nutri-
tious soups packed full of ingredients like
chicken, corn, tomato paste, potatoes,
carrots, etc. while the latter delivers an
exhortation in Russian to the people who
come by.
Initially, I was told, the people who came for
a cup of coffee or tea before the exhortation
and meal came in to sit in silence. Now, us
soup-chefs can hear the din of excited, if
excitable, Russian chatter pouring through
the closed door. The set-up and take-down of
the whole operation outside the kitchen is
particularly impressive. Though we take care
of three water boilers for coffee or tea, the
stools (visitors sit on stools around 3 tables)
are set up by local volunteers and are wiped
down, floor mopped, and washrooms wiped
down vigorously also by those local volunteers
who are ‘paid’ with a bit of extra food. They
also set up the rows of chairs that they’ll use
to sit and listen to Duncan
deliver his nightly exhortation
which takes place between
coffee/tea and the soup meal.
To speak highly of the other
soup-chefs here, the process
in the kitchen is also impres-
sive to someone witnessing it
for the first time. Within the
span of about 4 hours, the
entire kitchen area is sanitized and wiped
down before being assaulted by a flurry of
cutting boards, knives, meat grinders, and
trays, all to cut, chop, mince, pour, and sani-
tize whatever dishes the cooks use, followed
by a daily mop and sweep and then a final
sanitization in the evening. All told, after a
few hours of hard work, three steaming pots
of soup roll out of the kitchen on a sanitized
trolley nightly to the appreciation of all the
visitors to the Riga Bible Center.”
~ continued ...
Sis Anne describes the special
dessert for New Year