Monday 29 November 2010

God is at work!

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Philp. 1:2)

This morning I woke up with the thankful heart. The Lord blessed us so much in the past month. We had a time of struggles and He comforted us. We rejoiced and He rejoiced with us. We are thankful for His faithfulness and we pray that the Lord would bless you in the most unexpected ways. 
We pray, ‘that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God (Philp. 1:9-11). 


Eugene and Aneta family
Eugene, Aneta and their three children David, Erik and Joana arrived to England about 4 years ago. Since then, they have been attending Brunswick Baptist Church. We are very happy to be able to make friends with Eugene and Aneta as we all have a heart to preach the Gospel to the Polish people. 
                            





Since Polish people still facing difficulties in meeting the ends back home. As a result of this, Eugene’s brother Slavik has moved to Gloucester. We met him on Saturday and we were able to talk about the love of God and that He is looking after him in this difficult time. 
Please, pray for Eugene and Aneta to have wisdom and share their love for Christ with Slavik that he would find hope and peace in Him.
         
 

                               Family reunion

At the beginning of November Rita’s sister visited us. She has never been in England. We had a great time together and rejoiced that we were able to pray and show the love of Christ. She said that she never had such a peaceful holidays. Please, pray for Loreta to find this peace in Christ. 


                                                          
  God is a team Leader!

God is full of surprises! A few weeks ago we received a letter from an elderly woman from one of our partner  
churches. As we read the letter, God spoke to us, 
‘I have called you to this place’. It reminded us about Gideon in Judges 6:14-16). 'The Lord turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you? "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel?" My clan is the weaker in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family." The Lord answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together." 
As we think about ourselves being God's team in Gloucester. We are just like Gideon thinking how weak and incapable we are, but God warmed our hearts, when he said that 'We will work Together'. He won't leave us on our own. This is the best promise! 
As an angel talked to Gideon. In our case we received a letter from a woman who have had a heart for Polish people since the WWII. The letter encouraged us so much! God confirmed our calling once again. If He decided to place us in Gloucester He will open up doors for the Gospel in this city. Please, write us! We need your prayers and your life stories that demonstrates His faithfulness and encourages us.
We know that working on our own, we would never bring glory to God, because the whole concept of mission is about being part of God’s mission, we are His team. He is the Leader and we are His fellow workers. 

Praise Him:

for Saturday prayer meetings with Eugene and Aneta; 

for Rita being able to make contacts with Polish people;
for Vidas being able to provide for the family;
for Rugile doing well at school and making good friends’

for growing number of supporters; 

for partner churches: St James, Brunswick Baptist Church and Kendal Road Baptist Church for being supportive and encouraging at the beginning of our ministry.


What we have not done in order to be able to preach the Gospel?
We are quite strange missionaries. In one hand we are in the ministry, but on the other hand we cannot do anything for a very simple reason. We have not raised our support yet and we are struggling financially. We all know that anyone who goes on the mission overseas, they must raise support and then go, but we are not going overseas. We are here! 
Recently, we had a meeting with our partner churches and European Christian Mission to talk about this issue. 
We concluded the meeting with very clear view, that for us to begin our ministry we need to raise support. 
However:
we will continue meeting with Eugene and Aneta;
we will keep contacts with Polish people that we met during these three month; 
learning Polish;
we will do some more research on Polish community in Gloucester; 
but the main focus of this year is support raising. We need to raise £13 000 a year. 
We would appreciate your prayers!

As you all know Rita has been learning Polish. She has a great teacher Ola and she helps her a lot, however, Rita feels that she does not have enough opportunities to practice Polish. We have done some research on language learning possibilities. We found out that Cheltenham Campus offers ‘Polish Beginners’ course. The course would help Rita immensely! The course will begin from the 5th of January. Rita will need to register this week, because if there are not enough people, the course will have to be cancelled. We humbly ask you to pray that we would be able to pay for this course.
If you feel that you can support Rita with £156 ( also £60 for a bus tickets) for 12 week Polish language course, please contact us. 


Thank you for your prayers and support!

In Christ,
Rita, Vidas and Rugile Rimkai





Vidas, Rita and Rugile Rimkai,
8 Casey Close,
Gloucester, GL1 3QP
01452 548363
rita.rimkiene@ecmi.org
vidas.rimkus@ecmi.org


European Christian Mission
Freepost NH-4573
50 Billing Road
Northhampton
NN1 5BR



Tuesday 2 November 2010

Inspired by God's faithfulness in Gloucester

'Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about to the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I am just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then' 
Joshua 14:10-11


These verses have been coming to my mind again and again. In six years we visited quite a few churches in Gloucester and beyond its borders. One and the same thing occurred to us, that churches are aging. Of course, this is not a new discovery to many of you. Sociologists, missiologists and other scholars noticed this phenomenon years ago. I thought it is interesting that many aging church goers or better to say believers think or assume that mission is for young, lively folk like us. I dare to say that neither churches encourage elderly people to be active in church life. Personally, I believe that there is so much to learn from elderly folk, because not long time ago they were our age and did amazing stuff. Thus, the younger generation should remind them about 'no age limit' in God's mission and get them up from their comfy seats to share and encourage the young!  Does older generation think that they have no gifts, skills and not vigorous enough for mission? Or missionary organisations have set up age limits? I do not think so! We are all exited to see young people going to mission. Also, we admire and perhaps pray for ourselves to have the same strength and joy of being a servant of God when a 70 year old lady or a gentleman gives a testimony of his walk with God. We need all generations to be active for the kingdom of God!

A few months ago we have been approached by an elderly man. He asked us if we would help him to 'restore' their church. According to him, church has lost all its congregation and now there are four elderly people praying for revival of their church. He was about the same age as the Caleb son Jephunneh Kenizzite, who approached Joshua by reminding him of the land that Moses promised, but also assuring Joshua that he is not too old to look after it. What Jephunneh was saying, that there is no age limit for those who serve God. There is no battle that people in their 80's could not fight. 

But the man that approached us showed no interest in God's mission himself. He surely loved God, but according to his own standards. He was sure that only young people have a gift of evangelism, preaching, encouraging, teaching and etc; only young have time and skills. In fact, he had a vision of a church that he wanted to have. But here is one problem, he forgot that church is not man's, but God's. Sometimes we all think that a particular church belongs to us. We have ideas and desires how this church should look like, but the good news is that church is God's and all we need to do is to follow His lead. 

This Sunday we visited our partner church, Brunswick Baptist church were a women stood up and prayed, ' Lord I know I am not young, but please, show me how can I please you and how can I serve you despite of my old age!'. This is a woman who seeks the Lord wholeheartedly and seeks not according to her own understanding, but God's, who has no restrictions to the age of His servants.  I truly pray that we all would have a character of this woman.

On the Sunday afternoon we prayed that we would grow old and never tired of serving the Lord. We asked God to fill us with strength and passion for His kingdom. We prayed that when we will be eighty we would be vigorous as forty years ago and ready to face a new day, new battles, new tasks, new skills and gifts. And if we'll lay in the bed of death we would pray for zealous followers of Christ to take our place and serve the Lord wholeheartedly. 

But while we still young we praise the Lord for:

Rugile has shown a great deal of interested in Lithuanian language. She has been reading and writing very well. She is proud to have a second language and she thinks that she might be able to learn the third.  She is doing well at school, enjoys playing piano and loves going to church club on Thursdays.
Recently, she was diagnosed with psoriatic plague. It is a skin condition that becomes hard and sometimes painful or itchy and can spread all over the body. The common place of psoriatic plague is elbows and knees. At the moment, her both elbows has been covered in hard yellowish spots. The doctor prescribed a special cream. Please, pray for Rugile's illness that she would feel as comfortable as possible about it. But also that God would heal it!

Vidas has been busy during the holidays. He painted our bedroom, kitchen and the corridor. It looks tidy and nice! He is working hard at Redcliffe. He is a shy man, but while he is at work and do not see what I am writing here I must tell you something: he is a very gifted man not only fixing stuff, but he has a gift of encouragement and prayer.  He enjoys hanging out with teenagers, he says, 'I will always be young in spirit'! His gift is to inspire young people! Please, pray that he would have a chance to witness to teenagers at Kendal Road Baptist church as well as to Eastern European men. 

English teaching is going well.  The Bible reading as another way of learning English slowed down, but I know that this is a very unusual way of learning English, therefore I prefer to wait for Edita to feel more comfortable and see a benefit of it. 
We visited our partner churches St. James and Brunswick Baptist Church. Both churches are very welcoming and encouraging! We are happy to be partners with them and seek God's will together. 

On the 6th of November we will be having a Polish couple at our house to discuss a possibility of having a Polish Bible group. Please, pray for us to be able to explain our vision and encourage this couple to be part of it. 

Needs:

We are still struggling with support raising! Please, please, please pray for people to come alongside to support us financially. 
Pray, that we would seek God's guidance and take time to pray. 
Pray, that more churches would come alongside us and recognise mission at home as their calling and responsibility. 
Pray, for Gloucester churches to be open to mission together. People to be open to enjoy diversity and praise God for being faithful in their communities and beyond. 


We thank you for your prayers and courage to walk an extra mile with us. Please, remember there is no age limit in serving our Lord Jesus Christ, just a challenge of trust and submission to Him. 

Please, write us and tell us about your ministry, challenges, difficulties and joys over defeated battles.

Our contacts:
rita.rimkiene@ecmi.org
vidas.rimkus@ecmi.org

In Christ,

Rimkai