November 05, 2012

November Newsletter

Dear Friends!

Thank you for your continued friendship, prayers and financial giving to StreetCry! We are so thankful for you.

I want to apologize for the huge lapse in writing. It has now been 2 months since we opened "The Living Room student cafe" here in Tallinn. As many of you know, it was 14 months in the planning, and sometimes we felt it would be forever before we got up and running. But by the start of the school year this September, it finally happened. During that 14 months we made many new friends and a number of people who wanted to help with our project. Because many pieces of equipment were donated by local companies and ministries, as well as by Swedish churches, coupled with the donations we had been receiving - everything came together.

Most of the people who are coming to the cafe are University students, which are our target group. They are the most atheistic and agnostic age group in the country and we are expecting to see God change that! We are right across the street from a music school, very near a drama school, business school and English school, as well as Tallinn University. So, it has been very exciting to be open for them.

Our goal of course is to show them the love of God and to see them come to know Him by repentance and acknowledging that He is Lord and Savior. From what we understand, nothing has changed regarding that for the last 2000 years! We also want to see young believers raised up and go into ministry as we saw in Russia.

So far we have had one person come to know Him in the cafe, and we have been able to pray for several people who needed healing and our staff have given some accurate words of knowledge to people who have come by. We also have a room for people to display their artwork or photography and share a bit about their life. Our first display and Christian testimony was by Aaron Overstreet and has been followed by an Estonian photographer. We are also having live bands or solo musicians on the weekend.

To put it mildly, we have been quite busy learning the ropes of a full fledged coffee house that serves meals and has to pass rigorous health department checks. Up until now our cafes have been free food and coffee and ministering to a very different group of young people. But here and now we are convinced that these are the ones He has called us to. We are trying to give them very good food at the cheapest prices in town, and to have a safe and peaceful atmosphere where students can study, relax or sit and talk. Four different people have come up and said, "I feel like I am home when I am here". We want people to truly feel God's love for them, and know that we accept and care about them.
Now that a few of us have learned the ropes, the next step is to find a couple of people to help with some of the cooking and serving, so we can do more evangelism and train some others to do evangelism as well. We also have a tremendous need for young potential missionaries and especially those that have musical giftings, artistic gifts, prophetic giftings or those who plain love people and love to share their faith. If you feel called to join us, please let us know. If you have friends looking for their place in the Kingdom who have a burden for missions or souls - please pass this newsletter on!

Besides running the cafe, we are continuing to have worship night once a week - most of the time on Saturday night. We have experienced a very strong presence of God at the meetings, and our desire is for His presence to remain here and for the unsaved to encounter Him.

As usual, we will continue to have our Christmas feed-ins here in Estonia as well as in Russia.

If you feel led to join us, our prayer needs are:

  • for a worship team who love Him and are dedicated to seeing worship restored to the church in it's fullness.
  • for an evangelism team who love to witness and win souls
  • for a revival and wakening among Estonian youth
  • for favor with the cafe
  • for favor with our visas
  • for finances to take care of ministry expenses

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