Crikey cobber - throw another prawn on the barbie! (said with tongue in cheek!)

A small invasion of warm-hearted and good-humoured Aussies created a few translation challenges this week. Crikey mate! Evelin and Kerlin learned a few new phrases as we hosted Major David Pullen and his colleague Gerard Byrne from Sydney. As leaders of the Australia Eastern territory’s recovery programmes they have pioneered a teaching and training resource that has been used by God in powerful ways throughout that territory. Last year, videos of Estonia’s rapidly developing ministry amongst drug and alcohol addicts were shown in Australia during the Self Denial appeal and sparked interest between Australia Eastern Territory and the Estonia Region.  David and Gerard’s services were generously offered and an assessment trip arranged to allow first hand opportunity to see if their ‘Bridge Programme’ material might be suitable for our ministry.

Gerard shares his testimony in Narva

During the week new friendships were developed as our visitors spent time at Lootusemaja (Hope House recovery centre - Tallinn), Narva, Johvi and Kopli corps. Having set off early from Tallinn on Wednesday morning we arrived at Narva just in time for the midweek Alpha course. The corps’ worship hall was full, with others sitting in the hallway listening to Nicky Gumbel (interestingly overdubbed in Russian!) present the truths of the gospel. Gerard was able to share powerful personal testimony of his own recovery and salvation transformation.

The assessment visit was very positive; the ‘Bridge Programme’ materials were well received by all and we concluded that this course will provide an excellent framework for our centres. We face a number of challenges if we are to turn the opportunity into reality. Fleshing out the presenter notes will be a big task for David and Gerard, then translating the materials into Russian and Estonian and adding suitably recorded multimedia will be a time-consuming and expensive package. But this will make for an exciting project and one we will be shaping up and presenting to donors as soon as possible.  

We are already thrilled to have a Regional team fluent and multilingual. It has been great to meet our new friends. As this territorial relationship  develops over future months we look forward to adding ‘Aussie-speak’ to the  skill set!