As Pastor Josh and Jeremy Pattisall travel to Valga, Estonia this week, we thought it appropriate to introduce you to our team there. Chris and Laura Wiles have been a part of Salem Chapel since 2004 and moved to Estonia in August of 2009. If you are a supporter of Salem Chapel, your tithes and offerings allow Chris and Laura to share the gospel with children, youth and their families in this beautiful nation. Read more from their perspective about God’s work in their lives in Part 4 of their story below. (Find Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 on the Salem Chapel blog as well.)

Depending on God. God has been teaching us to depend more and more on Him, and less and less on ourselves. Here are a few specific ways He’s been stretching each of us during our time here in Estonia.

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As Pastor Josh and Jeremy Pattisall travel to Valga, Estonia this week, we thought it appropriate to introduce you to our team there. Chris and Laura Wiles have been a part of Salem Chapel since 2004 and moved to Estonia in August of 2009. If you are a supporter of Salem Chapel, your tithes and offerings allow Chris and Laura to share the gospel with children, youth and their families in this beautiful nation. Read more from their perspective about God’s work in their lives in Part 3 of their story below. (Check out Part 1 &  Part 2.)

Planting Seeds. One of our youth group girls recently shared with me more about how she came to know Jesus. She grew up here in Valga and although her parents were not Christians, she regularly attended Children’s Church as a child. While at Children’s Church, she heard stories about Jesus and His love for her. Eventually she was too old for Children’s Church and all those stories about Jesus remained just stories.

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As Pastor Josh and Jeremy Pattisall travel to Valga, Estonia this week, we thought it appropriate to introduce you to our team there.  Chris and Laura Wiles have been a part of Salem Chapel since 2004 and moved to Estonia in August of 2009.  If you are a supporter of Salem Chapel, your tithes and offerings allow Chris and Laura to share the gospel with children, youth and their families in this beautiful nation.  Read more from their perspective about God’s work in their lives in Part 2 of their story below. (Find Part 1 here.)

Sharing the Gospel. We have encountered a certain attitude toward Christianity in Estonia — seemingly different to where we grew up. It’s illustrated well through a story told to us by a friend. Her brother was in the same class as a Christian girl and he told his sister “That’s the closest I ever want to be to God – that’s enough God for me.” This Christian girl was sweet and kind and our friend’s brother was expressing not a resistance to her, but instead a resistance to God. It seems to us that many Estonians are fleeing from God. They either believe that God doesn’t exist or that He’s some kind of controlling being best kept at great distance. A God who deeply loves us, full of  grace and forgiveness, is unfathomable.

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As Pastor Josh and Jeremy Pattisall travel to Valga, Estonia this week, we thought it appropriate to introduce you to our team there.  Chris and Laura Wiles have been a part of Salem Chapel since 2004 and moved to Estonia in August of 2009.  If you are a supporter of Salem Chapel, your tithes and offerings allow Chris and Laura to share the gospel with children, youth and their families in this beautiful nation.  Read more from their perspective about God’s work in their lives in Part 1 of their story below.

Why Estonia? When someone asks why we’re in Estonia, we start by telling the story of how we got here. We first came to Estonia in the summer of 2008 as volunteer staff for the Salem Chapel youth mission trip. After a week here, we did not want to leave. We prayed for months after we returned home and finally spoke with Pastor Josh about the possibility of moving to Estonia. In August of 2009, we moved and we’ve been living and sharing the Gospel in Estonia ever since.

What sticks out in our minds the most is that first feeling of not wanting to leave Estonia. Both of us had an overwhelming sense of a need for the Estonian people to meet Jesus. We didn’t aspire to be missionaries, nor did we feel particularly gifted as such. We were just overwhelmed with the idea that there was a place  – a place where we knew people by name — that needed to hear about Jesus. We couldn’t help but think that there was something we could do to serve, to support, to encourage, and to make the Gospel known. We weren’t positive how the pieces would come together, but we knew God was leading us to Estonia. He is evident in the work here and we’re excited to share more about how He has changed and is changing lives.

Tomorrow Chris & Laura will share more about what it looks like to share the gospel in context of another culture.