This is an email sent out to many JWs about thier Assembly in Lithuania. Quite a bit different than the ones you'll see out here, eh?
Randy Watters
Free Minds, Inc.
>>Subject: Greetings from Vilnius, Lithuania
>>Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:15:05 +0300
>>
>>Dear friends,
>>
>>It has been a while since you have heard of us. You are all in our minds
>>and
>>hearts, allthough we cant always keep so closely in touch. Here you can
>>read
>>few lines how we are doing and we hope to get a letter from you, when you
>>have time to put few lines.
>>
>>
>>With loving greetings, wishing you nice autumn,
>>Helja and Beniamin Podgorni
>>Vilnius, Lithuania
Vilnius 28.10.2004
Dear Friends,
I decided to write a common letter of our news, although I have avoided it
until now. I have to admit, that life is too busy nowadays and there is no
time to keep contacts with friends, as I would like to, so this way it's
better than nothing.
Where to start? This year has been busy. We have had lots of guests... We
had Ville Pirttikoski from Russia bethel, Norbert and Shirley Kotrla from
Canada, later their daughter Mandi from Niznyj Novgorod, Russia. We enjoyed
the company of sister Astrid Willemsberg from Netherlands, brother Robert
Budrecki from Patterson, USA, a nice young deaf sister Liisi Lindholm from
Finland. (This autumn at Helsinki was founded first deaf congregation in
Scandinavia, only Riga at Latvia started earlier), we had Anneli and Veka
Hellberg and sister Katja Raiskio from Finland, we got to know brother
Joseph Horler from Dublin, Ireland. He serves there at Russian group, or
maybe its already a congregation? Sanna and Veikko Toivakka visited us
briefly during Siauliai KH dedication. Our dear friends Maria and Jyri
Karkkainen from Helsinki English congregation visited us in June, spending
couple of days here, it really was good to talk for a long time, no hurry
anywhere. Later in summer, both Reeta and Pekka Alho from Finland and
Jeronimas and Gwen Abrazcinskas (our american circuit couple) used our flat
for their stay, when we were on a holiday. My grandfather visited with a bus
group from Finland. 35 brothers and sisters from Tampere region came to
visit Lithuania and Vilnius. I guided them during 3 days at Kaunas, Trakai,
Vilnius. It was the hottest weekend this summer. Plus 30 C, even at 10 p.m
it still was some 22 degrees. We had nice time and some of the group could
visit us. We enjoyed the company of Salme and Erkki Herronen and Harri and
Seija Eskonaho. Then we had some brothers from Poland visiting us, if I
remember right it was Darek and Gregorz. It was a great surprise and joy to
meet after 10 years sister Sari Pekonmaki and her friend sister Disa from
Iceland. They came over to a wedding in Lithuania and we had a chance to
meet them. Just after they left, my cousin Paivi and her husband Sami
Heikkila came over from Finland for a short weekend visit first time to
Lithuania. They were positively surprised and we got to experience with them
Sarah Brightman's concert. It was a great surprise for them to find
themselves at this concert, we had been talking on the way about some
Lithuanian folk musicJ Recently we got to know better sister and brother
Satu and Raine Antila from Vaasa, Finland. They are planning to move over
here in the beginning of next year. We helped them with practical things.
Everything went so well, that we actually rented a cheap apartment while
their visit here. So now, we are just waiting for them to come. Maybe some
of those who visited us from abroad I forgot, there has been so many this
year, but we enjoy your company very much! Of course there has been lots of
local brothers and sisters too during the year, as well as our both parents.
My mom visited here in spring, and later this autumn she came again together
with dad. We traveled with my parents in September to Poland to visit
Beniamin's parents. After we had met all our Polish relatives there in
Wroclaw, we returned and Beniamin's parents came with us to Vilnius. They
stayed here for about 2 weeks.
Earlier this summer, in June we had "opening of the summer", outside of the
city, by the lake and there was 104 of us, all congregation was invited.
Some husbands whose wives are witnesses came for the 1st time ever to meet
with JW's. After that their opinion about us changed for the better.
This autumn our congregation celebrated it's 10 years anniversary ("closing
of the summer season") and we organized again a party at countryside. We
invited all those who have been to our congregation before and received lots
of greetings from those who couldn't come and celebrate with us. We were
about 90 people in September at one cottage outside of Vilnius, enjoyed the
sauna and swimming in the lake, volleyball, football, basketball, music and
all kinds of other activities. We all ate spurgos (it is a donut in
Lithuanian), grilled some shashlik (pieces of meat in a stick grilled on a
fire) and had wonderful day. As everything went so well and congregation
seems to enjoy and need such recreation together, I guess it will be a
tradition to organize next year too such events.
We had chance this year to attend 2 conventions. First one was in Helsinki,
Finland. It was for all English speaking congregations and groups in
Scandinavia (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark). It was not big in number,
about 2000 in attendance, but it was very various in cultures and nations,
altogether people from 86 countries!!! There was a map and everyone was
invited to pin their home country. Afterwards, it was counted. This year
especially the program fitted this circuit, I mean the parts that were about
witnessing to foreigners, or in an other language.
Our convention was in Siauliai KH complex. It is a small hall and so
Lithuanian circuit had to be splitted into 3 parts. At our convention there
was about 930 in attendance. The hall was crowded, people even sat outside
and in corridors.
We had a chance also to visit Norway after Helsinki English convention. We
did a organized bus trip for 5-6 days. Took a ferry from Turku to Stockholm.
The bus drove trough Sweden, where it rained a lot. When we arrived to Oslo,
Norway, the weather got better and rain didn't hinder us at all during our
visit. We visited Lillehammer's Olympic village, Geiranger fjord and spend
the nights at a mountain cottage. I have been there before, but for Beniamin
it was a new experience. He got to see Stockholm a bit, Oslo and fjords and
mountains. Norway is really a beautiful country.
Later in the autumn we had planned budget trip to Ireland. We got some cheap
tickets from Vilnius to Dublin and bought them well in advance, already in
May. In August we traveled together with Saara Pirttikoski (she lived before
here in Vilnius, but recently moved to Riga, Latvia) and her brother Ville
from Russia bethel. So off we flew to Dublin. We stayed there with some
finnish brothers and visited Guinness storehouse, as well as other sights.
We rented a car and then one Portuguese-Australian brother Orlando Da Silva
joined us and we traveled 5 of us around the southern part of the island. We
visited the beautiful resort bethel, old castles and gardens, light house,
beaches, one brother at Cork, finnish sisters at Galway, also one interested
one who moved there from Vilnius. We swam 2 times in Atlantic ocean. Driving
is on the left side of the road, I tried too, with no accidentsJ Roads are
narrow and both sides are often with stonewalls, so you better drive very
carefully. You can see sheep everywhere. No high buildings, block of houses
anywhere. I liked that. People are friendly. All small cities were
beautiful, Dublin was the only city we didn't like. It's noisy, crowded,
hectic, dirty, and you get easily stressed there. But as for our work, it
has become very interesting recently with masses of people moving in from
other countries. They said there are officially already 40 000 Chinese
there. Unofficially could be even more. Everywhere you can hear Russian,
polish, Romanian, Czech, Lithuanian languages. After new EU countries joined
EU, thousands have moved over to Dublin. It's becoming 2nd London. They have
Russian group at Dublin that we visited and got to tell some experiences,
they have Romanian and Chinese group as well. But it seems there is lot of
work to do and it will be very interesting for them, after the tough Irish
field.
This autumn we have felt in Vilnius that we are of Jehovah's special
attention. We got 6 new special pioneers to our congregation. 1 Lithuanian
sister was assigned from another territory to our city, 1 Finnish brother
was assigned here. His name is Samuli Rantanen and he is 2m tall. Especially
our single sisters are SO happy that society sends single brothersJ It was a
surprise to hear that brother and sister Carlos and Angela Moreno, who are
from Columbia and have served until now Russian circuit, got assigned to our
congregation. They are in Spain now for circuit overseer's courses, but when
they return, they have to start learning Lithuanian! They will still take
care of the small Russian field here, but while they are not traveling, they
will be at our Lithuanian congregation. And finally the last 2 new special
pioneers were from our own congregation, a Finnish couple, Jonna and Tomi
Raiskio, who moved here a year ago pioneering. We have got new publishers
and pioneers also from other congregations in Lithuania, some have moved to
Vilnius, but also some have left us and moved away. Anyways, the number of
publishers is highest ever, now 115. Once in attendance at our Sunday
meeting there was already 147 people. Our congregation covers a territory of
300 000 people in the city plus outside of Vilnius some smaller towns and
villages. Little by little we are trying to cover the city territories, at
least once. Old town and center has never been preached by Lithuanian
congregation. There are 4 Russian congregations at the city sharing a half
of the population, about 300 000. They have covered their territories better
and are helping us with separating where lives Lithuanians where Russians.
In September we had 7 auxiliary pioneers. It's a real joy that all of them
are young. From 17-25 years old and most of them are regular auxiliary
pioneers. We have for example 2 young brothers who baptized half a year ago
and ever since they were baptized they took auxiliary pioneering and I know
they have now applied for regular pioneering. They really show great pioneer
spirit!
Campaign with "Stay Awake" brochure goes well. We didn't get lots of them,
only 20 per publisher, but so far what I have heard it's going very well.
Last Sunday it was raining and honestly I'd rather stayed inside than go to
the service. Well, I thought, if the weather is bad and there is no desire
to go, then I HAVE to go, because the results are always good then,
something interesting will happen. So we went with a young deaf brother to
my territory where lives highly educated people. University teachers,
translators, politicians and so on (once I had good discussion with the
mayor of the city). I had doubts about their interest, but as I guessed.
results were good. We placed in 1-2 hours some 7 brochures and some even
invited us in, we had a nice discussion with a couple. They are both English
translators. Husband had translated 50 books from English into Lithuanian,
including children's bible. It looks a bit like our "My book of bible
stories".
Last month I had 11 studies. Some of them come to the meetings themselves,
some are new studies. I think one young attorney, her name is Laura, can
soon start as un baptized publisher. She started studying about 5 years ago
with another sister who moved later to another city in Lithuania. Then there
was break, she got married, got divorced and lots of things happened in her
life. Some time ago she started coming to the meetings again and I invited
her to visit us, we talked and seemed to find "common language" and she
agreed to start studying again. We are repeating kl book, only with last
questions, with a goal to prepare her to preaching work. We do the tough
questions, what people usually ask us in service and she has to answer to
us. She knows the bible well. She reads it regularly and has lots of
questions to us always. She doesn't celebrate the holidays any longer and
comes to the meetings regularly. After her holiday, she came on Tuesday
meeting (theocratic school) sat down and sighed " How good it is to be
here!".
We don't yet have a KH in Vilnius. It is our constant issue in our prayers.
Society has assigned one Finnish brother to search for KH here. His job is
only to look for possible kingdom hall. He will arrive in the end of this
year. We hope then something clicks and finally we can start building our
own hall.
Beniamin is also busy with language course. He is teaching Lithuanian
language to the new single Finnish special pioneer brother, Samuli. Every
day from 10-13 they have lessons. Soon they will be joined by Finnish
couple, Jonna and Tomi Raiskio. They know the language better, since they
have lived here already for a year.
We will have our assembly next month. Next Monday I will visit our bethel
with some of my students and some sisters, who have never been there. Monday
is a worldly holiday, but in bethel they work, so its good day to visit
there. Bethel is located about 100 km away from Vilnius, behind city of
Kaunas.
We are healthy, service is good and our apartment is hot (some apartments
are not. They put on the heating some 2 weeks ago, when the temperature got
outside below 8 C day time, nights almost frost). Now its warm outside,
about 12-15C, but rainy. I even put curtains into one room after one year of
living in this apartment, so we are making progressJ We feel right now very
happy in our assignment.
Looking forward to hear of your news,
Best loving greetings,
Helja and Beniamin Podgorny
Kalinausko 8/11-14
03107 Vilnius
Lithuania