Find out what's happening these days in the United Methodist Churches in Lithuania by clicking Lithuania Link.
2008 Mission Trip was a great success
The spiritual needs of people in Lithuania are truly great as a result of the 50 years of oppression that occurred under the Soviet Union. Interpersonal relationships, leadership skills, economic health, mental health, and spiritual growth, to name a few, were seriously disrupted under the domination of the Soviet regime. Our presence over the past 10 years is making a significant difference in restoring hope within their lives. However, there is much work that still needs to be done.
Our continuing partnership with the United Methodist Church in Pilviskiai, Lithuania is an important relationship that affects many people in the Pilviskiai congregation as well as our own. As part of our ongoing goals that were established for our partnership, six members of our congregation traveled to Lithuania from September 26 to October 6, 2008.
The purpose of this trip was to have our men work with the men from Pilviskiai to make repairs to the Pilviskiai fire station. In addition, members of our team worked on developing a plan to complete the unfinished "Upper Room" in the church building. Also, planning took place for a women's retreat to be held in 2009. This retreat will be open to women from all 11 Methodist congregations in Lithuania. (Check out the website of the Lithuanian Church.)
Home visits to members of the community also took place which continued our ongoing support of the missional outreach that the Pilviskiai congregation is making to their community.
On our final night in Pilviskiai we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our partnership and the 5th anniversary of the completion of Pilviskiai UMC's new building. The celebration included a program/worship service followed by a pizza and cake party.
Members of the 2008 Lithuania Mission Team were (left to right): Rev. Dave Wilkinson, Jeanie Reimer, Ernie Harvey, Brian Reimer, Al Hofacker, and Bill Mobley.
To view video clips from the trip, click Pilviskiai UMC videos.
To read the Lithuanian Partnership newsletter click Lithuania Link.
Partnership Background
Were you aware that the partnership between the First United Methodist Church of Green Bay and the Pilviskiai United Methodist Church is 10 years old?! Our congregation sent its first mission team to Lithuania in 1997 and our partnership agreement was initiated the following year. During that time, our two congregations have shared in our prayers, presence, gifts, and service for one another. In the last 10 years, the Pilviskiai congregation has increased their membership, cultivated leadership, constructed a new church building, and most importantly, grown in their faith.
During their visit to Green Bay last fall, we learned from Pastor Viktorija and the lay leaders of the Pilviskiai church that they both need and desire the continuation of the partnership. Pastor Viktorija offered her heartfelt thanks to our congregation for our ongoing support and described the vision she has for the future of the relationship between the two congregations. Among her requests is that we send a mission team, comprised primarily of men, willing to work on a community project with some of the men of Pilviskiai. She described that few men of their culture are actively engaged in their faith and it is her hope that our presence, in this way, might help to draw more men into the church.
In an effort to meet that goal, plans are now in place for an autumn mission trip to Pilviskiai. The trip is expected to be approximately eight days long with a late September departure and an early October return. The team will work with Pilviskiai UMC's lay leader, Algis Jablonskis, and other village fire fighters on much needed renovations of their fire station. The trip will also enable the Lithuania Committee to investigate the availability and cost of materials for the long-awaited completion of Pilviskiai UMCs upper room.
Another outcome of last October's visit was the opportunity for meaningful dialogue between Pilviskiai UMC's lay leadership and our pastors, members of our congregation and the Lithuania Committee. At that time, an agreement and basic framework were established for a multi-congregational women's retreat to be held in Lithuania during the summer of 2009. There is much yet to be accomplished on this front, and coordinated planning for this event will be another aspect of the September mission trip.
Programs of the Pilviskiai UMC
Present Programming within the church:
- Sunday School
- Adult choir
- Youth choir
- Scout Program (for boys and girls)
- Women's Psychological Group
Mission and Outreach Efforts to the Community by the Pilviskiai Congregation:
Home Health Care Program
- 4 women from the congregation working in the HHC program
- Look after 18 elderly and lonely people from the community
- Visit at their homes at least once per week
- Supply with medicine and vitamins
- Take to the doctor, visit them in the hospital in Kaunas
- Help with areas of need in their homes
- Provide strong psychological support
This program is funded by a church in Norway at approximately 900 litas (approx. $300 per month). Funding provides 50 litas (approx. $20.00) to each person for vitamins and medicine, and a small stipend for each worker.
Needs of the Home Health Care Program:
Additional funding to have more people working in the program
Training and support for the HHC workers as issues of "burnout" are already present. Program originally started with 8 workers, now down to 4
Food Coupon Program:
- 50 families from the church and Pilviskiai community receive 20 litas/month (approx. $7) to buy food staples such as milk, bread, porridge, etc.
- Families identified by the church leaders
- Church leaders report this is a big support to the community
- This is funded by FUMC – Green Bay. Began approx. 3 years ago when it was identified as a large need in the community
Reflections on Lithuania – Holy Ground
By Scott Houle, a first-time Lithuania Mission Trip member
August 2006
We seem to be outrunning the storm that mercifully held off until our group of twelve mission team members and about twice as many from the Pilviskiai church visited the Hill of Crosses. The images of those hundreds of thousands of crosses standing testament to the human spirit and the love of Christ overwhelm me. Lithuanian farmland rolls past outside the bus windows as Annele shares her dark bread, cucumbers, and tomatoes with me. Looking outside I think to myself, "this could be Wisconsin."
Scott, Jenn, and I chat with Agne, our translator. The three of us, who are new to the mission trip this year, have become good friends with Agne in a short few days. Having been the translator for the team for many years, she's become like family to many people. Agne is an attractive young lawyer with a lovely singing voice, and has a depth of soul and spirit that can be explained at least in part by the stories she begins to relate. After World War II her grandfather, a prominent Kaunas physician, was exiled to Siberia by the Soviets, as were so many of the educated, leader class in occupied Lithuania. Soldiers came in the middle of the night and told her grandparents to get up, they will be taken to Vilnius and shot. For whatever reason, they instead found themselves on a two-month journey by train to a remote, frigid labor camp. I am stunned to hear that Agne's mother was born on this train. Agne tells us to visualize these events from her grandmothers' point of view: your husband has worked hard in medical school and built up a practice, you're starting a family, looking forward to a pleasant lifestyle, and one day it's taken from you: the house, the library, the office, all your clothes except what you're wearing, all those things that represent family and tradition, everything. Shortly after you arrive in a distant, harsh and unforgiving land, your husband dies of heart failure aggravated by laboring all day for a crust of bread or a bowl of potatoes. When after thirteen years Stalin finally dies and you're able to return home, you're shunned as an enemy of the state, and you sleep in a train station because your home has been subdivided into apartments.
We sit captivated as Agne tells us of her own childhood in the U.S.S.R, growing up in an apartment with several other families. She remembers a lot of happy times with all the other kids around. Her parents told her never to mention the truth of what had happened to her grandparents, because according to the Soviet textbooks, all those murdered or broken souls had been sent to health resorts, not shot or shipped like cattle to the far reaches of the Arctic. Each day the news broadcasts stories about the horrible state of affairs in the West. In the face of oppression and constant fear of exile, her parents managed to instill in her the knowledge of a world out there beyond the lies.
In spite of all her suffering, Agne's grandmother never felt sorry for herself. After many years, the family was able to return to Siberia and recover the remains of Agne's grandfather, and the two were finally reunited in a place of honor in a Vilnius cemetery. Agne's is only one of many stories we heard, some of them first-hand accounts of atrocities. Now she and so many others have a sense of gratitude for the opportunity they now have to live and worship freely, and it is to nurture this return to human dignity and holiness that I humbly hope was my purpose on the Lithuania mission team. Before we left, our leader reminded us that from the moment we arrived at the airport, we were on holy ground, and I pray that my words and actions were worthy of the mission.
I find a fire lit within myself, an urgency to tell these stories, because thinking back to my musing about the landscape of Lithuania, "this could be Wisconsin", I realize that the history of totalitarianism and godlessness could just as easily have been here in America, and could still be one day if we're not conscious of the cost of freedom. The mission trip to Lithuania, where I was welcomed like family, where the scars of decades of oppression are still raw, renewed my sense of gratitude for the blessings in my life.
