Katie Roth, BBI Missionary to Latvia wrote: As a missionary working in fairly ‘non-traditional’ Latvian Baptist churches, I have felt much frustration over our inability to reach out effectively with the hope of true freedom. The desire is there, the belief in Christ’s saving power is there, the need is everywhere, but we have experienced so much failure! For many years I felt utterly impotent in this area. Then there are other, more traditional, churches which honestly believe that they don’t have a problem! “We don’t have any of ‘those sort’ of people in our church!” People have to get their act cleaned up before they join the church or else claim instantaneous deliverance upon receiving Christ.
But that is all about to change! This fall ‘True Freedom’ is coming to Latvia! ‘True Freedom’ is the Latvian name for the Celebrate Recovery program that started at Saddleback Church in California nineteen years ago. At the recent Celebrate Recovery International Summit we heard how Christ is bringing freedom all over the world to people struggling with all kinds of hurts, habits and hang-ups. There were CR leaders there from Haiti, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, England, Norway, African countries and every state of America.
Rodney Holmstrom led a team from Fellowship Northwest in Springdale, Arkansas to Syria. God showed he could really use a group of thieves, liars, sex addicts, alcoholics, drug addicts, grief stricken, codependent, sexually & physically abused dysfunctional people to bring Good News, hope and the message of healing to a completely different Nation?Well….as crazy as it sounds, apparently YES!
There ended up being two different conferences going on simultaneously with 11 countries, 4 different languages and around 150-200 people in attendance between the youth and the adults.
The team was initially scheduled to lead the youth thru the conference in a local church but the pastor feared that if he hosted the conference that it would make some serious problems for him.So, God in His great sense of humor, with several of the team being recovering alcoholics, had the conference meet in a bar, yes a bar. A local bar owner graciously allowed the use of the space. It was closed due to the Ramadan.During this time Muslims don’t eat or drink anything.Pretty ironic isn’t it?! J
As the team kicked off the conference, they heard the same words as other countries, “our people are different, no one in our country opens up and shares” etc, etc.During the conference the two groups representing their two countries would not even interact, let alone sit next to one another due to ongoing bitterness that had occurred sometime back.
The next morning right after worship, one of the leaders said he wanted to share something.It is customary for a man to stand and represent his country and apologize on behalf of his country.So one of the leaders asked if anyone from the other country would like to stand and say anything in apology.Three more men stood and asked for forgiveness to the other country for what had taken place.Then, unbelievably, the other country had four people stand and do the same thing in return.
Someone asked the translator if this was a normal thing and he said “I have never seen anything like this before in my life” Unbelievable! How powerful our God is! And that was then followed with the most open and transparent discussion you could imagine. The flood gates opened!
The door was opened to coming back and doing a CR conference and equip our friends on the how to do it now. They now know “what” recovery is thru Life’s Healing Choices translated into Arabic and now they need the “how” to do recovery. More specifically, they want to learn how to get CR going in the different churches and communities and countries.
A team of 10 from Bell Shoals Baptist Church of Brandon, FL traveled to Puerto Rico recently to train churches in Puerto Rico on the 7 Keys of Celebrate Recovery. The conference had over 125 in attendance, representing 7 churches in Puerto Rico. The host church was Restauracion en Cristo, located in Bayamon and has had a Celebrate Recovery up and running for the last 2 and half years. Pastor Jose Alvarez had attended the Celebrate Recovery Summit in 2007. After attending the Summit, his Senior Pastor took the entire church through the “Road to Recovery” series before launching CR. It is the desire of Restauracion en Cristo to have Celebrate Recovery spread across the island nation.
They have a good start with the conference and now they have had 2 separate churches that attended the conference start coming to their Friday night CR at Restauracion en Cristo to learn and begin a CR at their local churches.
Celebrate Recovery is up and running in Puerto Rico and beginning to spread! The team from Bell Shoals has already outlined plans to go back to Puerto Rico and work with Restauracion en Cristo and other churches to saturate and spread Celebrate Recovery across Puerto Rico partnering our brethren to the south.
