I was interviewed by a reporter for the
Tartu
Postimees, the main newspaper
of the second largest city in Estonia. They
found me through my Travel Blogs (
http://www.ucg.org/resources/blog.htm).
The woman reporter Helena Nõmmik told me
that they were interested in several things
that we did in Estonia: visiting prisoners,
repeated visits to their country, the Feast
of Tabernacles and more. She asked for a
one-hour interview.
Helena was very articulate and spoke
excellent English. We used Skype for the
interview. I had given her a number of other
links to read before the interview which
included our keeping the Feasts of
Tabernacles, the Church Office maintained by
Johnnie Lambert in Tartu, outreach projects
through LifeNets and more.
The interview was very thorough,
positive and respectful. I was amazed as to
how much they had researched the Church.
Helena had lots of questions about our
visiting Valdur Vesingi at the prison (
www.kubik.org/prison/vesingi.htm).
They were impressed by the fact that he
translated articles and booklets for the
United Church of God and how this was good
for both us and him.
Helena asked about the Feast of
Tabernacles and about the big crowd of
nearly 100 coming this fall. She asked about
the biblical authority for the Feast and
what it was all about. She wanted to know
the difference between our faith and the
Lutheran Church which is the largest
denomination in Estonia. In particular she
was quite specific about what we actually
believed about Christ's second coming and
how it differed from the Lutherans.
She asked me what kept me coming back
to this country. I told her it was my being
able to communicate with most of the
population in Russian and my desire to do
the Mission of our Church. She then asked
me about my Ukrainian/Russian background.
She herself is fluent in that language and
talked some about the issues they have
between the Russians and Estonians.
She asked about our church office in
Tartu and what we did. I told her that we
used it to mail literature including
magazines, booklets and a Bible Study Course
to Estonia and the former USSR republics.
They had done enough research to know
of UCG's roots and asked about our main
beliefs which I explained a number of our
Fundamental Beliefs.
She then asked about the outreach work
that LifeNets did in Estonia from our Web
site at
www.lifenets.org/ok. Over the
years we have helped the School for the
Blind in Tartu, but in recent years have
sponsored the OK movement (
www.lifenets.org/ok)
which is a national program for underage
alcohol abuse and for FAS (Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome). She wanted to know where we got
our money and how we related to the United
Church of God. We told her about our
interacting with Lauri Beekman, a Seventh
Day Adventist who runs these programs. He
has helped us with translation. He has a
national daily afternoon radio program from
Tallinn that's info and call-in.
We talked about connection with the
Rotary Clubs in Tartu and our acquaintance
with the former Tartu mayor Andrus Ansip and
now Prime Minister. I told her that this
was through our Rotary connection.
I invited her to come to our Feast
Services in Tartu in October. She said she
might come. In any event, she did want to
meet our people in person.
All this started by a search for TARTU in
the TravelPod Travel Blog that led to other
links-one leading to another. Some of posted
information was 13 years old, but still of
great interest to show our Church's history
and commitment in this area.