News from Alan and Alice Osborn

November 2022

Estonia: the story so far…

In September 2021, after sensing God’s prompting to begin working towards bringing the Freedom in Christ course to Estonia, the translation effort commenced. Alice worked really hard over 6 months to not only complete the course books, but also all of the video subtitles.

By April 2022, we had both been credentialled as Elim Missionaries to Estonia (based in the UK) and also accepted as Pioneer Leaders with Freedom in Christ Ministries International (FICMI). We were just about ready in time for the first online pilot course. For this we worked with the Pentecostal denomination EKNK and had around 30 of their pastors and leaders take part. The idea was always that churches would be equipped to run future courses for themselves, our hope and prayer being that we could help strengthen churches by making fruitful disciples.

The course finished at the end of June with great feedback and positivity about ‘Vabadus Kristuses’ (the name of our newly formed non-profit). The summer camp for EKNK churches had been set for July, and we were amazed when we heard it had been themed with the name Vabadus Kristuses! It was at the summer camp that we officially launched the ministry and began to take registrations for the first actual course, being run online from September 2022. The Estonian video subtitles were also added to ‘Freedom Stream’, the online streaming service that FICMI offers, becoming available to Estonian speakers anywhere in the world.

We had received around 30 registrations for the first Course but ended up hosting 50 people each week, with 2 church small groups joining in, boosting the attendance. One of these groups came on the very day that the course actually started, when a listener heard Alice being interviewed on a Christian radio station that morning about Vabadus Kristuses.

There have also been 4 EKNK churches running the course themselves this autumn, one with 2 young people up to another that had 30 people. Together these 4 churches had around 50 people gathering in person. As the courses are drawing to a close, again we have been amazed by God, seeing over 100 people going through the first course.

Interestingly, 2 of these churches have found new people exploring Christianity or some not in regular church attendance coming every week to their course. It seems to be working as an evangelistic tool, which has also wonderfully surprised us.

With this in mind, one church is considering running the course early in 2023 offering it as an inter-church event across all churches in their town. So far, 3 EKNK churches are already wanting to run a course early next year.

We now have formed a small group that meets to pray for Vabadus Kristuses, and we hope that as we share our story that more prayer from across the globe will begin to arise!

It seems we have hit a wave and are doing our best to surf it!

Love and blessings, Alan & Alice.