SELK / PASTOR HUGO GEVERS – LEIPZIG, GERMANY
Here’s an update from SELK and Pastor Hugo Gevers which is another one of our supported Missions overseas.
Since the influx of refugees into Germany, the SELK Missionary here in Leipzig, Rev. Hugo Gevers, has seen a huge increase in the people seeking him out.
He visits asylum homes in and all around Leipzig (including holding a weekly Divine Service in Borna on Thursday afternoons). Many members or people in instruction live in these asylum homes outside of the city and cannot afford the train fair to come to Leipzig for church. They come on Christmas and Easter by pooling together and buying group tickets that they have saved up for.
Inside of Leipzig, Rev. Gevers works with refugees and migrants in the meeting house called Die Bruecke (The Bridge). This meeting house is directly tied to the congregation of St. Trinitatisgemeinde (Holy Trinity Congregation) of the SELK in Leipzig. All newly baptized become members of this congregation. Rev. Gevers works with the head pastor of the congregation, Rev. Markus Fischer.
Currently, there are so many people in Baptism and catechism classes that Rev. Gevers has to split them into several groups. He basically teaches group after group on Wednesdays from 1 until about 6 PM.
There were recently 11 baptized on Easter Monday, with larger groups to follow this coming Sunday and next Sunday (April 17).
Pastor Gevers knows some Farsi, but works with a volunteer translator, Elisabeth Keyvar, herself a member. They also assist with navigating the legal system, especially with “proving” their conversions to the German court system.
Additionally, there is a lot of work being done in Hamburg, but I do not know the details there. From SELK news email blasts I receive, it appears that many congregations across the SELK (perhaps even most) have some sort of contact with refugees, whether it be just a few families, or larger undertakings like those in Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg.
Many help them learn the German language, one congregation recently helped to reunite a family, they are catechized and taught, they receive mercy, they are baptized, etc. There are also a few refugees in the congregation in nearby Halle, where Rev. Dr. Armin Wenz is pastor. There are so many former Muslim/refugee/migrant members of SELK congregations that there is no longer a place that the SELK has that is big enough for them all to meet together!
Anyway, I hope this helps! In Christ, Elizabeth Deaconess Elizabeth Ahlman, MA LCMS Eurasia Communications Specialist elizabeth.ahlman@lcmsintl.org Home (Festnetznummer): +49 3412 465 9821 Mobile (Handy): +49 1522 861 2698 Skype: cetahl
Elizabeth Ahlman Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:01 AM To: Bob Scudieri
Pictures of events to the LCMS Eurasia Facebook page here:
www.facebook.com/lcmseurasia.