16. Jun 2025

Tallinn - Saku

When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well, he went against cultural norms. The reaction of the woman is to be understood: "What? You dare to talk to me a Samaritan woman and you being a Jewish man?" Sometimes cultural norms can be a barrier to people coming to know Jesus. It takes sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit to know when and how to break through those cultural norms.

In Estonia people will completely ignore you if they do not know you. If you pass them on the street, they will keep their eyes straight ahead, look away or, if they are curios enough, look down to your shoes. With the past two Snail-Trails people were constantly coming up to me wanting to know who I was, were I came from and where I was going. I would greet people as I passed by and many times a conversation would develop that led to a God-talk. But here it is different.

As I was leaving the Old Town of Estonia today, I decided to change my route a bit to walk through two small parks. As I walked through the second park, I noticed a young man sitting by himself on a parkbench. Next to him was another empty parkbench. A whisper came from heaven to go talk with him, but how? So I went over and put down my backpack on the empty parkbench. No reaction. No eye contact. I finished off a jogurt drink that I had and drank some water. No turn of the head. No indication that I existed. I then dared to ask the question: "Do you speak English?" The answer: "Yes, but I want to sit here alone in the quiet."

He was not being inpolite. I was searching for something to say, I noticed I large bird behind him and said: "I was just wondering what kind of bird that was." The young man took a quick look and said: "It's a crow." I think I knew that...

But then the young man, Kristjan, noticed my heavy duty backpach and said that he had one just like that. For the next half hour we were exchanging hiking stories which eventuelly led to talking about our spiritual journeys. Kristjan adheres to the ancient pagan god of the Estonians, Taara. The spiritual world is very real to him. I will not go into all the details, but there were some intetesting parallels in our spiritual searching. When he was 16, for instance, he saw his first ghost. When I was 16, I said yes to Jesus. It was the leading of his Spirit, I said, which has brought me to this parkbench in Estonia today. We connected. Kristjan has a good friend who is a followerer of Jesus and they like to discuss their spiritual points of view with each other. So our convetsation was another knock from heavon on the door to Kristjan's heart. At the end of our conversation I asked Kristjan if I could pray for him and speak out a blessing for his pathway through life. Tears came to his eyes as I prayed. Afterwards he said: "You made my day!"

There are many young people like Kristjan in Estonia who are searching for spiritual reality and orientation in life. I will continue to pray for Kristjan and his generation on my walk. Would you like to join with your prayers as well?

Photo 1: I met Kristjan at a park today on my way out of Tallinn. I think if I would have stayed in the area, we would have become good friends... maybe even spiritual brothers.

Photo 2: Tallinn was for many years one of the "Hansa Cities" that doted the Baltic Sea, a network of primarily German merchant cities. The German influence can still very much be seen in Tallinn.

Photo 3: A view of Talliinn looking through the window of a castle tower.

Photo 4: The Way of St. James through Estonian begins at this Catholic Church.

Photo 5: I really enjoyed walking though this swamp area on my way to Saku. Fortunately it is not yet the high season for mosquitoes.