Day Twenty-Nine: County Fermanagh
Friday 29 May
The annual VOX magazine Finding Faith Tour looks very different this year. Instead of a 7-day road trip around the island, this year VOX editor Ruth Garvey-Williams brings you highlights from all 32 counties (one per day plus one for each of the 31 days in May). Contact Ruth if you have a story to share.
Day 29: A Good Challenge
Across Ireland, there are many churches that serve groups of people who have come here to live and work. One of those is the Russian-speaking church in Enniskillen. I spoke with Lithuanian pastor Robertas Guobys to learn more.
“We moved to Ireland from Lithuania nearly 10 years ago. A number of families from our local church in Lithuania came to Enniskillen to build the new hospital,” Pastor Robertas said. “We found that there were a lot of Eastern Europeans in the area and so we started meetings in our home.
“After a while, we decided to rent a public place once a week. This is a small town so everyone knows each other, especially the Easter Europeans, so word got around.”
Up to 50 people gather each week including Lithuanians, Latvians and one Ukrainian. “We were all from the former Soviet Union and one good thing came out of that - we can all understand Russian so we run our services in Russian,” Pastor Robertas said.
“Jesus is everything to us! When you get closer to God, you should be closer to people. We should have an open heart to love all the people around us.”
Finding a place to rent provided challenging. “We could not find a premises and it is quite difficult for some churches to open their halls to an Eastern European group but there is a brilliant church that is continuing to help us. Fermanagh Christian Fellowship welcomed us and we have become part of that church, meeting as the Russian-speaking group.
“I am working as well as pastoring the church. My work in the past was civil engineering. But here, I do very simple work in the local steel company working on the shop floor. At the moment, I’m welding and producing structural steel.”
The pandemic proved to be a good challenge for the church which has also been reaching out the Eastern Europeans in Dungannon, Co. Tryone. “Before lockdown, we were only meeting once a month but at the moment, we do a weekly service for Dungannon as well as one in Enniskillen,” Pastor Robertas said. “It is so easy at the moment to invite guest speakers from Lithuania and from England!”
