24/7 Pastoral Care Telephone Line Launched

Pastor Siimon Haamer is giving and interview to the main Estonian TV news program about pastoral care telephone line launch. June 17th, 2020.

 
This Corona virus crisis, while causing many hardships, is also providing new opportunities. 

The Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs decided to finance and launch 24/7 pastoral care via telephone. Because the Academy has trained pastoral care givers for approximately 30 years, the Ministry asked us to initiate and run this operation. Initially, financing is offered through December 31, 2020.

Siimon Haamer is the coordinator of this helpline project which has increased his working hours to 16 a day for the last few weeks. The pastoral care telephone line started June 17 at noon. The information was very well presented through many Estonian media channels and in the evening on the main Estonian TV news program. We began receiving calls immediately after the public announcement and the line has been occupied most of the time.

We are now able to offer jobs for 10 pastoral care givers, and this is certainly building up more interest in our study program and pastoral care giving specialty. It is amazing how we are experiencing God’s blessing through this.

The money we received from the government won’t help us in any way to meet the needs of our annual budget. This funding is designated for the program and is not part of our annual budget.

 
Blessings,
 
Siimon Haamer
Dean of Tartu Academy of Theology

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