A great weekend!

This last weekend I was blessed to join the leadership team for the youth group at the Jesus Church on a planning retreat of sorts. We drove North to stay at a house near a town called Tuja. The town is right on the sea about half way between Riga and the Estonian boarder. During our weekend we had great fellowship, did planning for the next semester worth of youth evenings, spent time in God's word together, went to a nearby place for a church service, and I even got to experience a wonderful authentic wet sauna for the first time. It was a blessed weekend. I am happy to have had the opportunity to get to know this great group of people better. There is something about cooking and eating together, and everyone lending a hand that bonds people. The gents were continually making trips outside to get water and firewood and keep thing going for us wonderfully, while the ladies took care of meals and dishes and such. It was a very positive community experience!

Bible study, and planning.

Seila (the girl in the pink) had a birthday, and a number of others in the group had recent birthdays or names days (a Latvian tradition) so we sang happy birthday, had a cake and some other treats.

Nothing much new right now...

Hi everyone! I just wanted to post again, make it clear that I haven't forgotten about this blog and send a greeting your way! I don't really have anything new happening right now, but things are beginning to get back to normal after the Christmas season. Our children's/parents play group is meeting again, and with that a bit more of a "normal" schedule has returned.

An interesting tidbit that I didn't realize until living here is that within the Orthodox Church, Christmas is celebrated at Epiphany. There is a significant Orthodox Christian following here in Latvia, so it was quite obvious that Christmas was "spread out" more than it seems to be in the States. The Christmas markets are being taken down, and things are beginning to just look like plain old winter. We have had a LOT of snow within the last couple of months but as of recent, our snow has been melting! I must say I welcome the just-above-freezing weather with open arms, and am glad that the snow is disappearing. It was getting hard to shuffle through. This will make room for the next snow that falls!

Some of you might remember me sharing about Latvia and it's geographic location. With that the discussion about the length of days also frequently came up. Well, I have now experienced the "short days" where the sun rises at 9:30/10 am and sets at 3:00 pm. It was surprising to me how much I could notice the change, and how rapidly the days shortened. Now we are on the lengthening side of the calendar and the sun is sticking around longer and longer each day. I'm sure I will have something to share about the extremely "long" days during the summer, but for now I am just happy that my brain isn't telling me I should go to bed at 5:00pm!