a tough crowd, a new friend, and a good friend
quite a day, this rainy monday in liepaja, latvia..it’s 10:30pm here..the body is tired, and the brain is buzzing..
let’s start with the tough part of the day first…i gave it 3 good tries with the teenage boys at the liepaja city orphanage today. i tried 3 different paths to insert the gospel into our time together…it didn’t work well, and then they went out for their cigarette break. (did i mention this isn’t a christian orphanage?)
frustrating? yes. did they know that will, candace and i cared? i sure hope so. i know i paint a wonderful picture on the air of these trips…and they are. but sometimes, you can’t win a battle in a 4-hour visit. lord, help us if nothing else to have planted some seeds…in your name…amen.
before the orphanage visit today, we walked down the street a block to the sv. trisvienibas katedrale. (st. trinity cathedral)
…no, not a theology problem there…just a translation problem. anda, my translator, told me the more literal meaning would be “holy trinity cathedral”…
anyway, the church built in 1758, has an organ with 7,000 pipes, and beautiful gold leaf everywhere on the altar. even more remarkable…this place is still standing after the nazis and red army occupations. (yea, god!)
the best part was a short, translated conversation with the old lady at the donation table. holy trinity is a lutheran church, you see…and i had an idea, and reached for a hymnal.
i asked anda, “is this the communion service?” as i stopped at a certain page. she said that it was.
although the tune chanted by the cantor looked different, i asked if the old woman could read the first line:
“the lord be with you…”
i replied through anda’s translation “…and with your spirit.”
the old woman read, “make haste o lord to deliver me…”
and i replied, “make haste to deliver me, o lord.”
we smiled. not a fake american churchy smile, but a smile borne of knowing. of knowing the same words, the same faith, the same lord. i could walk into holy trinity in liepaja this sunday, not knowing a word of latvian, and have a wonderful worship experience. i know, liturgy isn’t “cool”…but on this cold, rainy day in liepaja, it felt good…to the depth of my soul. sola fide…sola gracia…sola scriptura.
my job in the opening of the orphanage visits, is to be the narrator of our little play on the story of king “nebby” and the firey furnace.
while being a little hammy (me?) in the first few minutes of the story, i looked over to the bench where the buckner folks were sitting…and there was kristine.
(for those of you who don’t listen to wcrf, kristine lukstina worked for buckner during our first trip 2 years ago…she is most famous for using the end of our “thank you” spot to listeners to invite them to latvia, and to “bring me some ice cream”)
we had some time to catch up during the afternoon, and then at our team dinner. kristine is now out of grad school, and trying to get her marketing company off the ground in a tough economy (here, too…). her idea is to use the web and be the link behind the comsumers testing a new product, and the inventor or company that needs feedback. kind of an “e-focus group” kind of thing.
the best part is that her focus hasn’t changed a bit from 2 years ago…
“i want to get rich,” kristine said, “so that i can use all that money to fund the ministries i’ve dreamed of starting here in latvia.”
hey, i’m not much on the prosperity gospel, but…you go kristine. aside from building a business from the ground up, kristine spends her spare time running a youth group, and playing guitar in her church praise band. (don’t call her…she won’t be home…)
my “latvian daughter” is busy about the lord’s work. and, to keep her sugar level up, I brought her the “order” she placed with me by email: 2 boxes of nerds, and 4 bags of differently flavored hershey’s kisses (they can’t get any of that here…how uncivilized!)
as i watched her drive away, and looked to my right down the town square toward holy trinity, i thought about what a good day the lord has made…and just how big, and how subtle, he shows himself in the everyday.
11:30pm here in liepaja…the last tram should be passing under my 4th floor window soon.
“the lord be with you…”
mz in lv
