all of the following songs are in russian, the predominate language spoken in the area of the old soviet naval port built during the cold war.  the area, once top secret, held 23,000 soviet army and navy forces and support personnel…now 8,000 are squatting in the deteriorating buildings.  the light in this dark place is the light of the gospel church, pastored by sergei graukusa.

if jesus is in my boat, i can smile – even in the storm

praise for jesus, who creates everything for us…it is all beautiful, because of him

2 different roads we can take in life…one is ours…the other is his

click to listen to mark’s audio blog – riga. latvia

when you’re so far from home, (4,399 miles if you drew a straight line!) it is so nice to hear something familiar…and so it was sunday morning at st. matthew’s church in riga.

the ability to sing amazing grace with our latvian brothers and sisters was wonderful.  what made it fascinating was watching our lips move in english, while right behind us, the latvians were singing in their native language.

it was a wonderful reminder that someday we will all be worshipping in a universal language at the throne…and that the things that seem to divide us, like language…really don’t divide us all that much.

we spend the afternoon at an orphanage in jurmala that i have visited before.  it was good to see that there have been some nice improvements since i was there 2 years ago.  new lighting, brightly painted walls in the kids common rooms have made for a much nicer atmosphere for the children.

every time i go on one of these trips, i always try to be in “guard my heart” mode, but it never lasts for long.  i always let me guard down for a couple hours, a kid steals my heart, and…well, you can guess the rest…

on sunday, it was ediys (ed-eez).  this sweet little 9-year-old grabbed onto me right from the start.  whether it was playing jenga or soccer, or the many times he just jumped onto my back, ediys is typical of so many of the boys we will see this week.

because the vast majority of these orphaneges are staffed by women, the boys who live there have almost no discernable male imprint on their lives.  and that messes up part of the equation:

all kids need a dad.

i played with ediys until it got dark, and then it was time to go…

the excitement of these trips is meeting the kids and spending time with them.  all kids that i’ve met around the world are just like mine…they want our attention…and they want to learn.  the holy chaos of short-term missions vbs is so much fun.  as americans, we are out of our element…and that’s a good thing.  it makes us just a little sharper, just a little looser than we are in the day-to-day button-down world.

the tough part of these trips…the goodbyes.  you say so many of them in 10 days, even the jet lag is better than hugging a little kid with an uncertain future…goobye.

pray for us this week…that the seeds we plant will find growth with the latvian volunteers for buckner who keep returning here every couple of months.

on to liepaja on the baltic coast on monday…more to come…

mz in lv

hello from riga, latvia…i’m here with a team from buckner international visiting orphanages and baby homes.  this is my second time here, and to be honest, i never thought i’d have the honor of coming back.

our orphange visit today went really well…i’m with the older boys – meaning teenagers.  they’re basically unadoptable, and they come from very difficult home situations, so as you might imagine, they’re tough guys…or at least that’s how they perceive themselves.  you wouldn’t believe what a great spiritual lesson there can be in playing a game of “jenga”…i’ll have to tell you about it sometime.  (by the way, trash-talk between competitive teenage boys is an international sport…at least we taught them the international symbol for “loser”

we started the day with a tour of old riga and its history, and then wound up our morning at the museum of the occupation.  for those unfamiliar…latvia is one of the most conquered pieces of real estate on earth.  from the german traders of the 1200′s, to the swedes, the poles, the czarist russians, and others, none have been able to resist ice-free ocean access, and nice flat land to bring their horse cavalry across.

the museum of the occupation deals with the most recent, and probably most brutal, conquerers of all: the soviets, and the nazis.

latvia gained its independence for the first time in 1918, right after world war 1.  by 1939, hitler and stalin had their own ideas about the baltics.  once hitler grabbed half of poland in september of 1939, stalin grabbed the latvia, lithuania, and estonia…and their nightmare began.

stalin started with the politicians, the teachers, and the business leaders.  in 1941, when he launched his attack on the soviet union, hitler came through…cleaning out the jews, gypsies, communists, and whatever intelligensia stalin missed.  by 1944, stalin had returned…this time, depending where the lines were, it got really ugly.  in some families, one grandfather had been conscripted to fight with the nazi, the other with the red army.

after the war, the soviets tightened their grip.  the kgb became a part of every workplace, and every college classroom…i was told you may not have known who they were, but they were there.  the latvians fought back…not with weapons, but with music and flowers.

the folk music of the day sung of the simple joys of lativan life…the kgb knew they were actually “gentle protest songs”, but really couldn’t arrest anyone – it was just latvian folksongs about the joys of family – one thing the kgb couldn’t take away.

the flowers?  latvians love flowers – they give them for any and every occasion.  i was told they made sure that there was color everywhere from spring to fall…it was there way of saying that there was something else the kgb couldn’t steal.  (the fact that very few latvians grow ‘red’ flowers even to this day?  just a coincidence, i’m sure…)

why am i telling you all this?

the stirring for freedom in latvia started long before gorbachev indicated that limited freedoms might be possible in the balitics.

the move to freedom in latvia began in earnest in 1986 when a group of lutheran pastors set it in motion. their preaching, teaching, and boldness spilled over from the pulpits to the streets.  the movement was peaceful, yet determined.

in 1991, their movement was successful.  the cost was over 500,000 lives.  those killed or missing made up 1/3 of the latvian population when the occupation began in the fall of 1939.

freedom is a new thing for these translators i’ve been talking with.  the older ones remember the tanks of the red army in their town squares, and the hushed voices telling of disappeared relatives they were not supposed to speak of.

election day in america is coming…what is freedom worth to us?

how would we fight?

with weapons…or flowers?

or…are we so used to it, that we somehow find it is worth less than our forefathers paid for it?

when election day comes…vote for freedom.  i don’t know what that means to you…to me, it means showing up…every time.

more from latvia soon…mz in lv