saying goodbyes...again

We are finally at that point where the summer is coming to a close. We leave for the airport in about an 45 mins and it is crazy to think that we will be on our way back to the states in a matter of hours. This last week has been so great catching up with old friends hanging out and having some time to debrief a little and start to process our experience this summer. The journey home is going to be a long (and I fear rather emotional) trip mixed with sadness of leaving people and excitement of seeing family and friends.

There are so many thoughts racing through my head right now as I know I have not even begun to describe our experiences here in Latvia and Russia adequately and wishing to express everything that we have seen and done and all the people who have touched our lives in such a brief time. This has truly been one very interesting and very amazing summer. The Lord have moved in so many more ways than we could have ever imagined and it has been such a blessing to be here see Him be glorified!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support and for keeping up with us, it really means more than you know!! All the pictures have been uploaded now, so you can find them from the links on the right and hopefully can have an image of what all we have been up to!

moscow young people's camp

July 28 – August 2

Moscow Young People’s Camp 2008! This is going to be similar to the post on Wesley Days from Camp Wesley in Latvia in the sense that I will give a brief overview of camp and then delve a little into specifics. As expected, not much time to write each day and way too much to express everything that went on but I plan on hitting the highlights!

Monday (28th)
We took a bus to camp and met up with the team for planning and preparation between the Russian leadership team and the American team to work out last minute details. Michael went to the train station to pick up Zina which was such an awesome surprise when found out she was going to be able to make it camp! (Just a reminder, Zina is Kira’s – Pastor in Kirov – roommate). The “camp” is more of a retreat center with a dining hall and a large auditorium. There are several floors with rooms that are kind of a mix between hotel and dorm rooms. The look more like dorm rooms, but each has two beds, one table, two small nightstands and one closet. They also each have their own bathroom and shower so that was really nice. The building itself seemed pretty old, but it was the perfect place to have a more seminar-based camp. I was rooming with Zina too so that was really exciting. Brandon and Michael were paired with two of the guys from the Missouri team. We all had a time to hang out after the meetings and talk and I can’t say enough how awesome this team is from Missouri. They also had a LOT of peanut butter and animal crackers, but I promise that’s not what made them so cool :)

So camp officially started on Tuesday the 29th and went through Saturday August 2nd. Here is an overview of the schedule (and I use that term lightly as usual). Tuesday and Saturday were slight exceptions with registration taking up the most of the day until picking up in the schedule at 3pm for the first talk on Tuesday and camp ending after the morning devotion on Saturday to head to the church dedication.

8:30am breakfast

9:30am devotional time (we met all together in the small room and then read the devo by ourselves in our booklet and then split up into small groups to discuss and pray)

10:30am 1st session of the day (usually in the auditorium and had some worship followed by a talk by someone)

11:30am chai (tea) break – sometimes games as well

12pm 2nd session (again in the auditorium) a talk by someone, sometimes with worship beforehand)

2:00pm lunch

3:00pm 3rd session (auditorium) worship followed by a talk by someone

4:30pm games/chai

5:00pm 4th session (auditorium) worship followed by a talk by someone

7:00 dinner

8:00 5th session (auditorium) worship sometimes followed by a talk by someone

9:00 evening event (differed from night to night…with an international night where each country planned something to share and Korea, the Ukraine, Russia, and the States were all represented)

11:00 time for bed (though of course this happened not even one night as every the night event went past this time and then people hung out afterwards, but it was a good effort)

Hopefully now you have a general idea of camp, however know that there is much more to be told of the relationships that were built both with the American and Russian teams and the details of everything that happened over the days of camp! The Lord was really at work this past week, despite a lot of frustrations between teams and trying to break the language barrier (thankfully we had three translators and a forth on the last day!) but it is so evident that He moved among the people there and the camp really made a huge impact on the lives of everyone there.

pictures from moscow...

just a preview of the pictures from Moscow! more on facebook (from the links on the right under pictures) from Syktyvkar, and Moscow before and after the young people's camp. of course not all of them, but just a sample!


at St. Basil's in Red Square in Moscow

the return to riga...

So we have been away from the internet for a while so sorry for the long delay since the last post! We are back in Riga, Latvia at Dan and Courtney’s now however and will be here until we fly back to the states on the 7th. I hope to be able to get some pictures up from our time in Syktyvkar and also from the camp in Moscow today or tomorrow and to post about camp as well.

Here is a somewhat short version of our time in Moscow before camp. Sorry still for the length…

July 25-27

Friday (25th)
After settling in at the seminary we went to lunch with one of the students there and then had a bit of time to relax and read and nap while Michael went to the Embassy. We met up with Kira and some of her friends from Florida and a group from the States that went on the Emmaus walk with her for dinner. The place we went was on this street downtown that is blocked off and has a lot of souvenir shops and touristy things (even two Starbucks, sounds like home, huh?) so after dinner we parted ways and Michael, Brandon, and I walked around and bit of shopping before the next day when we would be with the team from Missouri so we could make sure we were able to go everywhere we wanted to and cater to the team the next team. Deciding it was too early for bed, we ventured around the metro stations and walked a ways home to see the city at night and it was well worth it.

Saturday (26th)
We met up with Kira and the team from Missouri at one of the metro stations close by and then wandered to the open market for some shopping. The market was awesome and had just about anything you could want; clothes, food, souvenirs…and the further you went in to it (and it was massive) the cheaper it got and the more like a lot of garage sales combined together. We spent a couple of hours in there and needed every minute of it to make it around to everywhere. Next we ventured down the same street we had been on the night before and really got a chance to get to know some of the team. We made a stop at a mall as well (which, wow, was huge. I mean like 8 stories. With every possible store you could imagine, an internet cafe, food court, bank; even a Build-A-Bear. It was impressive to say the least.) We took a boat ride around town and got to see a lot of what we had seen from walking around from a different view and it was really nice to be able to sit and talk with people and get to know them before camp began.

Sunday (27th)
Mike Stallion (who we had been planning with and who was the leader for the Missouri team) split his team up for church in the morning. Some of them came to the seminary for the Russian Korean service (they had a girl on their team who had been in Korea for the past five years doing mission work so she was going to translate) and the rest went to other churches in the area. To everyone’s surprise, the service was not in Korean, but Russian because they had a guest speaker for the day. This was also a surprise because the guest speaker was Pavel, the pastor from the church in Syktyvkar that we had just spent the week with! What a small world it is. After the service we had a traditional Korean lunch (which was rice and vegetables and spicy sauce with even more spicy sauce/vegetable mix to put on top on the side. It was so delicious! And dessert was rice cakes with nuts in them which were also pretty tasty. Everyone met up at Red Square in the afternoon to walk around and see Lenin’s tomb and St. Basil’s and then take a tour of the Kremlin. It was a very touristy day indeed, but a lot of fun. The team is great and after talking about the plans for the youth camp we were pretty excited about what was in store for it! The majority of the team went to the ballet (it was Don Quixote) however the guys opted out so Brandon and I joined Mike and three of the guys Trevor, Kevin and Jesse to chat at this very hidden, very local, cheap little restaurant wedged downtown in an alley between Tiffany & Co. and Dulce & Gabanna. The team has been staying at the church in Vnukovo (which is where the dedication will take place on Saturday) so we parted ways for the night with plans to meet up at camp the next day.