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.