Monday Morning

We are up at 3 AM this morning to get ready to go to the airport for our early flight. I'm not sure how well I think at 3 AM, but I'll attempt to give you a recap of yesterday's activities.

We attended worship at First Riga at 11 AM. In a word... powerful. Gita is so intentional about her design of worship. She chose songs that we would know the tune to and had an interpreter there so that we would understand what was going on. For me, the most touching parts were the prayer time and Holy Communion. 

During prayer time, Gita lights four candles to remember various areas/people (their Conference, the Baltic States, etc.). Then everyone has the opportunity to come to the front and light a candle and say a prayer. The candelabra was filled with light by the end. What a beautiful sight!

During communion, everyone receives an individual anointing and blessing. After you receive, one of the pastors (Gita or Astra) lays hands on you and says a prayer over you. All I can tell you is that we were very moved... or at least I was. "Moved" is such an inadequate word... but it's all I have at the moment.

Our closing hymn was "This is My Song" - sung in English. How perfect. Consider the lyrics... and how you might feel after spending a week among the Latvian people...

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

What powerful worship we had!

We spent a little while in fellowship over lunch, visiting with the pastors and then said our goodbyes. Kristine and Oscars took us for one last shopping trip, and then to the hotel for dinner. I don't know that I've said much about Kristine, but she has been our Volunteers in Mission contact, and is such a precious person. She's been our savior many times! Her English is great (she studied in the States) and she is selfless and charming always.

On our way to the airport for this early-morning flight to Frankfurt and then on to home... we'll see you all soon!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Curiouser and Curiouser

Image
We slept in a little bit this morning and had brunch at the appropriately named Curiosity Coffee Bar, a highly-rated little place just a couple of blocks from the White Rabbit (our Alice-in-Wonderland-themed bnb). Curiouser and curiouser, we spent the rest of the day at the South Carolina State Library.  The library staff were quite accommodating of our multiple requests from the stacks (I don't have a pic of the big pile of books we left behind at the end of the day).  The things we're curious about make some people (Kef and Dad specifically) shake their heads. Today's finds included a listing of early settlers to South Carolina, among which was my 5 greats grandfather Samuel McGill, described among the "poor protestants lately arrived from Ireland on the encouragement of the Bounty given by this Province." His age was listed as 23, and he was granted that bounty of 100 acres. Although we knew he was born in Ireland, we didn't know what year. So this 1766 lis
Read more

Epworth

Image
The first stop on our Wesleyan Tour was the small town of Epworth, where John Wesley was raised, baptized and became the man he was. I'm not sure how this town would be if it hadn't been for the Wesleys... it's almost as if they loved to hate Samuel Wesley and his family when they were living, but when they died or went away and became "famous" they became hometown heroes. I guess this would just be any-old little town if it weren't known for the Wesleys. We visited the rectory that was John Wesley's home (rebuit in 1709 after being destroyed by a fire that John himself barely survived). Among the displays there was a listing of what Susannah Wesley's day typically looked like... That's a lot more time for spiritual reflection than I would have thought. I wonder how many mothers of 10 children have a schedule that looks like this? A simpler time perhaps. So far, what I've learned of John Wesley makes me wonder whether I would ha
Read more

Home

Image
I've been mulling over my final blog entry for this trip, primarily because I wanted it to be profound. So, since I'm still waking up at 5 AM I figured I might as well go ahead and try my hand at it. Today, I go back to work in the church that descended from John Wesley's work. After a pilgrimage such as the one we've just had, I find myself wondering what I've learned that may impact my outlook on life and work moving forward. I started this trip (the first day, if you recall) wondering about the likability of John Wesley. Awfully presumptuous of me, I guess, to judge the man who impacted the lives of so many. I find myself now thinking more of John Wesley in context. In the same way that we read the Bible with the time period in mind, I remind myself that Wesley's way of sharing life with others was very different for his time period. We modern Methodists perhaps don't appreciate how different it really was. We are "mainstream" now... no long
Read more