August 2007Greetings from Latvia! While you are still sweating from the Texas heat, we are in the midst of our firstbig cool-down here in Lettland. Tonight the low will be around 46 and the highsfor the last couple of days have been in the lower 50's. It is just cool enough tohave to wear a jacket and long sleeves but not cold enough yet for our wood-burning heater. Since we know that fall and winter is fast approaching, we had our load offirewood delivered this week. Our flat is heated entirely by a wood-burning stoveso we got enough wood to fill up our wood shed. Our building has eight separateapartments and each has its own wood shed outside. I have already told Laura toget r-e-a-l familiar with that path to the shed because she will be making thattrip every morning and night. I don't think I heard an answer from her! Everything is still going well here. Laura has ladies' Bible study on Tuesdaynights and we both do the Youth Meetings on Wednesday nights. Our numbers continueto increase for which we are grateful. The ladies group has decided to start having monthly suppers after church onSundays. They really do not do very much in the way of fellowship so they havetaken it upon themselves to plan these activities. They still want Laura to be incharge of everything and she has learned that if she just gets the idea out infront of them, they will take off with it. This Sunday we will meet at the riveron the edge of town and have a sausage cook-out. Half of the people will bringsausages (similar to hot-links but not as spicy) and the rest will contribute theblack bread and drinks. Marshmallows are almost unheard of over here so Laura andI will try to get to Riga before Sunday and hope to find some. What's a cook-outwithout roasting marshmallow? School starts the first Monday of September. They make a fairly big production outof it. It is known as the "Day of Learning". Each school has its own little paradeand opening ceremonies. We are looking forward to observing some of theirtraditions.Laura and I had the opportunity to meet the headmaster of the 'pamatskola', whichwould be equivalent of our 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. He was a very gracious hostand we learned quite a bit about their educational system. Of course, for twopeople with almost 60 years of educational experience between us, school issomething that continues to interest us. I think we will cultivate a relationshipwith this school and look for ways to help them and the students. The biggestdifferences we saw were their lack of technology but we were impressed thatstudents at that age have the choice of three foreign languages: Russian, Germanand of course, English. The schools seem to be similar to what we remember schoolwas like in the United States before 'THE TEST'. We will report more after we seethem in operation.We have all of our visa application paperwork submitted. Yes, we had to drive toTallin, Estonia (the country due north of Latvia) to turn the papers into theembassy. Still not sure why we couldn't turn our papers in at the capital ofLatvia (Riga) but I guess that's government bureaucracy. We are now waiting to seeif there is any additional paperwork that they require. Our pastor, Olegs, took about 14 young and not-so-young people on a four-dayexcursion. They walked over 50 kilometers along the coastline, ending up inVentspils. He is a really good outdoors-man and they 'lived off the land'. There
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