The last week has been such a whirlwind. Sunday morning me, Chris, Ieva & Andis piled into our car and took off for Riga. Our friend Jim Baker was flying in and was bringing his friend Mark Krebs with him. We spent the day in Riga… Jim sang at church & we had a small reunion of sorts with many of the Music Ministry Seminar people. It was cool to hang out with them again.

The week went on as normal for me - school, preparing for school, meetings, etc. - but I also had 2 extra people living in our apartment. Always fun. It wasn’t so bad, though. I just really felt bad for Mark… no one knew he was allergic to cats. Not cool.

Jim & Mark did bring presents for us, though. We were overwhelmed & humbled by the generosity of people, some that don’t even knows us, to be willing to donate for these things. Chris was the happy recipient of a load of electronics for recording… my understanding is he can now record & produce some fairly good quality music. Very cool. The big part of that was a new laptop for him… an Apple, which are considered very good for working with media.

I was blessed as well with things like Apple Cider mix, brown sugar, M&Ms, hot chocolate, marshmallows, peanut butter, BUTTERFINGER BARS… should I go on? My kitchen is very happy as am I. :)

We also went through a roller coaster of emotion and activity with the prospect of buying an apartment. We still feel like we did the right thing in pursuing it, but in the end we just couldn’t do it. Though we have learned a lot about how the system here works, so when we do actually buy one, we’ll be one step ahead.

The guys took a number of trips to various places in Latvia… Riga, Kolka, Liepaja… it was good for them to see some of these places and good for Chris to get some “guy time” in.

We also had some great times of talking, praying and worship in our home. It’s been a rough week with one of my Latvian friends, too, so we’ve all been dong a lot of praying for them.

Wednesday we all took off again to Riga to celebrate Jim’s birthday. We met up with a bunch of our friends again and all went out to Lido, a wonderful buffet type Latvian restaurant. SO good! They also had everything decorated for Christmas, which thrilled me!

Thursday was Thanksgiving #1. We spent it with at the home of our National Director, the Dzelzs family. It really was more of a “foreigners” celebration than an American one, which was fine. We had Americans, Canadians, Norwegians, Brits and Latvians. Very cool. Also on Thursday afternoon, Chris, Jim & Mark came to my English class. I had asked the students before hand to write some questions for Mark & Jim to answer. They did, while they also entertained my class. I had some great feedback from my students afterwards.

Friday was Thanksgiving #2. It was the first time I’ve made the whole dinner myself. I did have a bit of assistance from Ieva, though. She’s good at shopping up veggies and such. I like teaching her how to cook. We did have chicken, though, since turkey is very har to find here & generally doesn’t taste good. My pumpkin pie even turned out fairly good, though Ieva didn’t care for it. Pumpkin here is eaten more as a vegetable, not as something sweet.

The guys took off for Riga Friday night to catch an early plane Saturday morning to head home. Ieva stayed with me at our place and we welcomed the Christmas season by breaking into the monster-sized bag of Christmas M&Ms the guys brought for us and by watching “A Christmas Story”… go ahead, say it… “You’ll shoot your eye, kid!”

Somewhere in the busyness of the week I managed to get a really bad sore throat. Right now it’s like knives when I swallow. Thankfully we have Monday - Wednesday off of school. It’s a government holiday since the NATO summit is being held in Riga. For me it just means a few extra days to get better… and sleep. So ready for sleep…

Pictures 1 & 3: Mark Krebs; Pictures 2 & 5: Jim Baker; Picture 4: Andis Senkans