I don’t know why I’ve been staying up so late. Last night I was up talking to Ieva until 4am. And, if you were wondering, the sun is indeed starting to come up around that time.

Yes, Ieva’s home. Yeah! Chris and I took Elita and went to the airport to meet Ieva and Daiga on Wednesday night for their 11:30pm flight arrival. So nice to have them back. Attempting to be good Latvians, we need we needed to have flowers to give them. (Flowers are a very big thing here.) Well, we forgot to buy them before all the stores closed. Elita’s dad said we should just pick some along the road on our way. I don’t know if he was joking or not, but we went for it. In the progressing dark and drizzling rain, Elita and I would jump out of the car whenever we saw a patch of somewhat usable wildflowers. We pulled in to the town of Pūre, and saw a gas station and thought to check there to see if they had any for sale. While we waited to ask the lady, through the glass window, Elita & I noticed that they had some nice flower boxes full of pretty flowers. We half joked about using those as a back up. When the lady said they had none for sale, I encouraged Elita to go for it… so she asked the lady if we could cut 2 flowers from each of the 2 kinds they had there. The lady working was a little surprised, but said, “Well, just do it so they look good, so it doesn’t look like you cut them off.” So, we did! Talk about fresh flowers! We laughed about that for quite sometime. Can you imagine pulling that off in America? Only in Latvia!

Elita… she’s been staying with us this past week and will stay another week, I think. She’s a young friend from Riga and also Peteris’ girlfriend. We’re kinda doing an “immersion English” type thing with her. It’s going ok. Nothing formal, but just getting her to speak all the time and correcting her as we go. She’s pretty good overall. It’s been nice for her, too, as she, her parents and her brother and sister all share a 1 bedroom (2 room) apartment in Riga. She’s essentially got her own room here (as Chris’ office) and a spare computer, so she’s living the high life.

If only our hot water would get turned back on…

Yeah, so Ieva’s home and it’s so nice.We’ve spent time with her each day, and most of the evenings until late. (Chris just took her home, now, at 1am.) I’m loving hearing her storied about her first missions trip and what God showed and taught her. Now she’s focusing on pulling together the support she needs for DTS. It’s a tall order, but she’s got the faith for it. Check out the video Chris did for her here. Pray for her… she needs about $2000 in about 3 weeks.

Going to bed… I have a feeling something is going on tomorrow… later today. I’m just not sure what. :)