BUSY SATURDAY

We are just about finished with a busy Saturday in Latvia.

First, we left out on the 8:15 bus for Riga. There are Prayer Days each month for the young people of Latvia. Vilandes Baptist Church was the host this month and our friend Samuels Thomas was the speaker. There is always good music and a great group of young people. We had three of our kids go with us.

When we returned to Cesis, we attended an outdoor concert. Every 5 years Latvia has a Song Festival. They were even able to adapt it so that they could participate during the Communist years. You can not imagine how big a deal this is. The singers are always in their national costumes, some even in their village colors. We are talking about the Super Bowl of choir festivals. They hold it in a huge stadium complex in Riga  during the first week of July. Over the entire week they will have several hundred thousand people attend different parts of the festival.

It does not look like we are going to be able to go this year (some of our group went 5 summers ago) but tonight's concert was a great look at what we are going to be missing. Tickets are extremely hard to get and very expensive so they are having these 'rehearsals' in the different towns.

I don't know a thing about music but they sounded very good tonight. The group 'Auli' is an instrumental folk group that plays drums, bagpipes and a bunch of other traditional instruments. They are one of our favorites and we try to see them every chance we get.

Tradition is such a big thing here. No one is embarrassed to dress up in their national costumes and they don't mind singing the songs of centuries past. It is really enjoyable seeing their pride in the past.

Here are a few photos. In Cesis, the outdoor stage is at the foot of the castle. It makes for an impressive display. (As always, you can double click and the photo will open in a larger window.)

Ata!