Sunday, June 8, 2008

GOODBYE TO CHASE AND FAMILY

It has been our privilege to have Chase and his family visiting with us for the past 10 days (see previous posts). We have had a great time discussing the ministry effort here, his perspective on Cesis and renewing old friendships.

He had the opportunity to preach twice at the Cesis Baptist Church along with advising future missionaries in Riga, visiting with the boys in prison and meeting many of our Latvian friends. His wife Laura is a neonatal nurse and she was able to tour the local slimnica (hospital) with one of our friends who is a midwife.

We hope that he, Laura, Maddie and Nate enjoyed last week as much as we did. Chase is a great speaker and seems to know just what to say at the right time. He obviously married way over his head and his children are a treat to be around. Paldies again Chase...we are already missing you and your wonderful family. May God continue to bless you in your new endeavors.

We love having visitors here. We like to show-off our little city and help people to become more familiar with Latvian culture. It is always interesting to get their views on things here.

The hardest part of visitors is that they are always visitors. They have their life that they have to return to and leave us to continue the work here. Laura and I really do not get homesick very often but when our visitors return to the States, it is very, very hard. We get along with each other beautifully and we have been each other's best friends for over 30 years, but sometimes we really miss not having others with a similar background (American!) to discuss things with. We both have Latvian friends and we are treated great by the people but we miss just being able to sit, talk, joke and enjoy other people.

We have a little less that a month to prepare for the Sports Camps, Youth Celebrations and Concert. We are anxious to see two of our boys (Jacob and Jordan) as they will be arriving with the Americans to help work in the activities as they have done the last three years.

Here are a few pictures from some activities this past week:

 

IMG_1520

Speaking in Riga to university students...

 

 

IMG_1335

Klaus, a good friend...

 

IMG_1620

Nate and Maddie

 

 

IMG_1710

Laura and Nate

 

Chase & Laura

In love in Latvia, Laura and Chase

 

 

IMG_1523

University students now ... future Latvian missionaries?

No comments: