Returning to Latvia

I love summer time! I love it for a number of reasons. Of course, there's the hot weather beckoning me to spend the entire day outdoors playing sports, swimming, hiking, occasionally canoeing. Also, knowing that I don't have any classes to go to or manage homework assignments adds to the excitement of this season. But the reason I look forward to summer every year is because of the availability of time to go somewhere far from home, preferably overseas, on a summer mission trip.

Since high school, these summer trips of mine have been a tradition. Sometimes I have stayed in the States, traveling to places like New York City to help run a VBS for Chinese children in the inner city, or to Kanton, Oklahoma to spend time with Native American youth, learning about their lives and families and teaching them about God and the life he gives us. Last summer I travelled to Nepal to teach English in a small village in the Himalayan Mountains. My experience was priceless, as I walked away having learned far more than I actually taught.

This summer I will be returning to a place that I called home for many years. Although I scarcely remember their language, the people and the culture are keenly unforgettable to me. I am going back to Latvia. Travelling alongside my friends, we'll be headed to a city called Daugavpils which is not so familiar to me. The culture in that city is actually quite different, too, as it resembles Russian culture. I have missionary friends there who have been serving there since 2000. I can only imagine how much their love for the people has grown during these years, and I am so excited to pull alongside them and help within the short month that we will be there.

Preparing for a mission trip is also a wonderful experience. That's the stage we're in right now. Recently, my team and I have been meeting to share our testimonies, share stories from the Bible we have memorized, discuss ways to share the gospel, discuss Latvian and Russian culture, share our fears and anticipations, and to grow closer to each other. I've really enjoyed watching my team bond together as we share such personal and intimate information with each other. The dynamic of our team is incredibly complex and versatile. We each bring unique gifts, tendencies, experiences, and goals to the table as we merge them all into one goal of glorifying God and spreading his good news to the people in Daugavpils. Everyone is committed and their excitement grows each time I see them. I pray for them--each of them.

I pray for a spirit of humility to saturate our hearts as we serve not only the people of Daugavpils, but each other, as well. I pray for submissive spirits and adventurous hearts. I pray for pure objectives and motives. I pray for reasoning and scriptural knowledge to abound among us. I pray that our desire is to seek life and give it. I pray for goodness--for good things to happen to the friends we make and the kind families who will take us in, and also for the Church there. Strangely, I pray for difficulties, whether they be conversations, food, cultural differences, people, or our hearts, so that God's grace can prove to be more powerful than anything.

I pray for love. I pray for love to reveal, protect, multiply, expose, transcend, comfort, open hearts, capture minds, inspire thought, levy grace, bring peace, show mercy, instill hope, and cultivate faith.