Blogs from Riga, Riga Region, Latvia, Europe - page 25

On Saturday we drove to Vilnius to match up against Vikingas. We were missing four of our starters; I was most worried about Mantas because it meant that we had no catcher, and old Marius (35 year old) had to do it. The Ukrainian pitcher was pitching for Vikingas, and it was a close game. We lost 5-3, though four of the Vikingas runs were unearned. And there’re was one brutal out call at the plate where our guy was clearly safe, ending a potential rally. In arguing over the call, Marius (the player called out) called the umpire a series of dirty names (all in Russian) and was tossed from the game. Which meant that he would have to sit out the next days’ game, in which he was supposed to be our starting pitcher ... read more

Interesting story from a few days ago...... One interesting topic of discussion that often comes up when I’m out having drinks with people here in Kaunas is the difficulty of getting to the US for Lithuanians. It is the same conversation that could be had in any number of countries involving applying for a visa into the US; we are a very difficult place to get to. Many Lithuanians have come to the US via a work visa, for anywhere from 2 to 4 months, but any longer is very difficult to come by. And often it becomes more difficult the second and third time around as the govt. becomes less and less lenient about visas (from what some Lithuanians have told me, each situation is different I think). I have heard numerous stories of people ... read more

Hey Y'all (that's very Latvian!) So three balsamic something shots later here we are writing a blog.... I forgot my notebook today which is frustrating because that is our guide for writing these things! Well....I did make some random notes today so we'll go from that. Keep in mind that Sonja is drunk. There were some things that I wanted to wrap up about Estonia. Things like they were not as friendly as the people of Finland. Much more soft spoken but not to into smiling. Not sure how to take that. And not judging just from that "cheeseburger" experience but from all of our restaurant and tour experiences, but that customer service is not that great. Sub-par really. But, I was a server and maybe in North America we are just more used to everything ... read more

The last few entries have been a little bit rocky, but we're bouncing back. We went to three countries with mummified communist leaders, and we never got to smell the formaldahyde in any of them because of our various small "crises" and their various arbirtrary hours. But we're shaking it off. The bank cards work, Justin is feeling better, we have a new camera, and Justin fixed Chris' ailing iPod. Since he was never really able to shake his cold in St. Petersburg, Justin got very familiar with St. Petersburg's Puppet Hostel. They even gave us free tickets to the downstairs Puppet Theatre, but we were the only members of the audience over the age of 8 and unable to speak Russian. We're sure that we would have found the giant Hippopotamus hilarious if only we ... read more

We had our first experience with mockers. A group of boys were, sitting in the front row at our last concert whistling at the girls dancing and then making comments and laughing during the preaching. A couple of concerts back we had to deal with children running all over the place. Despite the distraction many youths came up for the alter call. I’ve spoken to 4 different girls who were really inspired by our work and want to work for God in the same manner. They are looking into Jesus Revolution. I really enjoyed being able to just encourage them and pray for them. A girl who was blind in one eye had three people from our team pray for her and when we left, she could see light where before she was not able to ... read more