Change Is In the Airformerly "Lydia's Latvian Blog."

This morning I found myself getting up much earlier than I usually do (I even used an alarm), getting and ready and heading to the base. Our lecture room slowly filled up with staff on their laptops, connecting to the internet, and Janis and I realized that this was the most people the base has ever had connected wirelessly, at one time. (There were 9 of us… ok, that’s not so many by American standards, but for us, it actually slowed down our internet quite a bit… it was monumental.)

So, what was all of this for? I was teaching a seminar about blogging. Blogs are something that our staff have been interested in for some time. Chris has been working diligently to set them all up and today I spent the morning showing our staff how to customize their blogs, as well as the basics of how to write a post, add pictures, etc. We used to projector and I walked my group of students through the process, step by step. It was a challenge, but we did it. I was proud of all of them. They all learned the basics and got started on their way into the world of blogging!

I’m sure that I’ll be getting a lot of questions in the not-so-distant future, but it’s not so bad.

Oh, did I mention we leave for America in 10 days? We have a friend, Danka, from Czech, coming tomorrow for about a week, and a band coming from England that Chris is hosting… a lot going on and a lot to do in our last 10 days before we leave.

I recently read an article in The Baltic Times about how Latvia is trying to combat Sex Tourism in the country and in Riga, specifically. You can read the whole thing here. Part of it really stuck out to me. It said:

“STOP Sex Terrorism” is a massive advertising campaign aimed at stopping this from going any further. It’s the brainchild of Re!Action, a non-governmental organization, put together in conjunction with the Alfa Center advertising agency. The campaign is sponsored by Riga Airport and more than 20 other businesses based in and around the capital. The campaign is, somewhat unconventionally, not aimed at the sex tourists themselves but at the Latvian women who participate in sex tourism by agreeing to one night stands with the revelers. It hopes to reach those women who can be found sitting with a lonely expression on their faces at the edge of the bars of the popular tourist night clubs, waiting for a foreigner who can afford to buy her the most expensive cocktail on the menu and whisk her away – for a few hours, anyway – without resorting to outright
prostitution.

“Its goal is stopping the nonchalance toward this problem, as well as raising the self-esteem of the society and younger women in particular, by making one think about whether it’s worth it to have a one-night stand for a glass of cocktail,” the Re!Action Web site says…

A recent survey conducted by the popular Internet news Web site tvnet.lv addressed the most common reasons that a woman would have a one night stand with a foreign tourist who buys them drinks. Of the 1,504 respondents to the survey, 53 percent thought that it was an issue of self confidence. Nineteen percent thought that the problem was the women’s financial situation, and 17 percent thought that the problem is the attitude of Latvian men towards women. The remaining 10 percent considered the problem as merely one of social circumstance or cited other factors.

Self confidence?!?! While I have a hard time reconciling this, deep inside I think it is true. I guess it just drives home to me one more reason why I want to show these young women that I’m friends with just how important they are and how much God loves them! I pray that they will come to a true understanding of that, really believe it, and therefore not be tempted into this lifestyle.

You know, when you look on a map, there’s always this black line between countries. This is especially noticeable if you’ve even drive across the border of a country. Rarely are the borders back to back… usually you leave one country, drive some distance (maybe feet, maybe a mile) and then you drive into the other country. I remember years ago traveling, I believe, between Czech and Austria. There was quite a distance between the borders… maybe a mile. My friend Laurie and I began to think, “So, where are we? We left Czech, but we’re not yet in Austria… what we we did here, or what it a baby was born right here, where would the be born? Where the heck are we? We’re on The Black Line!”

Yesterday, Chris and I took a trip to The Black Line between Latvia and Lithuania. There was an outreach team from Norway working there with YWAM. The one girl leading it, Benedicte, is a friend of ours and is leaving Latvia after this outreach, so we went to hang out and say good bye. Also, one of their translators is our friend Eduards. It was his first time doing actual official translating, so we went to check up on him, as well as just to get out of the area and take a break from everything going on in Talsi.

So, we headed to Ruba. The last 20km or so were dirty, dust gravel roads. We wondered how they chose this village to go to. First we saw “The Black Line” sign, which declared we were entering the “borderland”. The next sign we say said, “Lithuania – 4km” Ok… so we must be getting closer. We turned off onto yet another dirt road and drove through what looked like it was an abandoned factory zone… we later figured out it used to be the border station. We kept driving and then… “beep beep beep”… our cell phones alerted us that we had a new message, which read, “Welcome to Lithuania… we hope you enjoy your stay!” Ok, well, we MUST be getting close! We did eventually find the village & team, which were working at a camp at a local school. I guess when it’s winter and the trees are bare, you can easily see the Lithuanian side of the border.

After our 2 1/2 hour drive, we had a good lunch, toured the village school, which used to be the mansion of a Baron back in the day. It was beautiful. As were the gardens around it. The 4 of us had some time to just hang out, have fun and chat. Before we knew it, it was time for them to go to dinner and get ready for the evening, and for us to leave on our 2 1/2 hour drive home. Maybe it was a long way to go for a 3 hour visit, but I think it was worth it, for everyone.

And besides, it was cool to hang out on The Black Line! *smile*