Change Is In the Air

Please, take my advice. If you ever go to the store and, in a moment of weakness and longing for the wonderful taste of bacon, see this…

…walk away, quickly! Do not consider it and do NOT buy it!

Trust me, I’m all for bacon. I consider it one of my favorite foods and believe it should be it’s own food group with a minimum daily requirement! I was hopeful, (or more accurately, desperate) when I found this. Being a somewhat adventurous (again, desperate) person, I tired it. I love bacon and I love popcorn… but this… this was an abomination to all things that salty and smoked of the pork and or popped corn variety.

To this day, 2 weeks or so later, my microwave still emits a “bacon bits” type smell when turned on, despite thorough cleaning.

You have been warned.

Friday night was Musician’s Night. This is something like a youth group meeting with mostly worship and a bit of sharing/challenge. It’s awesome because so many young people come, and are in leadership of it. The group that played last night (and most often does), was S.O.S. The leader, Arta is 24. Most of the rest of the band is still in high school. I think that’s awesome.

It was a fun night. Usually Chris and I are, not only the oldest people there but the only non-Latvians, as well. This night was no different. The pleasant surprise was when Inese and Anda showed up. Anda is my Latvian teacher and fellow English teacher that the high school. We’ve been becoming better and better friends, and I love hanging out with her. Inese is the worship leader at the Talsi Christian Fellowship Church. We’ve been hanging out with her more lately, as she and Chris are talking about a number of music ideas. Both of these women are just shy of 30, married and have 1 child each. It was SO cool for me to stand there a talk with both of them! I love hanging out with the youth but sometimes it’s nice to hang out with people closer to your own age. Chris took a picture of the three of us and I was shocked when I looked at it, and saw my Latvian blood coming out. :)

The night was also special because it was Arta’s last night for a while. She left today for Albania to start her DTS (Discipleship Training School). She’s so excited and we’re thrilled for her, even though we’ll miss her.

It’s taken some time to get back in the swing of things and get settled back into life here, but it’s happening, albeit slowly. But, we’re still happy to be back and love living in Latvia.

I’m not sure when this “Polar Bear” started going soft, but man, I’m so ready for spring. I blame it completely on America and the fact that it was 85 in February in Florida. It totally messed me up, seasonally.

So all growing up I hear that “If it rains on Easter Sunday, it will rain for the next 7 Sundays.” I thought of that a few days ago, on Easter. I wondered what the allowance was for if it snowed on Easter. God forbid that it snow for the next 7 Sundays… that would put us into the beginning of May. That’s just not going to work for me. Maybe it’s that it will snow for the next 7 days, which would be all week. Now that it’s Wednesday, I can see how that could work, as it’s been snowing off and on since Sunday. We go from whiteouts to gentle flakes in moments. The kids are enjoying the snow, that’s for sure. They’re outside trying to snowboard down a hill that is maybe 8 feet high. (Do you think Jesus had to deal with snow when he rose from the dead on Easter morning? I’m glad that was most likely not an issue for Him!)

So, with this in mind, I can’t understand why people wouldn’t want to spend their Spring Break in Latvia! We have beaches here, too! And besides, here you wouldn’t have to worry so much about skin cancer so much as you’d be completely covered up!

Hey, look, it’s a whiteout again… go figure.

I had never been sick so much as I was while we were in America. It seemed like every time I turned around we were canceling some appointment or something cause one of us was sick. It was insane. We thought that maybe we just weren’t used to the American germ strains anymore. Who knows.

Now that we’re home, I’m sick. Again. Chris got something… a bad cough among other things, while we were in Florida (of all places). I was fine. Fine while he fought it. Fine when we got back to Mom & Dad’s and Mom had bronchitis and Dad & Adam came down with some flu, fine through all of it. Then we left. Then we got home. Yeah, home! Then I got sick. And I think it’s the same thing that Chris had and is actually still fighting the remnants of… praise the Lord for Riga Black Balsams. (Now there’s a sentence you don’t see everyday!)

So, yeah, my first week home, and I’m sick. Again. I can’t wait to be over this and get out and see more of my friends! But I guess that will have to wait. Maybe God is just helping me keep some boundaries so I don’t become all work-a-holic the first week we’re back. Instead, I’m spending a lot of time sleeping (not good for fighting jetlag), watching some movies, catching up on my blog (LOL), and slowly unpacking and moving back into my apartment.

I’ll still be glad when I’m over this, though!

To everyone in Ohio who got blasted with the snow-storm of the decade… I’m so jealous! I wish that storm had come last week so I could have enjoyed it with you! I guess it’s good we flew out when we did… I heard Cleveland canceled a majority of their flights.

Someone asked me how much snow we have here. The answer would be “none”. Not even piles left over after shoveling or anything. So sad. It’s 43 here today. Go figure.

Snow or not, it’s good to be home. We weren’t here even 24 hours and friends came to visit! Yeah! Yesterday evening Peteris, Elita and Andis all came over for a few hours. It was so good to see them!

Other friends are slowly realizing we’re back and writing that they can’t wait to see us & asking when we will invite them for dinner. It’s so good being welcomed back.

Still fighting jetlag and it’s kicking my butt. I fell asleep on the couch around 10pm, which would have been fine, but it was on the couch, and Chris was still awake. I woke up around 12am, we went to bed around 1:30a and got up at 10:30a. The nine hours wasn’t so bad, but the 2 before it made 11 and I have a killer “sleep headache” now. Ugh. Gotta try to get on a normal schedule. Our apartment was freezing when we got here, especially the bedroom where, for some reason, the window was open. It was like 30 outside! I think I caught something cause I’m coughing like mad now, a deep racking cough. Not good. Hopefully just getting eating and sleeping patterns right will help that.

Our cat, Saulite, remembers us as well! At first she was shy, but she has warmed up and is just as devious as she ever was!

I went to the grocery store (thanks to Kaspars who drove me) to restock everything, starting from almost complete scratch again. I was shocked over how much more things cost now. Gas was about $4.20/gal when we left here in September. Now it’s about $5.90/gal. Cheese, bread, milk, everything in the store has gone up quite a bit. It will be a challenge to adjust to this.

I do have to mention one more thing… it is odd being here and being with our friends, and Ieva not being here. For those of you who don’t know, she’s in Oklahoma right now. She’s raising support to go to Perth, Australia for a YWAM School of Worship. Please keep her in your prayers! She’s doing wonderfully and we’re so proud of her, but we do miss her!
So, there you have it! We’re looking forward to finishing the unpack and starting to get into life here again. Since we don’t have a car anymore it will be a bit more challenging, but that’s life, I guess. It’s good to be home and back where God has called us. We have many new ideas and vision for the future. Pray for us as we sort our what it of God and what isn’t, as well as the timing of everything. Blessings!

We have arrived safely in Latvia! We’re home and, wow, it feels good! We had a bit of a panic moment in Cleveland when we found out they couldn’t check our bags all the way to Riga, but that in London we would have to collect them, go through security and recheck in. Not good since we paid a bit extra because one bag was over the limit. We were also very concerned because when leaving London you can only have one carry-on/personal bag per person, and we had 2 each (as America allows). While we waited for our airline to open up for check in, we hung out with our friend, Dana, which was a great time of trying to stay awake and also catching up. Before we checked in, the three of us prayed for favor, and boy did God answer! We decided to consolidate our 4 bags into 3, and then just asked the agent what to do. He was very friendly and gracious and not only did he not charge us for any of our overweight bags, but let us check a 5th bag (one of our carry-ons) for free. Amazing!

Arriving in Riga, we were a bit nervous as well, as we had special permission to be gone from Latvia for 6 months without jeopardizing our residence permit status. Somehow we were the LAST people in line, and when we finally got to the agent, he had no idea what to do with our paperwork concerning this. In the end, he stamped it all and let us through without problem. This is something we prayed with Dana about, as well.

We were met at the airport in Riga by our friend Kaspars, who also drove us back to our apartment, as well as our teen-friend Elita, her brother and mom. It was so nice to be welcomed back to the country, even though our plane was late and we were late… they waited till we got there around midnight. Amazing.

So, I think jetlag is really kicking in, since I should be exhausted but I’m not sure if I could sleep yet. So far, I’ve been awake for over 36 hours with any sleep. Wow, my bed is sounding better and better all the time.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us! Please keep us in your prayers as we readjust over the next days… we even have friends coming over in a few hours to welcome us home.

Hey everyone… or anyone who might still check in here… Just a note to say that I do intend on blogging again, and soon. We have 8 days until we leave for Latvia (aka HOME) and 3 weeks of stuff to do in that time. We’ve just this evening returned from a trip to Florida and managed to put 4000+ miles on our rental car in less than 3 weeks. :) Also, my computer was down and dead and gone getting “fixed” for about 6-8 weeks (thanks Mark!), which had all my addresses, passwords, etc on it. (This is also why I haven’t been emailing people much… didn’t have any addresses.) ANYWAY, please keep checking in. Give me another 2 weeks and I’ll try to get over jet lag and finish unpacking and then I”ll let you know how our time in America has been. :) Blessings!