Loving Latvia

Allie here!

Okay, so we are now here in Liepaja. We loved our last two weeks in Jelgava, and it was so hard to leave there! We have been struggling with being in a new place while our hearts are still with the kids in the orphanage, but God is going great things! Living in the orphanage with the kids was such an amazing experience. It was so awesome when the kids would just come and knock on our door and ask us to come out and play. The children were so precious! We had so much fun playing and loving on them.

One day Lindsey was with some of the kids (keep in mind, she is our senior intern) and they were eating leaves and they have her some. And yes, she definetely ate them. Later she came and told us about it and that they tasted like grapes. We thought she was crazy, but of course we tried them and they were dang good!

There was one boy named Christion that was extremley shy and always alone. All the other kids wanted to play and hug us, but he wanted nothing to do with us. We started to worry about him and were sad that he would just rather be alone. Around the third day we were there he was sitting close to me and started scooting closer and closer. There was another boy sitting in my lap and as soon as he got up Christion ran over and hopped in my lap. After that he was so open to us, and it was good to see him finally be okay with others showing him love. Most of the kids we would usually be working with during the VBS were gone to America. So our plans were completley flipped around and we had the littlest kids, kindergarteners, and the oldest kids. We were a little stressed as we had to re-strategize everything completeley, but God had better plans. We got to build relationships with the older kids. They are definetley the hardest to reach out to, and usually get no attention from the groups coming through. With the girls we had a make over day where we did hair, nails, and make-up, and went out shopping. We played soccer and stayed up late talking with the boys. We still got to do VBS with the kidnergarteners so everything worked out great. We are missing those kids and they are in our hearts forever!

We are now with the Longview team and it has been crazy awesome to be with some Americans. We make Latvia much, much louder. They have been great, and some of them are on their seventh trip to Latvia! Their dedications to Latvia is so amazing to see. We started our sports camps today and we are expecting it to grow to around 300 kids by the end of the week. All of these kids are just off the street and are a rough crowd to handle. We all see how it all goes, but today went well. I got to play some basketball, which I have missed. I'll just say that my basketball team was full of the kids versus the guys from Longview and well.... Team Latvia dominated Team USA. We are looking forward to see the work that God does within these kids. We feel blessed that God wants to use us as his tools.

Please keep us in your prayers! Much Love!

Latvia Ladies,

  Allie, Dala, Shandi, and Lindsey

P.s. Last night we got to go out into the Baltic Sea.... yes... be jealous!