Learning to Love.

We have just arrived home from a very eye opening 12 day orphan camp. It was an interesting experience though because I was submerged into two different cultures. First being the Latvian culture, which was brought in not only by the kids but by the other Latvian leaders who spoke no English and were not too happy about working with young Americans. The other culture shock was the orphan culture. Jaycee and Susan talked about it in our intern training, and experiencing it was more intense than I had imagined. We had to break up at least 25 fights, and I mean punching in the face and pulling hair our fights. They have a learned behavior that craves love and attention in every way. Loving these kids was physically and emotionally draining.
I had two nine-year-old boys in my room, Janis and Denis. They loved when I did the little things like take their shoes off before bed and they always fought over who got the first/last hug after we said goodnight. I found myself doing things that a mom would do for them, I cleaned up after them, made sure they got enough to eat, smelled their feet and made them shower if they were too "fooey" for me to handle. They spoke no English, besides numbers 1-10 and I taught them a few other words like bed and sleep. Communication was definitely a struggle. I had to grab Endija, Jaycee, or Susan to translate when they didn't understand ..or just weren't listening to me (which unfortunately happened often).
In the two weeks I was at the camp I saw the difference I made in the lives of the kids I got close to. I saw that what they need most I can give them, love. My hope is that they saw where my loves stems from. I'm praying that through the way I loved these kids at camp, they were given a glimpse of the gospel.

Sigulda

12 day orphan camp in Sigulda! Let's do this!!

Arrival

Upon arrival after an extremely long roughly 25 hours of travel what the four of us interns wanted most was food and sleep. However, Susan and jaycee had much different plans for us. We were given a red envelope with four bus passes and the name of the stop.

The red envelopes did not stop after we arrived in the city. The next day we split into teams for an amazing race-ish day. We spent the day taking trains and learning how to get around Latvia on our own. We didn't enjoy this much at first, mostly due to exhaustion, but now we are glad we know our way around the city.

The next two nights we spent at a country house owned by another missionary. We took time to debrief from the last few crazy days and train for the upcoming challenges. It felt amazing to drink some coffee/tea and relax.

Now that we are back in Riga we have one night and a brief time in the morning to prep for our first orphan camp. It's a 12 day camp for younger kids from the ages of 6-13. We will need constant prayer for strength when we are weak and tired, and brokenness for the hearts of these young orphaned children. The next twelve days will be rough, but I know that the opportunity to love on these kids is w

ell worth it.

Departure

Our plane left for our first leg to Chicago at 6:30 AM, so we had to be at the airport around 4:30 to check our bags and such. It was pretty brutal after packing all night. The absolutely amazing part of this morning was the blessed feeling of having friends there to support us. I loved seeing that my friends are willing to wake up(or stay up) until 4:30 in the morning to be there for me and my team. It helps me to remember how beautiful our God is and how great His affections are for us. I was truly blessed to see His affections lived out through those people.