Sunday, July 15th

A beatiful day in Balvi - by the Lake and in the park. Aija and I spent an hour or so wandering around last Sunday. This fountain is new and there was this wonderful inflatable play structure.

The church in Gulbene. Kaspars preached last Sunday as they don't have a pastor right now. These are some of the people in Gulbene. We stayed for tea after worship and then headed for Balvi where we participated in the Russian Baptist church service.

Today we worshipped in Tilza. We were very few but I was remembering the scripture which says that when two or three are gathered in the Name of Jesus, He is in our midst.

Daily Schedule

Every day brings something new when it comes to learning a language. I try to practice and study whenever I can but I have also made a schedule that helps keep me on track.

9:00 Walk into town-buy things needed for the day-talk to as many people as possible

10:00 Practice vocabulary
11:00 Practice sentences, reading
12:00 Lunch break
2:00 Practice in town - record any new sounds or words or readings
4:00 Record new material/readings with helpers (see pictures from 7/4/07)
5:00 Review recordings/download to computer
6:00 Dinner, etc

I've been following the schedule this week and it really has helped to be organized and work more diligently on some of the exercises that aren't as much fun.

I am able to record what people say, or ask them to read something to be recorded, on my digital voice recorder. It has many hours of memory. Once the information is downloaded to my computer I can rearrange this into subject matter or certain sounds that need atttention, etc.

Most people are quite happy to help. I try to go to the same places every day. Hopefully I will soon know as much about them as they know about me! Right now I'm doing most of the speaking - or else they start to speak and I'm lost. There is one very difficult sound for me to make (OK, maybe more than one!) and I'm glad I can laugh at myself when trying to work on it.

One thing I want to do pretty soon is to tell my story in church (in Latvian) about how I met Jesus and why I came here. That's going to take some work. :) There are often times when one is asked to say something in a church service, especially if you are a guest, and I would like to be able to say something meaningful.

Well, more next week...

Finding Language Helpers

July 5th

Here are some of the children helping me to learn Latvian. These pictures were taken inside the school because when we met outside it began to rain. The door was open so we just went inside.

We are really having fun with recording vocabulary and sentences, which I then can put on my computer for further study and practice. Another way people are helping me is that as I go through town, I ask people to help me by reading something in Latvian from a small book which is also translated into English.

As much as possible I try to use what I know here at home. Everyone here speaks English, though, more than I speak Latvian so it's easy to stop trying. One good thing is that all the other native English speakers are gone for the summer.

Here is a picture of my friend, Kristine, and her mom outside their house in Tilza. Her mother loves flowers and has lots of roses in her yard.