Learning Latvian

Our Latvian classes start at 9:00 a.m. every Wed., Thur. and Fri. and we finish at 1:00 p.m. Some afternoons we also get to practice what we know with students or others around town.

Classes are never dull. We often practice our lessons in teams of two or all together with active "games" to keep us thinking. Here we are are trying to remember what "profession" we have and throwing a ball from one to another. In Latvian words often change endings depending on their use in a sentence, so for example my name (or job as a clerk which would be a "pardeveja") could change to "pardevejai" or pardeveju" depending on if that person was doing the acting or receiving the action. For those of you language buffs - the differences depend on whether it is in the nominative case, accusative case or genitive case!!) Anyway, these activities help us understand what we heard in the lesson.


I am grateful for so much help as I get settled here in Tilza. The language is so important and my brain really needs to be trained to think differently. At Sunday School I can now tell the kids to sit down and listen. I know the names for scissors, pencils, paper, write, draw, Jesus (Jezus), God, etc. so can be of some help these days. Liga still has to do most of the work and translate for me as well.

Please continue to pray for my ability to remember what I learn and to be able to pronounce some of the difficult sounds.

Thanksgiving

Dave and Maurine cut the "turkey" - we called them "Tilza Turkeys" which were 6 chickens with stuffing!!


Everybody brought something to share and our plates were quite full. We had mashed potatoes & gravy, cranberry jelly, yams, corn, carrots with honey and ginger, olives (green stuffed & black), tomatoes with garlic topping, a special Swedish dish (fish), tomatoe and cucumber salad, and beet salad . For drinks we had four kinds of soda and tea and coffee. All especially enjoyed the pumpkin pies and apple cruble with ice cream for dessert.

As you can tell, we had a delicious meal with lots of friends. Some of you may have known already that we had 5 Americans, 2 Canadians, one Brit, one Scot, one Swede and the rest were Latvians -26 people in all.

Everyone served themselves in the kitchen after singing first a Latvian song of Thanks and then an English one, then prayer for the meal.

After dinner we had a wonderful time of sharing how thankful we are and for what. The kids sang a little song with the help of Wes who remembered the song from his childhood and taught it to the 7 children who were there.

As is usual after a big meal, we sat around and visited for a long time then had a special time of singing and worshiping the Lord.

Youth Meetings

Each week on Thursday evenings we start our Youth Meetings with some great games that get
everybody involved. The Bible teaching time is central to the evening and most often Kaspars gives the message. Through the Fall we are discussion the life of Abraham. Discussion is then either in small groups or sometimes the group stays together to get an idea what everybody is thinking. Refreshments are served and then the everyone stays around for table games and other activities until it's time to end the evening. We usually start at 5:00 and end at 8:00.

Pray that God's Word will be a strong influence in the lives of about 15 students who have been coming regularly this year. Pictured above are Ginta and Sanija playing Monopoly (all the streets are ones from Riga!!) and below is Maigurs who has come for the last several years.

Serving together with Bridge Builders, International and Calvin Presbyterian Church in Corvallis, Oregon.

Ko tu dari?

"What are you doing?" In Latvian: "Ko [koo.ah] tu [to] dari [d.are.ee]?" Questions are good for language learning. But, of course, it's helpful to know just what the person might be saying when they answer!!! I asked the question above to some young boys playing in a stream and they proceeded to tell me a whole paragraph worth and I didn't understand a thing. But at least they knew what I was asking and gave an answer.

This week in Latvian class one of the students said that when you're learning a language you will make a million mistakes so you might as well get started! We get to make lots of mistakes without feeling stupid. Everyone in class is really motivated so one girl asked today if we could have more homework! Yikes! I do think that's a good thing but now I will have more to do in the evenings and on weekends.

Last night after the youth meeting some young girls needed a ride home. One of them lives quite far out of Tilza so I thought I would try asking some questions as we drove out there. These were questions we had worked on during the day in class. I did understand most of her answers and felt quite successful.

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It's starting to get cold here and we need to keep a fire going in our house most of the time. I will always be grateful for my Girl Scout experiences where I learned about building fires and keeping them going. I have found that it takes about 5 -8 good sized logs to keep things nice and warm for the evening and through the night. If it's cold in the morning none of us wants to get out of bed and get the fire going again.