Daugavpils to Riga

Edgers and the congregation at Tasi

 Friday 17^th April

 Breakfast

I only managed to eat one mouthful of my pancake as it was not just cheese and ham. We swapped over. The apple pancake was a little more edible but very sweet. Alan managed half of the cheese and ham.

Andrew brought our hire car to the hotel and took us to a supermarket where we could change some dollars into Lats as he didn’t take cards. He then took us through Daugavpils to the A6 which was the road we needed for Riga. The roads are not in good condition so we are going to have to be careful. The car is a VW Jetta, six forward gears, automatic lights air conditioning and cruise control. Speed limits are 50 KPH in town and 90 KPH on main roads. Alan takes the wheel. I drive for about an hour, the journey is uneventful until we reach Riga, where we take a wrong turning and get lost in traffic and roadworks. We turn round and retrace out steps, but we arrive one hour late.

When we get to the church office we are met by Inga and Courtney. Inga is the church treasurer and Courtney is an American from North Carolina who is working in Latvia with her husband Dan.

I am horrified to learn that instead of going to our hotel our schedule is to visit Leipaja about 3 hours drive. Inga was going with us and we were taking three packages of clothes. It turned out to be a fantastic experience.

Our first stop was a church in Tasi (Tashy). The church is a two storey building, we climbed stairs that wouldn’t have been out of place in a run down multi storey car park. The pastor, Edgers and his wife Gunter met us and showed us into a room with six women of various ages. The table was set with refreshments. We introduced ourselves and spoke about why we were visiting them. They asked questions, Gunter was a very good interpreter. We were made very welcome.

The church has only been operating for about 10 years and has a thriving congregation and about 25 children belong to the Sunday School. The ladies make craft items for fund raising and they wanted to give us something. They wouldn’t accept payment, but one of the ladies had lost her job that day, so later we managed to give Edgers some money to give to her, so at least we felt we had helped her a little.

Our next visit was to a church in Matras. We were following Edgers, but had to be careful as it was a dirt road and very dusty. We couldn’t follow too closely as we couldn’t see his car. This church was literally in the middle of a forest, no other building in sight. Again we were made extremely welcome with refreshments and hospitality. We sang some Taize songs in English, Latvian and Latin. We talked about similarities and differences between Latvia and the UK, both in church and secular ways.

The church congregation new met were all women, six again, and we didn’t leave until 10.00 p.m. It was very dark, one lady was lighting our way with her mobile phone and Alan had a small light too. If Inga hadn’t been with us we would have been totally lost. She directed us to our hotel and  said that she would call at 10.40 in the morning to take us to the Methodist Church.

All in all a fantastic day. The Methodist welcome is the same everywhere.