Ilzite, Vera and Vilnus with Alan and Dorothy outside Liepa UMCMonday 20th April
Today we take the road out of Riga and travel about 50 miles north east. We do not have a guide but have been given directions and we arrive early and meet Ilzite. She is a pastor of a Latvian congregation in Liepa. We follow her car and arrive at the church where we meet Vera and Vilnis. Vera is also a pastor in this church and she works with a Russian congregation. Vilnis is her husband. This building has been open 10 years and they are in the process of converting a section of the building into a new sanctuary. Vilnis is helping in this but work has stopped for the moment as they have run out of money. The old sanctuary will then become a fellowship hall and kitchen. Inta a young lady from Cesis arrived, she was to be our interpreter. We were served refreshments and then we went to Sarkami, a very poor village. The church building is in a very poor condition. The people who attend this church are usually given soup and bread here as they often cannot afford to feed themselves. In the soviet era the buildings in this area were used as army barracks. From Sarkami we went to Skangali. This is a building that is owned by the Salvation Army. It was owned by a Swedish aristrocrat, but was lost to them during the soviet occupation. After that era they got the building back but did not know what to do with it so they gave it to the Salvation Army. It is now an orphanage where children live here much more comfortably than in other children’s homes in Latvia. They are taught life skills here, which is unusual in children’s homes in this country. We did not meet any of them as they were at school. The place seemed a very good and happy place.
It is also used as a retreat and up to 22 visitors can stay. The furniture has been sourced from Sweden which is much more robust than any that could be bought locally. An unusual instrument that we saw was a Kokle (pronounced kurkela), the Latvian national instrument.
Our next visit was to see the old church building in Liepa that is now used for children after school. We met Vera’s mother, her aunt and another elderly lady who all work with the children and give them food each day.
We returned to the Liepa church. The Hope centre is housed upstairs and this is where unmarried mothers and their babies are helped. We met a few of the mothers and also a baby who has been abandoned. Ilzite and Vera are trying to find someone to adopt the baby rather than placing him in a children’s home.
Lunch was a buffet style restaurant in Cesis, and then we were taken on a tour of the town. Inta is a tour guide in the town and was able to give us lots of information about the history of the area. It is a very old town and has a medieval castle and also a modern castle. This is the first place in the country that flew the Latvian flag after the soviet era.
There is a tall monument in the centre of the town. The original monument was pulled down by the soviets and replaced by a statue of Lenin, when they left the towns people pulled that statue down and replaced it with the modern one that we saw.
We arrived back in Riga during rush hour and could not turn into the road we needed, so we had to make a detour but managed to find our way back to our parking place by the church.
