I Was Born A Traveling Man

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” – Saint Augustine

Elder Davis loves to travel.  He is "King of the Road" when he gets behind the wheel of his 2010 Opel Meriva and heads for a new destination. Sister Davis is pretty much along for the ride...or so she thought.

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – JRR Tolkien

Vilnius, Lithuania is a 4 hour destination from our Riga apartment and that meant getting up early to make it in time for the marriage seminar.  As we headed out of town, we saw what appeared to be the beginning of a gorgeous, sunny day.  The landscape is a mixture of all colors green, while the sky sets if off with a background of blue. How delighted we both were to be outside the city and into the country.

Our last trip to Lithuania was during the dead of winter...white, frozen, dreary. But now God's creations were out in full force with beautiful bright colors. We thought these were fields of  mustard....

but a quick look in our handy guide book....

....said they are fields of rapeseed (known here-abouts as rape). Sister Davis had seen bottles of Rapeseed cooking oil in the stores and knew it must be popular but she didn't realize that this is one of Latvia's own products. We saw field after field of  bright yellow rapeseed on our trip to Lithuania.

Sister Davis was curious....the plant looks like the mustard plant that is so very common in the western United States where she grew up. Even the leaves look the same, so she had to search for answers online. She discovered that the two are different variety's of the same genus. And their seeds are both used for cooking oil...in fact the canola oil we buy in the USA is made from a type of rapeseed

According to Wikipedia: Canola is made with the seeds of Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) or field mustard (Brassica campestris L.). Its seeds are used to produce edible oil suitable for consumption by humans and livestock. The oil can also be used for fuel.  Canola was first made from rapeseed  at the University of Manitoba in Canada in the early 1970's. It was bred naturally to have lower acid than most rapeseed oil  and thus it's name:  "Canadian oil, low acid".

After about 2 1/2 hours of driving, Elder Davis started getting tired.  He had awaken earlier than his companion (something he does frequently...it's a Davis trait) and now it was time for his morning nap. Sister Davis was in a quandary. She wanted to be supportive but she hasn't driven a car for six months and driving in a foreign country SOUNDS SCARY.  And to top it off, the Meriva has a manual transmission.
Yikes, a stick-shift with Sister Davis driving....

"Grit your teeth, Sister Davis you can do this.

And that is how Sister Davis ended up driving the little black Meriva, on the roads of Lithuania. She was a little rusty with her shifting but since it was a highway with little traffic on it, she managed to get on the road, shift into fifth gear and could cruise along, while Elder Davis was zonked out in the seat next to her. Just before arriving at Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, Sister Davis gave the wheel back to Elder Davis. There is a limit to how much driving courage she had.

We spent the day having fun at the marriage seminar, and then went out to dinner with  Pres. & Sister Boswell and E/S Flake.  President Boswell asked if we were game to try a Brazilian restaurant. Sister Davis has always wanted to try a Brazilian Grill...she heard they serve lots of meat.

And she wasn't disappointed. There was one waiter who came to our table about 8 times with different types of meat for us to try. Grilled chicken, chicken hearts, turkey, pork, and last of all, beef ( because it's expensive and by then you are full!) Of course we over ate...it was mandatory. It felt a little odd though to be eating at a Brazilian Grill in Lithuania!

We spent the night with E/S Flake....

(see them on the balcony saying goodbye?)

...got up early Sunday morning because Elder Davis was born a traveling man...

and we were expected in Daugavpils (dog-of-pills) by 10:00AM.  Holy cow! It's a 3 hour drive and we had been asked to give talks in sacrament meeting. 

You might be wondering how we came to be giving talks in a place we had never been before. It was Elder Stucki's fault. Elder Stucki needed Russian Book of Mormons. His companion Elder Southard needed the money that his grandma had sent him. They needed a courier fromthe mission office and Elder Stucki heard that we wanted to come meet the new Institute teacher in Daugavpils, some day. Someday became Sunday. So we were to deliver two boxes of Book of Mormons and some cash. And, when the branch president heard we were coming....we were given the assignment to speak.

We got the phone call while we were at the marriage seminar and what could we say?
"You want us to speak tomorrow for 15 minutes each?"
"Okay.

We thought yesterday was a nice day...this Sunday morning was spectacular! Warm, sunny with a slight breeze, it was one of those rare perfect days that just makes you happy. We drove by numerous lakes on our way up Eastern Lithuania.....and lots of quaint little villages full of houses with steep roofs.

One of the interesting sights we saw all along the way...cows standing in fields with no fences around them.  In fact, most farms don't have ANY fencing.  And we seldom see more than a few cows per farm.

Our GPS took us to the heart of downtown Daugavpils, a city that is on the border of Belarus and is only 75 miles from the Russian/Latvian border. Daugavpils is Latvia's second largest city with over 100,000 people and is a major rail transportation hub to Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.  

Once there, we couldn't find the church. So with a call to Elder Stucki, we were told to park where we were and they would come get us. It seems the church is located on a street that is only for pedestrian traffic, no cars allowed. 

The church is located  on the second story of the building below:

Most of the members are Russian speaking (52% of the city are Russian).  Below, we have a photo of President Spalvens, the branch president, a sweet and humble man who introduced us as "honored guests".

Believe us, the honor was all ours to get to meet the wonderful members in Daugavpils.

It is a small branch with only about 20 people in attendance

(and that included 3 sets of missionaries!)

This is Elder Stucki with Brother Timofey. Brother Timofey is both deaf and mute and yet his spirit shines forth like we have never seen.  He knows Latvian sign language and one of our young missionaries, Elder Southard, learned American sign language in high school. They are not the same and so Elder Southard had to not only learn Russian for his mission he is now learning a little Latvian sign language from Bro. Timofey.  Bro. Timofey takes the sacrament and then a member sits next to him and writes on a piece of paper what is being said in the meeting. 

Bro. Timofey was asked before the meeting to give the closing prayer. He gives it in sign language. No one bows their heads to "hear" the prayer, they watch his hands intently to show their reverence to what he is saying.  It was wonderful, you can really feel the spirit of his prayer without a word being said.

We  stayed for Sunday School, talked to the new Institute teacher  and then headed out back to Riga.

Sister Davis never gets tired of seeing the many ramshackle farms along the way. They are so different from the newer buildings we see in America, yet people have lived in them for generations.

And these crumbling buildings, are literally, everywhere in the countryside.  Built ages ago, these were once the farm houses, barns, and out buildings of generations past. And someone made a decision, long ago, to move on...if only these walls could talk, what  a story they could tell!

We see interesting houses often on our travels...

Well, there is no telling where our travels will lead us next.....come back again and find out!

Love and Marriage

Love and marriage.....love and marriage
They go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can't have one without the other

Church leaders are concerned that many branch presidents in the Europe East Area are single. They are good, faithful priesthood holders, but lets face it, there are a lot of things you learn when you get married.  Besides the commitment issue, there are the lessons of compromise and forgiveness; most of life's important lessons are learned from our relationships with our spouses and children.  Charity, kindness, serving others, selflessness, learning to live within our means and a big one is patience....all these things we work on to make our marriages successful.

And it must be hard for these single branch presidents to counsel members who have marriage issues when they aren't  married themselves.  Women are complicated creatures and for men to even begin to understand them, they need to live with them at least 50 years.  And that's because after 50 years of marriage, they are so old and tired, men just give up trying to understand women....it's just too much effort.


To help with the lack of dating going on in the Baltic, there is another Celestial Marriage Activity being planned in Estonia in June. It would be nice if some of our young men could get a healthy dose of twitterpation before that event.

"Wait Sister Davis? Is twitterpation a word?"

Of course it is! You remember the word twitterpated from the Disney movie, Bambi, don't you?

Love and marriage, love and marriage

It's an institute you can't disparage

Ask the local gentry

And they will say it's elementary

And once a couple finds the love part...it's just a hop, skip & jump to marriage. 

But we all know that marriage is hard WORK!

And that is why the Vilnius, Lithuania branch organized a Strengthening Marriage Seminar on Saturday. Actually, Antti's wife Skaiste organized it. Latvia & Lithuania have a high divorce rate, but according to the government, there is no adequate explanation for it. The divorce rate is just under 50% with many Latvians' opting out of marriage entirely. Is it any wonder our YSA's aren't making marriage commitments in their 20's? And is it any wonder that some of the young marrieds in both countries are struggling with their marriages?

"My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met."

                                      Rodney Dangerfield

But Elder & Sister Davis wondered why WE were asked by Skaiste to attend the marriage seminar in her home country of Lithuania. What could we do to help? We found out....we could tell other attendees that even though Elder & Sister Davis love each other, we have had many struggles throughout our 36 years of marriage but we work through them. We recognize our spouses weaknesses and live with them.  And we don't give up when the going gets tough!  Of course, both spouses have to be willing to work together on this, a marriage can't be one sided. These are some of the messages that every couple needs to be reminded of.

After a talk by Elder Flake on communicating with our spouses....

"I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me."

          Anonymous

...the men and women went to different rooms.

President Boswell taught the men that their wives should be the most important person in their lives and to treat them as queens. He stressed that every Friday should be date night.  He must have done a good job because every husband planted a kiss on their wives lips when they came back together.

Sister Boswell had more of a discussion with the women and shared insights into what has made her marriage successful. The women brought up concerns about communicating properly with their spouses (men don't seem to listen very well)  and how much work they do for their children.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the discussion because the older married women gave tips to the younger wives. It cleared the air and gave perspective to the younger women who had concerns.

After we came together, (and Elder Davis gave Sister Davis a kiss on the cheek), it was time for lunch.

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like the horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can't have one, you can't have none,

you can't have one without the other!

Then it was time to play some interactive games....to see how well we knew our spouses and how well we worked together.

Antti and Skaiste....

Sister Davis had to make the hat and Elder Davis had to wear it to fish using a pole with a magnet attached. The fish had scriptures written on them and each couple had to look them up and explain how they related to marriage.

This picture got put on Skaistes facebook page with no explanation to it....just our names.

What caption would you put on it?

Write it as a comment at the bottom of the post :) 

And we weren't the only ones having fun....Pres. & Sister Boswell.

Elder & Sister Davis & Dainis attended a community choir concert in Riga the other night that Eva was singing in. We have come to love that girl so much. She is bubbly, sweet and friendly with everyone.  The choir sang delightful, Latvian religious songs. The conductor admitted that Latvia isn't know as a religious country but some of the prettiest music for choirs comes from songs sung in churches, so that is what they sang.

When we met with her afterwards, she said she was so excited to see us walk in with Dainis. Her friend Baiba, her little brother and her mom all came to the concert also.

And in case we don't have enough sweet young women for our rather slow-to-marry young men,  Baiba is now learning about our church and meeting with the missionaries...

Joke for the day: 

A man inserted an ‘ad’ in the classifieds: “Wife wanted”.
Next day he received a hundred letters.
 They all said the same thing:
“You can have mine.”

Kraukli

Kraukli means crow in Latvian. And that is where we headed last week to Camp Crow.  They don't really use the word camp in Latvia, they have guest houses here...so much more dignified, but we needed a facility to house 50 kids and chaperone's in two months  and our District Young Women's president and her husband, the Center Branch Young Men's president, found a guest house online that looked promising and they wanted us to check it out.  We took along a 50Lat deposit in case we liked it....

Road Trip! 

So we picked up Linda and Ritvard and headed north to the pretty port town of Salacgriva, Latvia.

Kraukli guest house is about 10 minutes into the country side.

It is easy to chat with Linda and Ritvard, they both served a mission in England and they are very good English speakers.  And they see how much the church in Latvia needs to grow to become as strong as the English saints.

So we chatted about Latvia on the way up to Kraukli (about 1 1/2 hrs. from Riga) and learned a great deal. Ritvard is a Latvian policeman and knows a lot about the city of Riga. He also knows the traffic laws which was a big help to Elder Davis...we never noticed the cameras placed along the highways before...and now we do!

We drove on unpaved roads for about 10 minutes which Linda says is very normal in the countryside. It was a gorgeous day and we saw lots of stork nests before we drove up a small road to this gorgeous guest house...although it looks like a camp to Sister Davis.

There are actually two of these big lodges on the property. This one had a sauna, showers, 2 bathrooms, a lounge, a huge dining room and about 20 beds on the top floor. The owner, a man named Edmunds, said this farm has been in his family for several generations.
He gets loans from the European Union to make this into a guest facility and has been improving the site for several years. This building  used to be the animal barn! Edmund's has done a lot of the work himself...

There is lots of open space here...with picnic tables, sports fields, and water features, all set in a forest of pine trees.

This is the pond for swimming in.....

A stage that will be perfect for a talent show or fireside....

Play equipment and something you don't see every day...a raised basketball court.

The indoor sauna...

The second story dining hall and a great place to have a dance....

 
This place had so many of the things we needed for a successful youth conference. We had already found a place for the Young Single Adult Conference but Elder Davis said this place was much better....so we decided to ask if they had the week in August free to have YSA conference here. And guess what? They had a reservation, but no one ever put down a deposit so for a 50 Lat deposit we could have it that week! Yeah, Elder Davis quickly called the Student Council to tell them of this better facility... "Is it okay to change our venue for the YSA conference?" 
Two said, "Go Ahead" and we did.

Inside the guest house was beautiful wood everywhere...you could tell that Edmunds takes great pride in making the place look good. Each bed has it's own bedding and he built "cubby's" for guests to store their luggage or bags.

There were 13  bedrooms like this...

And Sister Davis is just thrilled there are "Flush" toilets!

But the best surprise was when Edmunds took us up the trail into the forest a little ways.

Along side the nice stream that runs through the property...a great place to fish or jump into after sweating in the sauna....

And the surprise?  Edmunds  had spent a lot of time building a ropes course.

Wow, the young men are going to love that!

We were told this was the "easy" one....

Even Elder Davis had to try it....

 

Edmunds designed these and helped build them.  A whole lot of work went into making this course.....

Walk across this hanging log without anything to hang onto?  "No, Thank YOU!"

And for those who have always wanted to climb a rock wall...sideways--here you go.

Well, what do you think? Is this a great place to have youth/YSA conference or what?

To celebrate, we took Linda and Ritvard to lunch in Salacgriva.

.

Linda and Ritvard...

they are a cute couple and are expecting their first child in a couple of months 

We found a  little place on the water front called "Minhauzens".

As Sister Davis was waiting for her food to arrive, she asked, "Who's the old fashioned guy standing behind you?"

Ritvards looked over his shoulder and said, "That is Minhauzens. He is famous around here and just down the road there is a museum all about him."

And on that happy thought, we leave the blog for another day.....

Birds of a Feather...

Sister Davis has a special fondness for birds.  When she was a girl, she had a yellow parakeet she named Tweety Bird (how original was that?) which unfortunately flew away when she was cleaning the cage in the backyard (she never claimed to be the brightest child).

 And now Sister Davis feels she needs to make amends for that juvenile lapse of judgement by feeding every wild bird she can.  She had three bird feeders in her backyard in Idaho and no matter how much Elder Davis says, " it's a waste of money" she continued to buy birdseed. 

Sister Davis notices birds as she is walking through the parks in Latvia. She notices and takes an interest in them but she has never joined a bird watching club or really studied ornithology all that much.

But she came across something interesting the other day. In the scriptures, birds are mentioned a lot! You would be surprised at how many references to birds that are made through out the Old Testament and the New Testament!   One of the more famous ones.....

Luke 9:58
58 And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath no where to lay his head.

The scriptures are full of references to birds, fowls, eagles, sparrows and even storks!

There are 5 references to storks in the Bible and that is what Sister Davis especially wants to write about today.  She may have seen  a stork in a zoo before but really doesn't remember, and seeing storks in Latvia reminded her of a book that she once read when she was a librarian at Berenda Elementary School in Madera, CA. She loved the story and it was written so well , that she has never forgotten it...and really, how many books do we read that can have such a lasting impression on us that we remember it years later? 

The Wheel on the School  was written by Meindert DeJong and it won the 1955 Newbery Medal for children's literature.  Mr. DeJong was born in the Netherlands but his family immigrated to the United States in 1914. There are storks in the Netherlands and this book is about people and storks.

Sister Davis learned a lot about storks from this book...and how storks build their nests and that is what she sees lots of in Latvia...stork nests! 

Latvia has white storks that migrate here in the spring, all the way from Africa, and build huge nests (or borrow one already made).  They are like swallows, when they arrive you know that spring is here. They are fascinating to see....huge nests perched high up on telephone  poles,  old barn roofs, and even on old chimneys .  We usually see a male and female on the nest, and they take turns getting food and sitting on the eggs.

Psalms 104:17
17 Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

The stork gets as high as 4 feet high and has a wingspan of 6-7 feet so it's no small bird. Its nest is made of large sticks. They eat snakes, frogs, insects and other small creatures (even mice).



Storks were on  the decline for many years. The last wild stork in Belgium was seen in 1895, in Sweden in 1955, and in Switzerland in 1950. With those alarming facts, in 1988, White Storks were put on the near threatened list....  but we are happy to say they are making a comeback!

Now, Latvia has 10,700 breeding pairs of storks and Lithuania has 13,000 (the highest density of storks anywhere in the world!).  In fact, the Stork is Lithuania's national bird.



  Storks are the stuff of legends...they are thought to bring good luck to households, so farmers build nesting platforms for them close to their farm house.

Storks used to be a nuisance when they would build their nests on chimneys...kinda hard to light a fire with a giant bird nest keeping the smoke from going up the flue! So farmers who like storks to keep insects off their farms, make nesting places by adding a circular device to electric and telephone poles...and they work splendidly!

  

So when Sister Davis sees a big stork nest close to the road, she yells, "STOP!" and Elder Davis, who is quite used to his wife's idiosyncrasies rolls his eyes and tries to find  a place to pull over...which isn't always easy on Latvian highways!

Estonian Escapades

A few highlights of our "week"... Monday we made American style pancakes for FHE with maple syrup.  They were a huge hit!  Maple syrup is hard to find in Latvia and when you do find it, it is expensive. So how do you feed 18 hungry YSA's pancakes and maple syrup?

Elder Davis made the 60+ pancakes and kept them warm in the oven. Sister Davis made homemade "maple syrup" with a small bottle of "mapleine" that was sent to her by her friends in California. She had never made mapleine syrup and it was darn good! The YSA's loved it and two asked for the recipe. Good luck finding mapleine here!





Our next big event was on Friday..... 
that morning we packed our bags and headed north in our little Opel. We had washed and vacuumed it, learned how to put air in our tires with a strange European pressure gage and put in a tank of gas...only $80 to fill that tiny thing up!

 We were excited to be on a road trip on such a beautiful day.  The week has been especially gorgeous, with weather in the mid-50's (F), green grass, wild flowers popping up and trees just starting to leaf-out. 


We were headed to Tallinn, Estonia for a Super Saturday...one, in which we were teaching the lesson!



As Elder  Davis drove, Sister Davis noticed some stork nests near farm houses in the countryside.  They looked so interesting!  She will tell THAT story in another post...this one is about Estonia!

A typical Latvian farm house....



A "thatched roof" style house...


And a typical village church...but this one has a cockerel on it's steeple.



By the time we arrived in Estonia, with no particular problems... except those idiot drivers that kept passing cars when there were cars coming at them in the other lane....(sometimes, a hair raising sight) the weather turned overcast and rain started falling...Oh, NO! We didn't bring an umbrella!

Oh well, a little water never hurt anyone...well, except for the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.
We found a place to turn around and headed into the cobble-stoned streets, linking us to another era of time, and we arrived at the small and cozy, Taanilinna Hotel.  By the time we checked in, put our bags in our room and headed outdoors, the sun was out and shining brightly.

In the middle centuries our hotel used to be a house of wealthy burghers (people of the middle class). It has the same atmosphere as any other building from centuries past but was renovated in 2000 and has WiFi and other modern amenities.  We liked the "old world" feel of the place.

Our room...

It was so fun to walk out the hotel door and be in the middle of Old Town...the history just oozes from this place...

Because it was a Friday, Old Town had lots of people strolling about.

We called Elder & Sister Bonner and agreed on a time to meet them at their apartment. They were giving an English lesson to three young men who were taking private English lessons from a member of the branch, and just needed an opportunity to practice their skills. We arrive to ask them questions and we were surprised at how well these high school kids could speak English.

The Boswells called and we met them for dinner at an Italian place.

Next activity?  A stroll through Old Town!

But we had a great time together walking and talking...and then President Boswell treated us to hot fudge sundaes at McDonald's.....

We will let you in on  a little secret.....President Boswell likes ice cream sundaes as much as we do! And the McDonald's here have much creamier ice-cream than in the states....but their sundaes are about 1/2 the size of the one's back home so we savored each bite.

The next day we found our way to the chapel in Tallinn and set up for our presentation.

And after the spiritual talks...its time for Sister Davis to teach "A-tee-da-ta" to the youth.

This time Elder Davis managed to get a picture of everyone  a-tee-da-tahing...

We gave a power point presentation about doing missionary work and setting up Mormon profiles online. The youth seemed to enjoy it.

And then it was time for the kids to learn missionary related things. First on the team had to do a missionary relay race. The next  team member had to dress in a suit and tie. Next had to find some specific scriptures, next  peel a potato and last in line had to find out places on a map... after all every missionary has to be able to read a map!

The next thing was a little puzzling....the teams had to make a Tower of Babel using the soda can, two tennis balls, the potato, newspaper and tape. So right in the parking lot of the church building in Tallinn, Estonia the youth made the Tower of Babel....

Sister Davis went up to Brother Koiv and said to him,  "So if these pictures get back to church headquarters in Salt Lake City, what will the prophet say when he sees the Tower of Babel being built at our church in Estonia?" His reply?  "We will tell him it is an old Estonian custom, that on every 28th of April, we build the Tower of Babel, to keep us from being prideful."

Hey, that's not a bad answer!

We were given a simple lunch of  rice casserole w/vegies and sugar cookies. 

After saying our goodbyes, we were on the road back to Riga...

It started clouding up when we entered the Latvian border but when we saw blue water again... we had to stop to take a walk on the beach. The Baltic Sea is like a big lake.

The sand is fine and clean...with few rocks or shells.  It was peaceful, calm and gave us a nice break from driving.

Sister Davis in her new green coat....on the shore of the Baltic Sea!  Who would ever have thought SHE would be at the Baltic Sea? She could barely find it on a world map a year ago!