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!