Salaspils & the Beating Heart

The second site Elder Davis took us to on Saturday was Salaspils, a nice town not too far from Riga. Although it's history stretches back to the 12th century, Salaspils is notorious as the location of a World War II German Concentration Camp known as Kurtenhof.  There is a small sign pointing the way to the memorial. There are no tour buses here, there aren't even very many people, it is out in the middle of trees and fields. The memorial though is quite impressive.
The original inmates of the camp were prisoners of war (mostly Soviet) but they were soon joined by Jews brought from several occupied countries after Riga's ghetto was closed. Jews were forced to build this camp starting in January 1942 and many died from exposure and harsh conditions.
It was still drizzling as we walked towards the entrance...

At the entrance to the camp, there is a long, sloping concrete block placed at an angle that symbolizes the boundary between life and death.  The words say: "Behind this gate the earth moans."It is a line from a poem by Eizens Veberis, who was a prisoner of this concentration camp.

About 12,000 prisoners went through the camp during its existence. In addition to the German Jews who perished during the construction phase, an additional 2,000 to 3000 people died here, of whom a particularly high number were children and young people.As you enter the gate between life and death, you see a large granite block with fresh flowers scattered on the top. As you draw closer, you start to hear a sound...what is that? It seems to be coming from the ground.

THUMP-thump,  THUMP-thump,  THUMP-thump. It is a heart beat. And the ground seems to vibrate with the sound. We try to analyze where it is coming from and it is hard to pin-point. If it is in the granite block, the sound amplifies and gives the impression it is coming from somewhere else. If it is buried in the ground, the heart beat rhythm can be heard clearly. Where ever it is coming from, it is eery and you get a feeling that those who died here are still here... the ground truly does moan.
Now look up....WAY UP. There are four HUGE, concrete statues in a spacious field where the 45 camp buildings used to be. They were made in 1967 by the Soviet regime to honor those Soviet soldiers who died here under German brutality.    THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump.... a slow steady rhythm. Beating for all those who suffered and died here.
The first one is titled "The Unbroken". It depicts a man barely able to crawl, trying to pull himself up. It is hard to comprehend the size of it with this picture.

The next sculpture is titled, "The Humiliated". It depicts a lady with her head down and one arm trying to shield her face. You can see Sister Davis is in this picture to show the size of the statue.       THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump.....hearts beating through time and space, under the ground we stand on.....

This sculpture was entitled "Solidarity". It looks like three men but there are actually four. One man on the left is holding up another man. We were told that in a concentration camp, if you couldn't stand at roll call, you were killed. So it looks like one man is too weak to stand on his own so another is holding him upright.
Elder Davis is standing below that one to show how GIA-NORMOUS it is!    THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump..... eerily, beating in time with your own heart.   A great side view with Elder & Sister Davis looking tiny.




The children were separated from their parents so medical experiments could be done on them. Most of them were tortured by pumping out their blood (500 grams from each) to supply German military hospitals blood for the wounded soldiers. Most children died of either typhoid fever or blood loss. From 1942 to 1944 some 12,000 Soviet children, of whom at least 7,000 were Jewish, came through Camp Kurtenhof.
According to an eye-witness account, the Nazis killed about 150 children a day through "medical experiments". In one of the burial places by the camp, 632 corpses of children of ages 5 to 9 were revealed, with total number of Soviet children killed in the camp estimated to be 7,000.

Rumbala

On a grey and drizzling Saturday, Elder & Sister Davis decided to take a little road trip just outside of Riga. We invited E/S Millet along for the ride. And the weather was a fitting backdrop for the places we were going to visit.  Elder Davis, was headed to two sites of historical significance. First, we eased our little Opel Mireva 7 miles outside of Riga to a heavily forested area called Rumbala Forest.
A monument was dedicated there, Nov. 2002, aided by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of American Cultural Heritage Abroad. They worked closely with the Latvian Jewish Survivors and the Latvian government.  The huge iron sculpture at the entrance of the memorial symbolizes the suffering of Jews murdered in Rumbala Forest.


Here, on November 30 and December 8 of 1941, the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators (1,700 executioners) shot to death 25,500 Jews who were prisoners of the Riga Ghetto- children, women, elderly men and approximately 1,000 Jews who had been deported from Germany. Their bodies either fell or were pushed into mass graves in this peaceful forest.
So as we walked towards this sacred ground, we are touched at the peace that permeates this sad place. The forest is mostly tall pine and birch trees.




There are five mass grave sites that have been found. The location of the killings came to light after the war, when two local people tired to sell jewelry they found in the area. It led to an investigation and the discovery of mass graves. Until the 1980's the memorials here identified the victims as Soviet citizens although members of the Jewish community illegally tended the site.












In the middle of the site there is a giant Jewish menorah - with it's seven branches - surrounded by miniature rock obelisks bearing the names of 1,300 of the victims. Researchers from the University of Latvia are still trying to discover names of more victims. Only three people who were taken to the forest area survived.

Each rock had the name of a murdered family engraved on it. They were clustered in a star of David shape with the Menorah in the middle.




The Star of David was outlined with the street names that surrounded the Jewish ghetto.    A Soviet monument on Latvian soil..interesting.

This was the biggest of the mass graves. Can you see Elder Millet way at the other end? Sister Davis is in the middle with her umbrella up to give perspective.

Sunny Delight!

We got a package from home this week~ Our daughter Melissa, sent a package that for some reason got here in less than two weeks! Miracles do occur here often, but usually NOT with the local PASTS office.or dIt is hard to say what Sister Davis liked more in the box....the Hershey's solid chocolate eggs the darling pictures of her grandkids, the festive Easter kitchen towels...or the CATTANEO Bro's jerky!!!


We don't really need anything sent to us, but it is nice to know that our kids are thinking of us, half-way around the world. The hardest part of this mission is NOT physical. It's not really hard to leave your house for a few years, cars, or familiar foods; It's easy to adjust to walking everywhere, even up four flights of stairs. We can live with an itty-bitty washing machine and without a clothes dryer.

On a mission you quickly realize the most important thing in your life is your family. Every convenience and luxury that we know pales in comparison of the love we have for our family. That is the hardest part of a mission.

And even with the modern technology that keeps us in touch...like Vonage, Skype, email, etc. you still miss being there with them. When we skype with our grand kids we fall in love even more with them and want to just squeeze & kiss 'em. Our hearts reach across the world to them. Every one of our kids and grand kids are precious to us. And to live without them close by....that is the sacrifice of a mission!

The VERY best gift of the week...arrived without a box.

She is a Sunny-Delight!    Elder & Sister Davis are the proud grandparents of another granddaughter.... Sunny Lynn Davis, born March 21, 2012 on the first day of Spring, to our son Matt and his wife Brandy! Congratulations you two. That baby is adorable (and we aren't just saying that because we are the grandparents). We now have 3 grandsons and 3 granddaughters. Sister Davis was ready to hop a flight home...she wanted to hold that baby soooo bad! And while it is allowed for senior missionaries to take trips home for family emergencies, Brandy's mother is there helping and there is the little fact of the $1,800 per person plane ticket we would have to fork over.   So for now, we will trust the Lord to take care of our family back home while we continue on this great missionary adventure we are on. But when we get home...that baby is getting some major spoiling!

Welcome to the world, Sunny!

So Tell us About Nepal...

Nepal? Why are you blogging about Nepal? Elder & Sister Davis have been learning a lot about the tiny, country. Draped along the greatest heights of the Himalaya, Nepal is where ice-cold  mountains meet the steamy heat of the Indian plains.   It's a land of yaks and yetis, stupas and Sherpas and some of the best trekking on earth.

Thursday evening, Elder & Sister Davis invited Ram (rahm) over for dinner. He is Riga's newest church member having just been baptized two weeks ago. We fell in love with Ram the moment we shook his hand. He is genuine, happy and affable. And he is from Nepal! Home to Mount Everest, on the border of India and China, the capital is Kathmandu.
When Sister Davis first met Ram at church, she was so excited, she said, "Nepal! You are the first person I have ever met from Nepal!"
And Ram said, "REALLY?"   (Like that was so unusual to NOT have met someone from his country!) And he proceeded to tell her about his country. Isn't it interesting how boring geography can be when studying it on a map at school and then to meet someone from that place and it is so much more exciting? Ram loves his country and is eager to share his love with others.

So what is a Nepalese doing in Riga, Latvia? Studying to be a doctor. When he started getting his doctors license, the cost in Latvia was about 5,000 LVL (about $10,000) which is pretty reasonable. It has more than doubled since that time but still seems a bargain compared to what Medical School costs in the USA. He has been here 5 years because he is learning internal medicine.

Ram has been studying religion for about 8 years. He was once Hindu, but said because of his family being poor and from the country, he was in a lower caste. He could never aspire to anything better than was allowed in his caste. He felt something was really unfair about that (no kidding!). Hindu believers in Nepal still practice animal sacrifice like in the Old Testament. The people sacrifice a goat or chicken to their God each month and the animal must be umblemished. A goat, all one color, without any spots, etc. costs about a months wage in his country. The overwhelming majority of Nepalese are Hindu and about 10% are Buddhist.   Ram also studied Buddhism and is quite familiar with it's teachings (though he said Buddha NEVER thought of himself as a God or Prophet). He then studied Christianity and for a time, went to the Baptist Church in Riga because it was close to the hostel where he lives. But whenever he had questions that needed answering, he said the minister didn't give satisfactory answers.

And then one day LDS missionaries met him on the street. He wanted to find out more so they began teaching him. He went through many sets of missionaries over the years and loved to talk philosophy with them but gradually realized they did have answers to his questions. And in February 2012 was baptized in Riga, Latvia. He will have another year left to get his Doctors license and he plans to go back to Nepal and build up the church there.
According to the Church News, Nepal has about 200 members, only one branch which is in Kathmandu. Missionaries can not proselyte, only the members can, so it is amazing there are so many members there. They have NO scriptures in their language yet. No Nepalese Bible, no Book of Mormon...nothing. The members learn by attending church and having English speakers read to them.

WHAT FAITH! The Book of Mormon is in the process of being translated into Nepalese right now because there are Nepalese members in the USA who are doing the work. It is amazing all the translating our Church does that goes on all over the world! And translators get paid so the members love to do that work.

We decided to make tacos for dinner. We do not usually find corn tortillas but flour tortillas are easy to find. The day Ram was to come over, E/S Davis made a visit to Stockmann's, the Finnish store where you can find unusual products. Well, we found unusual all right....canned REFRIED BEANS !!! You can probably hear Sister Davis singing the "Hallelujah" Chorus right now.... hall-elujah, hall-elujah....


Sister Davis was dancing in Stockmanns! Elder & Sister Davis LOVE Mexican food and there in the middle of the store was a display with Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, Maple syrup and REFRIED BEANS. So we bought two cans. We would have bought more but we were walking and they get heavy when you are walking a 1/2 mile home.
Out of curiousity, what would you pay for a can of refried beans? Probably NOT as much as Sister Davis did...each can was 2,68LVL which equals about $5.00. Elder Davis hardly complained at all, because those refried beans were worth every penny. They brought back memories of Casa de Mexico (ID) and Burrito King (CA).
When we told Ram we were having tacos for dinner...he said, "Tah-koo? What is a Tahkoo?"
"Rams! You've NEVER had a taco?"
"No". He had never even heard of them! He also said, Nepal has no McDonalds but there is one KFC- in Kathmandu.
And Ram said he loved our tacos!
He ate two, and loved the "smashed beans" that went along with them. And at $6 a basket, instead of a snack, strawberries become dessert.

What an enjoyable evening learning about another country, different religions and most important, making another new friend.

As Sisters in Zion

Sister Davis has been teaching three of the Bailey children for the past four Sundays since their Sunday School teacher was called to be the Branch President. She has been having a wonderful time doing that! Elder Davis usually shows up sometime during the class because he knows Sister Davis always brings treats (and it's possible he's bored in an all Latvian Sunday School Class).
So the other evening the Baileys invited us for dinner and Sister Davis decided to make it a mutual activity since Anna Bailey doesn't get many of those. She made some chocolate cupcakes (from scratch of course, no cake mixes here) and bought some air-dry clay. We had a delicious dinner of beef stroganoff and while Elder Davis talked to Bro. Bailey, Sister Davis taught Anna, Molly & Daisy how to make clay lamps like the Ten Virgins used in the parable that Jesus taught in the Bible. We struggled at first (we had no real tools) but finally worked that clay into shape. And the girls did a pretty decent job of making their own!

Sister Davis was later told that Daisy let her lamp dry for two days and actually filled hers with olive oil, put a wick in, and lit it. It worked really well! So if you ever run out of electricity keep some clay on hand, it may come in useful.
On Saturday, March 17, 2012, the Church was celebrating the 170th Anniversary of it's women's organization, Relief Society. Around the world the sisters on that day were to have a service project and the men were told to make a lunch for the Sisters. So Latvia, wanting to be obedient, did just that!
Elder Davis was asked to serve food so he drove Sister Davis, Sister Millet and Sister Boswell to the Imanta Chapel for the activity.
There were about 34 sisters in attendance. We watched a special video presented by Julie Beck, General Relief Society Pres. that was made just for the Sisters in the Eastern Europe Area. It was translated into Latvian and Russian. You wouldn't believe what a special treat that is, to have talks geared to the sisters in this area who have unique struggles.
Then the District RS Pres. Sister Senkane, asked all the sisters to come up for a group photo...to put in the Latvian church history...

"You Talk to Much..."

Elder & Sister Davis were asked to give talks in Sacrament meeting about the Law of Moses and what changes came when Christ was on the earth. Not an easy subject, especially when you know you will have a translator standing next to you repeating everything you say in Latvian. I

We had 40 minutes to give two talks...piece of cake for us. Except someone decided to ask the Sister Missionaries to give a song in between our talks and that took about 8 minutes of the time.
Sister Davis struggled with writing this talk because the wording is different when you have to pause and let someone say what you just said. The breaks in sentences need to be in just the right place OR the meaning of the message sometimes changes. After rewriting her talk three times...Sister Davis felt it was pretty good.
The talk focused on what the Law of Moses was designed to do for the Israelites...
get them to turn to God. She wanted to have enough empathy and love in her words, that the audience would actually take the things she said to heart. And her talk was on obedience to God's laws.

Elder Davis was speaking on the law of sacrifice. We both want the members here to realize the gospel of Jesus Christ requires a lot of work but that if you love the Savior you want to be like him and do what is necessary to build up His church and that takes obedience and sacrifice.
Our church runs on volunteer help and sometimes members won't accept callings or assignments. They just don't have the faith to think they can be a teacher, or leader or librarian. They have never had any experience and think they can't do the job. And of course, there are always those who accept many assignments and do the majority of the work.

Sister Davis told the story of when she was a new member in the church. She knew next to nothing about the gospel. And her Bishop came to her and called her to be a primary teacher for the 7 year olds (Paso Robles, CA). They were mostly boys.
Sister Davis never really liked children when she was younger. She loved dogs, cats, rabbits and horses. She was newly married and now she was called to be a primary teacher. Well, she wanted to be obedient so she said she would try and she was given the manual to study. She studied and gave the lesson at church. Putting it mildly, it didn't go well. She will never forget that lesson because she came home crying. She felt like a failure. She learned that seven year old boys don't like to sit still listening to a teacher talk.

She didn't get much sympathy from Elder Davis who had been on a mission and knew how to teach. He said, "It will go better next week. Just try again, I know you can do it!"
So Sister Davis went back to church more prepared than the week before and came home again in tears. She didn't have a clue how to control a classroom of 7 year old boys.
But she was given a wonderful blessing...she was asked to attend the teacher development class where an absolutely wonderful teacher taught her how to teach and how to control her class of wild and crazy kids. Sister Davis learned to be a better teacher. And the more she taught, the more she learned. And now she LOVES to teach! It's her favorite calling in the church.... being a teacher.
And after that story, she looked at the clock and realized she had used up 20 minutes of time!
Whoa! Sister Davis...  
ElderDavis still had 15 minutes to speak..but remember that's only 7.5 minutes REAL time. And he went over time, too! That is the first time we have ever seen the Latvian branch go overtime in sacrament. We usually start 5 minutes late and get out 10 minutes early!
We were both relieved when our talks were over. And then people came up and in English were saying, "Thank you!" "Thank you for your talks." They were touched by what we said. They were so sweet to us. One person wanted a copy of Sister Davis's talk...and it's in English! She was probably just trying to be nice....but it made us feel good.

Super Duper Saturday

Our second Super Saturday in Riga was extra special since Elder & Sister Davis got to teach a scripture-marking class. This was the first "real" class we taught in Latvia and we had a captive audience since they had to sit through our class before they got lunch....
It started at 11:00 and by 10:30, LDS youth from all over Latvia started arriving by bus and van. We had 17 come from Liepaja and 2 from Daugavpils and about 22 from Riga.

Pres. Kovalyslyskys, District President, spoke about the importance of scriptures. Antii shared his story of the movie "Tangled" and how he has watched it more than 30 times and now he started notices little background details. He likened that to reading the scriptures.

Now it was our turn but first we needed to wake up the crowd. The youth had been sitting for about 40 minutes and Sister Davis had an idea to get them off their tush's and get their blood pumping before we started our activity. For those who have been to "Girls Camp" you will recognize the Campfire song that Sister Davis used...A Tee-da-Tah. Only when she looked it up online, it is actually called the Tooty-Ta song.  It was pretty hilarious watching all the Latvians and Russians with their tongues out singing A-Tee-da-Tah. Once the audience was warmed up, it was time to do some seriously fun scripture marking!

You see Elder & Sister Davis learned a great way to find scriptures quickly. And it was because we were so lousy in the Missionary Training Center at finding the scripture we needed without fumbling through a hundred pages. We realized we know key verses in the Bible and Book of Mormon but we don't know WHERE to find them. It was an "Ah-Hah!" moment. We needed a plan to find scriptures on certain topics quickly. So most mornings, Elder & Sister Davis have been putting colored tabs in their scriptures by topic.

If we want to find key scriptures on resurrection, we now have them within seconds. And we wanted to share this knowledge with the youth here.  Within a very short time, the youth were busily engaged gluing the topic list in the front of their scriptures and putting colored tabs on each one. Then they found verses in the Bible that emphasized the topic and put a colored tab that coordinated with the topic on the side of the page where the verse was found.

And we know it was successful because we had kids come up to us during Sunday School the next day showing us how much they had accomplished. Anytime you can get the young people happily reading and studying scriptures you know you've done a good job as a missionary!

A sweet and humble District President busily engaged marking his scriptures as well! When it was lunch time, we sent the participants out to play a game so we could get the tables set and the food served.

The youth played a getting-to-know-you game even though most everyone knew each other already. The first game was the "Name Game". The kids were divided into two groups and told to sit on the floor. Two people hold up a blanket between the two groups. One person from each team stand facing each other with a large blanket inbetween. The blanket drops, and the first person to correctly identify the other person wins the round.
Look at the faces of the kids....they are very intense. These kids play to win. There is no boredom and everyone wants to participate.










The next game wasn't really a game at all. It was work disguised as a game and it was the brain-child of our very own genius Maksims. He was given a tin of old church building keys that have been piling up for years and no one was quite sure what they opened. Maks brings the tin in and has each of the kids pick one key and tells them to go around the church and find out what (if anything) they opened. The kids had a ball running around the church trying to match locks to keys!
Below:    A tin full of keys...                                    

Rudolfs taking his "lock" finding very seriously ...

And the game ended with 8 keys that fit in locks. The rest were tossed out!
The next game was quite amusing. It is called Evolution (a rather funny game to play in a church). Look closely at the following diagrams...

In this game everyone starts out as an egg. And you play Paper, Rock, Scissors (PRS) to see who gets to evolve into something else and who stays an egg. Each time you evolve you have to act the part of the new animal so you can find the others that are like you.

It is a very strange theory of evolution...from egg to chick, to hen, to bear, to dinosaur and if you make it to "gurki" (Latvian for pickle) you win. Must be Seinfeld's theory of evolution and not Darwins!   Paper, rock, scissors...                                                                      
Aleksandrs wins that round!....... Elder Davis visiting with a non-member friend from Liepaja..

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 Have you ever had so much fun in your life?