A Crazy, Fun Holiday

Līgo (lee-gua) is a Latvian holiday held June 23rd to celebrate the longest day of the year (summer solstice). The next day is  Jāņi (yawn-ee), who happens to be a pagan God that was once worshipped by Latvians.  That day, June 24th, is name day for anyone named John ( a very popular name in Latvia).  Put the two days together and you have a rockin' pagan holiday that lasts two days.

Many people leave Riga and head out to the countryside to celebrate by eating, drinking beer, building bonfires and jumping over them, and staying up all night.  When you jump over the bonfire, you will  supposedly be ensured prosperity and fertility.  We are glad we don't have to do that, simple prayers work fine for us missionaries.

All the senior missionaries on Wednesday went out to dinner with President & Sister Boswell...and we ended up at The Blue Cow in Old Town.  What a great way to start a holiday with great food and even better dessert!

During dinner, President Boswell told us Evelyn, the girl we taught the mission prep. lesson to in Estonia, had submitted her mission papers that day. Wow! We were surprised....but happy that she had finally decided to go on a mission. Now the question will be... Where will she serve?

This was chocolate pecan cake with ice cream...most excellent!

                      

What Elder & Sister Davis like about this holiday are all the people who dress in traditional Latvian folk dress...oh yeah, there are also some pretty extreme head wear being worn.. 

The real summer solstice was actually Wednesday to Thursday but since the Latvian government didn't want a bunch of tired, hung-over workers on Thursday, they moved the holiday to the weekend...smart move. 

One of the nicest things about this holiday is the unity this brings to the Latvian people. They LOVE this holiday and have a great amount of fun with it. Especially fun to watch was the braiding of flower wreaths that most women wear. They get a bunch of plant materials together and make themselves a headdress.  

And the children are especially adorable!

Everyone named Janis (John) is supposed to wear a wreath of  oak leaves to show their strength. So the question is...is the boy below named Janis or is he an impostor?

These young ladies were selling wreaths of flowers and bouquets they had made from wild flowers, leaves, and ferns to earn a little money.  Sister Davis thought about all those years of "girls camp" fundraisers and decided she would buy one for Ligo. Her new head wear cost 3 Lat.

Everyone seems to come out to earn money on Ligo...as seen by this "sprightly" lady who was dancing a soft-shoe for the passersby with a cap on the ground to collect change. She seemed to be enjoying herself so much, Elder Davis gave her some coins and snapped her picture.

Fires are a big part of Ligo...as you can see by the giant wooden altars that were built to burn.  They have to be large, they are supposed to burn all night long.  There were three of these big platforms along the street; they start the fire at the top and the fire burns down to the bottom. The Ligo party along the Daugava River lasted from 5PM to 5AM.

Lots of acts were going to perform on 3 different stages...we just watched the daytime practices.  That night, the party was broadcast on the local television station.

And if you want to watch Latvian folk dancing, Ligo is the holiday to see. We saw lots of folk dancers entertaining and tour buses were everywhere...this is a major tourist draw in Europe.

Everything is decorated with birch trees...not just branches but whole, small trees. Even the BBQ grills were decorated....

And if you want to see traditional Latvian dress,  Ligo is the holiday for that, too!

Elder Adams decided to model one of the oak leaf hats this lady made... he's a brave man.

Look at these boys and lovely girls...they were singing folk songs and seemed to be having a good time.

Everyone was willing to pose for pictures on Ligo!

There were free flowers and grasses so everyone could make themselves a wreath if they wanted...and it looks like everyone did want to.

This girl is wearing  a braided grass headdress with peonies and is braiding a daisy wreath...do they teach this in grammar school? How do they all know how to braid wreaths from fresh flowers?

The folk dancers seemed to be having a blast...and their feet were moving a mile a minute.

Aren't the Latvian women beautiful and the traditional dress is so modest and feminine...

This little boy was hilarious...

he could see a long piece of grass hanging down in front of his face but every time he grabbed at it, his head moved and so did the piece of grass he was trying to grab.

Isn't this girl precious?

And the Latvian Art School made cows from various sizes of wood pieces and set them all over the main entrance to Old Town. Some were given Ligo wreaths to wear.

And after walking most of the day, Elder Davis said he wanted to ride a tram...
"What? You want to ride a tram?"
"Well, why not?" he says. "The buses and trams are all free on holidays, it won't cost a dime and I've always wanted to ride one."

The Adams said they were game...though we didn't really know the tram schedule so we weren't sure where we would end up. But we found a tram stop and got on...

 We rode it to the outskirts of Riga, to the end of the line and everyone got off but us...The conductor came through cleaning trash and Elder Davis asked if we could go back into the city...we don't know if he understood English or not, but with Elder Davis twirling his finger in the air while he was talking, the conductor got the idea and nodded his head.  So after 5 minutes, the tram turned around and started back into town.

We had the whole tram pretty much to ourselves! And the ride was as good as the monorail in Disneyland. What a fun way to end the day... we know it looks like daytime, but this was night already...it just doesn't look like it!

The Cake...

Sister Davis tried to think of another title for this blog but there isn't any help for it. This post is about a cake.  The post should be focused on Latvia's Seminary & Institute (S&I) Graduation. That should be the important thing for S&I missionaries, right? But somehow the graduation ceremony came in "second fiddle" to the cake.

"How can that be?"you ask. Well, this is how it all happened.
Sweet Noemi was in charge of Latvia's S&I graduation and she wanted to make it extra special. So like any normal LDS woman wanting to make an event special, she went online and found this picture of a cake...

And the idea, once in her head, wouldn't go away. Having never made a chocolate cake, she asked Sister Davis for a recipe....she was thrilled that our chocolate cake recipe only takes two eggs. 
Big cake pans are a rarity in Latvia. All the cakes in stores are small 8" round ones, so to get a big sheet cake that was going to take a little creativity.

And that is why Noemi made three  13x9"  chocolate cakes Saturday night. You see, E/S Davis were in Estonia and wouldn't be back to Riga until Saturday night. We still had to make cookies for S&I graduation so Noemi was in charge of that cake. But it still needed decorating....

Early Sunday  morning, we picked up Noemi and her three cakes and brought them all back to our apartment.  Two cakes went side by side on a foil covered pizza box.  The other cake was sliced carefully down the middle using a long piece of thread.  With whipped cream & strawberry  filler, the two sliced pieces were put on top of the two cakes and now we had a long, tall  cake.

After chocolate frosting was made it was time to start decorating....frost the cake, put strawberries along the edges, then chocolate mints on the sides (there were no thin chocolate bars in any of the stores) and a white ribbon around the sides to keep the chocolate from falling over.







We showed Noemi how you can use an envelope to make a decorating bag & fill it with white icing.  She had never done anything like this and was so EXCITED! Cut the corner off the envelope and you can write whatever you want on the cake.

She wrote the words in Latvian with a toothpick,  so she could go over them with the icing.

And voila! The finished product. Pretty amazing for someone who had never decorated a cake before!

But now how to get that cake to the church? The pizza box was flimsy so Elder Davis scavenged around the apartment and found a big board to put the whole thing on. When we tried to get the cake into our tiny elevator we quickly realized, it wasn't going to fit!  Okay, Plan B...down four flights of stairs.  And Noemi?  She says, "This is SO exciting!"

And now we had to get it into our tiny car.....Hey, we discovered the back seats fold down!

And drive very carefully to the church with "the cake",  flowers for the graduates, flowers for the centerpieces, a big platter of cookies and all the paper products. Up two flights of stairs and into the kitchen where we found Maksims playing hangman with this little girl...

"Wait, is that hangman?" Yes, but that is RUSSIAN hangman...they had a completely different alphabet...

Our sacrament meeting was moved to the third hour so we could have S& I graduation right afterwards.  All the talks were on the importance of scriptures and Seminary & Institute classes. Two  talks were translated into English, one was given in English and translated into Latvian and Russian and one was translated into Russian. It became so confusing, Elder Davis took his headphones out and didn't even try to figure out who was talking about what...

Below, the Institute and Seminary students are getting their certificates of achievement... we are super proud of them. President Birkenfeld is reading a list of names while Pres. Kovalevskys shakes each persons hand and congratulates them.

R-L: Antti, Martins, Pres. Koval., Rudolfs, Christine, Marta,  Sintija, Julia, Uvgenis, Ingus, Matis

And then it was time for that cake! Rihard is helping by putting candies around the cake...like it needs ANY more decoration! 

And then the crowd hit!  And the compliments on that cake came right and left...many assumed that Sister Davis had made the cake but she quickly corrected them...this cake was all Noemi's doing. We just hope she doesn't get asked to do every cake for every church function from now on...because everyone just found out, her cake was SCRUMPTIOUS!

On the Way to Tartu

Elder & Sister Davis were invited to Tallinn, Estonia to teach a Missionary Prep. lesson and to attend the Celestial Marriage Activity being planned by the Estonian Saints.   But E/S Davis were very curious about Tartu, a college town in the middle of Estonia we had never visited before. Tartu is on the way to Tallinn...if we go out of our way to get there. Tallinn is a pretty straight shot up the coast of Latvia but Tartu is straight up the middle of Latvia. So with just a little zig-zag inland, we got to see some new country.

And here is our story, titled......On the Way

On the way out of Riga:

We saw a house that said "I have been around a long time. I am old.  I am tired. And  I am worn out.

I need a hug." 

On the way to Estonia:

We saw farms that looked reminded us of Iowa.....

 Rivers that reminded us of  Idaho...

On the way to the tiny town of Placis:

We came across historic buildings but had no idea what they were....

On the way through the northern Latvian countryside:

We saw old stone buildings.....

On the way to dinner:

We saw the famous "Kissing Students" fountain...

On our way to Tallinn the next day...

We saw the ruins of  a medieval castle....complete with moat.

And a thoroughly delightful sight, though  rather unusual, even in Estonia....

 You can not help but smile when you come across an old windmill.

On the way to dinner...

the Bonner's took us to a newly discovered Chinese place in Tallinn, close to their apartment. This is a horrible picture of Sister Davis, but in the spirit of charity, its a good one of the Bonner's so she will include it in the blog.

On our way into the church in Tallinn...

we discovered some wonderful, sweet ladies who wanted to meet some wonderful men at a marriage activity.
It is sad for us to report that only three men showed up to speed-date 12 women.  We feel for these sweet sisters who want the companionship of a marriage partner and none of the single men from Latvia made the trip to Estonia....shame on them.

On the way back to Riga...

we realized we had had a great time.  We talked about our weekend get-away and how we can do the Lords work in so many different ways.  We learned about the Estonian culture in Tartu, we visited with the Bonner's and hopefully brightened their day, we taught a missionary class to a YSA hoping to inspire her to go on a mission and we got to socialize with the Estonian saints.  A very fulfilling weekend.

June 10th- A Special Day

June 10th is usually a pretty special day around our house. It happens to be, not only Elder Davis's birthday, but also his mother-in-law's birthday.  Happy Birthday MOM! 

But this June 10th, was a little different.

Hey, we are on a mission,  what else could you expect? 

Elder and Sister Flake came from Lithuania to stay with us for a few days.  

On Saturday June 9th,  Sister Davis was out shopping with "the girls".  Sisters Millet, Segeberg and Flake wanted to shop while the men were attending a special 4 hour priesthood leadership meeting.

Four HOURS!!!

 What an opportunity... Sister Davis  knows Riga shopping nearly as well as the natives and everyone else needed a guide. Sister Davis took those Sisters to every discount store around and to two Humana Thrift Stores.  

And come to find out,  it was Elder Segebergs birthday on June 10th  also! Sister Segeberg and Sister Davis were both trying to find some unique gift for their husbands and neither of us was successful. Of course, it's not like we made it a priority....

And that night we had dinner at the Segebergs place (they are staying in the mission home until their Bulgarian visa comes through).  We had lasagna and Sister Davis was in charge of dessert so she made shortcake to go with some red, juicy strawberries that came from Spain.

We sang Happy Birthday to Elders Davis and Segeberg a day early.  Elder Davis would be turning 60 years old the next day but for that night, he was still 59.

The Adams joined in the fun. They are helping the Millets in the mission office right now and will be working with the young married couples in Riga.

And Sunday, June 10th was District Conference for Latvia! So where do you hold District Conference when there  isn't any church building big enough to hold all the Latvian Latter-day Saints?  Why the World Trade Center of course!  And it turned out to be a beautiful day...a nice day to walk since this building is a 10 minute walk from our apartment.

 The church rented a room on the bottom floor.  Bishop Stevenson, Presiding Bishop of the Church, and his wife came all the way from Utah to meet with the saints in Latvia. President & Sister Bennet, from Europe East Area, also came to speak. The meeting was great...especially because we got to hear from Eva, the new YSA member.  She did a fantastic job speaking in front of a large audience.  Way to go, Eva!

News FLASH!   Now you may not know (we have been pretty hush-hush about this) but our sweet red-haired Eva is in a relationship with the wonderful YSA,  Dainis. We wouldn't normally tell you that but we found out it it is on facebook, so it's not like you are the first to know. In fact, last week Dainis called up one evening and asked if he and Eva could stop by to eat some food they bought...."Well, of course!"  So they came by to eat and ended up having a date night at our apartment. We popped some popcorn while they watched a movie.  And now they are the cutest couple in Riga! Keep your fingers crossed that it continues to work out for them.

After conference was over (3:00pm),   we ended up with a houseful of YSA's...and it's funny but we don't know quite how that happened. You see,  at FHE we told several YSA's who had a long way to go home, they could come over after conference, bring a sack lunch and stay at our apartment before choir practice at 5:00.  But communication isn't always the way it should be in Latvia. Everyone came and no one brought any food. Sister Davis quickly got some tortillas out and made cheese quesadillas to satisfy the hungry crowd.  She was grateful for the help of Elder & Sister Adams who were invited over.
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And 10 mintues after the last quesadilla was done cooking, Elder & Sister Davis were headed up to the church along with all the YSA's.  We had 1 hour to practice before the devotional that Bishop Stevenson would be speaking at..
La, la, la, la....warm up those voices! Elder Davis was praying the choir wouldn't be too "off key".

And then the YSA's from Estonia showed up... and we quickly discovered they sang like angels. They joined our choir and WOW! the blend of voices was good!  It just goes to show you that the Lord does answer prayers.

Rihard, Juris, Elder Bennet, Roman & Maksims

(The thumbs up were because of a talk Sister Stevenson gave)

The picture below is of the whole group. In the front are Pres. & Sister Boswell,  Bishop & Sister Stevenson, Elder & Sister Bennet, Elder & Sister Senkans.

June 11th was also special...it was the first time every missionary in the whole mission was in the same place at the same time! What a good looking bunch! Can you find Elder & Sister Davis?  Sister Davis seems to have grown a little on her mission....actually she got a small stool to stand on for the picture and didn't realize how short Elder Bonner would look next to her!

The missionaries from Estonia and Lithuania rode in chartered buses to get to Riga for a morning with the Presiding Bishop.  It was a wonderful meeting.

And then E/S Davis headed out  to shop for food for FHE.
After all, it was Monday night!

Called to Serve!

One of the YSA's were are working with in Latvia received his mission call and we were so excited for him.  Lauris hasn't had an easy life and we have been mentoring him.  When Elder Millet told us Lauris's mission call had arrived from Salt Lake City and was at the mission office, we asked Lauris if he could wait two days to open it at June's Break-the-Fast.  He said, "Yes, I can do".

After all, Lauris has been living on his own since he was 15 years old, and we wanted to make sure that opening his mission call was a grand experience for him. We invited EVERYONE who might be interested...which meant Sister Davis had to make 4 huge casseroles for dinner. Luckily, one could be made in the crock pot and thus we only had to cook three in the oven (one at a time, of course) and then worry about how we could keep them all warm until dinner time.

Below, is Latvia's newest senior missionary couple, Elder & Sister Adams, who were supposed to go on a mission to  Mongolia but were denied entry visas.  They came to see what Break-the-fast was all about and were a great help.....hmmm,  maybe we need to invite them more often.

 

 So after a hearty dinner....Elder Davis has everyone who ever served a mission tell Lauris one inspirational story or one thing they liked about their mission. Dainis is translating into Latvian...Elder Davis is telling about his mission to England, a looooong time ago....and Lauris is nervous. 

It's Elder Adams turn to talk about his mission.....listen up Lauris!

Everyone is excited for Lauris....Lina is filming the event for the 20th Anniversary of the Saints in Latvia which will be celebrated in two weeks......Svetlana,  Natalia, Alexandrs (Sasha) and Maksims...all Russian Latvians.

Dainis had surveyed everyone in the room about where they thought Lauris would be serving....Lauris had already told Sister Davis he did NOT want to go to Russia (even though he speaks Russian!).  Some of the answers were pretty funny...like West Africa, Washington D.C., and even Latvia.  And now Lauris...it's time to open the envelope! He tries opening it from the back and the glue is just too strong.....

So, Elder Millet steps in with his trusty pocket knife and slits the top right open, impressing everyone in the room! And the call is read...."You are hereby called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine Mission.

Well, Lauris is excited about that and will be heading for the Missionary Training Center in Madrid, Spain the beginning of August.  Congratulations!

Bob Visits A Palace

Bob really isn't the kind of dog one expects to see in a palace. He doesn't have a whole lot of class...in fact, when you push his tummy in, he says in  nasally Spanish,  "I am getting hungry....VERY hungry". What can we say, he started life as a Taco Bell Chihuahua.  Someone recently told us, after he heard Bob "talk"... "That was the creepiest voice I have ever heard",  and he could be right.

But Bob was along for the ride and a Palace was where we were headed. It was cloudy when we arrived at Rundale (roon-dah-lee) and a few rain drops started falling as we parked the car in a grassy area. 

Rundale Palace is so big and such a tourist attraction, there are four different places to eat there. And we were hungry!   We got out of the rain by ducking into a little Kafenica. The food was hot, homemade and inexpensive. We were all happy, even Bob.

While we were eating, it started raining "buckets". Oh no!  Everyone of us, had left our umbrellas in the car.  The parking lot is a long walk away.   We decided we had to brave the elements and headed into the storm.  Below you see Sister Millet and  Sister Davis with our hoods up.

This is just where the horses were kept!

The palace is still a little way further....just keep walking, and walking...

We enter into the courtyard and still have a ways to go before we get to the entrance...

but at.  And now we have arrived! Rundale Palace.

 Rundāle Palace is one of the most outstanding Baroque style buildings in Latvia. It was built between 1736 and 1740 as a summer residence for Duke Ernst Johann of Courland.  At the time the Duchy of Courland was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This palace (it is really big!) was designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, an Italian architect, who designed many Baroque palaces for the Russian nobility. The Duchy of Courland was taken over by the Russian Empire in 1795, and Catherine the Great took a dislike to the Duke and did what any spiteful woman would do....she gave the palace to someone else.
She decided to give it to the brother of her boyfriend...Valerian Zubov. He died in 1804 and his young widow, a local girl got the house to herself. During the German occupation of World War I,  the German army established a hospital and a commandant's office there.

It has over 50 rooms that are open to the public and others are still be renovated.  The entry hall could house  a small army all by itself.

The rooms are opulent and ostentatious and we had no "tour guide". You are just allowed to wander around at your own leisure.  Each room had it's own detailed description list that we could read. 

The first room we went into was the "green" room.  We soon found out that every single room had gorgeous European paintings on the walls.  The Duke was a serious art collector.

Nearly every room had a handpainted mural on the ceiling....

And the long hallways are just as gorgeous as the rest of the place.

Because of the rain, we didn't get tickets to the garden tour but we got a great view from some of the rooms.....

A design made of hedges, grass, flowers and ground cover....pretty creative.

This is the Dukes bedroom. Notice that HE has two furnaces in his room....

This was the ladies bathroom....



And now back to the real world, where two senior missionaries have a small apartment, a short bed, no yard, no view, and no thermostat.  But as nice as this palace is to visit...who would want to live in a palace everyday?  We are happy where we are, thank you very much!