Hello my dear friends in Christ -
It feels so good to be writing to you all since for some of us it has been an extremely long time since we have heard anything about each other. i think i should start publishing a monthly newsletter about myself and sending it everybody. (just kidding. I am thinking of a monthly novel about myself.) I am just back from Baltic Chrysalis reunion II (clap!), and I just could not keep myself from sharing about it with you all. For those of you who do not have an hour or so to spend reading my version of it, here is the summary: Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Americans had a very good and productive weekend.
Here I am again. I think that the route Klaipeda - Siauliai will eventually become a dejavu experience when I will no longer be really able to tell the difference between the occasions on which I have traveled it. To make it more special and distinctive, I chose to travel by bus instead of train. Ignoring the fact that I felt as if I was on a super detailed field trip featuring the rural life of Western Lithuania with my bus stopping at every lamp post, bush and occasional towns with 3000 inhabitants, I had a great time of self-examination on the trip.
One of the penetrating thoughts that kept popping up was that one should never lift a pastor who is supposed to be a Chrysalis person in Lithuania above the head with a joyful shout "Fly with Christ" like we did at the last Chrysalis reunion. You never quite know the power of those words - not only they can change lives, but literally, the pastor can fly as far as his home in the States. The only comfort is that the ticket has an expiration date and Jeff will have to come back in April. After all, maybe it is not that bad, because another pastor, Keith, decided to follow the advice of flying with Christ and will do so in a Walk to Emmaus some time in spring. His wife is already flying there with the same mission, so you might want to keep Chan in prayers. I wonder which verse in the Bible tells that for those who love God all things work out for good. Is this a valid proof then that we love God? Likely.
After four hours in a bus I felt like it was about the right time to meet my co-travelers in Christ and to Riga from all over Lithuania. Gee, fifteen girls (and an occasional guy named Andrius) is a good bunch of people to start with. But the further you go, the more you get. In just two short hours I was screaming with joy hugging Michelle and everybody else. Who told that Lithuanians are reserved and not affectionate? When I saw Daisy, my joy tripled and I felt like I could definitely answer "yes" to Eric Clapton's question "Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?" Pizza, more pizza, updates and non-stop chatting felt like a good start. Lying on somebody's mattress (or maybe a heap of clothes) I felt the taste of summer in my mouth as I was moved by my joy to open the chest of wisdom and sarcasm in front of my good old friends. It is such a joy to chitchat with someone by the name of Daisy who understands my passion for books and shares in it. (Daisy - I have not given up on "The Cane River." It is a GOOD book.) No matter how wonderful it all seemed, our Latvian friends had something even better in store.
As we were invited to the unbelievably renewed and redecorated sanctuary of Riga 1st UMC, tears flooded my eyes. The darkened hall blinked in the candlelight as Siiri Kula was playing Chrysalis music on grand piano. From some deep corner of my heart the tears and the trembling from my candlelight evening washed over me. I think that sitting on a wooden bench and watching an illuminated cross above the altar I started to realize that we own every single memory from our own walks or flights just as we own our names. The slightest mentioning of it or sound resembling it overflows our hearts with memories and electrifies us with the touch of the Holy Spirit. Rising from the pew I felt like the words of the worship song "Jesus Jesus" are becoming so real and personal that I could hardly swallow my emotions.
As Inese (Latvian pastor) was reading the first verses of Philippians 1, my heart was too heavy with joy to express it in words. In situations like that I wish that I had a gift of tongues. To my advantage, communion in Christ is the language that requires no interpretation. As I felt the loving embrace of Michelle, I realized that from that moment I would no longer be able to separate the words from Philippians 1 "I thank God every time I think of you, and every time I do, I do so with joy" from my memories of Riga, from the dancing candlelight, from illuminated cross above candle light, from the stories of how our roads met in Christ for the purpose greater and deeper than even now we dare to perceive. I think that the one who wrote the worship song "God of wonders beyond our galaxy" must have felt the same way. Or very close.
When we resumed to our rooms, we could experience the physical aspect of Christian unity as we were getting ready to sleep. Twelve of us in a very medium size room rumbled around to find a strip of free ground to spread our sleeping bags and lay down our tired bodies. I do not know if anyone cared for convenience, but in less than an hour the room was filled with a peaceful rhythmic breathing and snoring signalizing the down time in Riga 1st UMC.
Flakes, milk, tea, cookies, jokes, toothbrushes, lines at the shower room and usual morning chores echoed the snapshots of my dorm life. I was starting to feel unrestful with the upcoming "division of labor", meaning dividing people into different committees. I had enough time to come into terms with the fact that I was not as mysterious as I thought i was since someone very insightfully had already prescribed me and Jolita to work with housing, registration and other arrangements (I want Steve on-line!!!!). I hate to admit it, but that is what I am best at if I am not front stage. Daisy and Michelle made it very clear that there will be no girls front stage whatsoever in the Chrysalis to come. Oh well, I have lived through worse. :)
To my big surprise, everything went so smoothly that I was a little uneasy with that. How can it be that there are people who are willing to do something like refreshments? If not for God, I would not do it for anybody else or any other reason. Oh well, that is what we call divine intervention. So all in all, it seems like we have a good back stage crew. I do not really know where the time went but out of sudden I realized that the time was exactly one hour before my bus leaving.
As I was leaving, I anticipated a shot of sharp pain under my ribs on the left side. Surprisingly, I felt as if I was leaving just for short trip to my "non-Chrysalis" life if that is possible at all. I knew like a bird knows when it is leaving for winter, that I would be back. Back with the people who have become a part of me and of my life. Back home.
With the best of my love and all of my prayers,
Grazina
First off, greetings from snowy slushy wind-blowing lithuania. Secondly, I spent an hour this morning writing an even longer e-mail than Grazina about the follow-up in this stupid internet cafe in Kaunas and it didn't even send! I came here all excited to see if anyone had responded and discovered it didn't send at all. So, i will try again, though maybe not spend so long a time. I think you can all tell by Grazina's e-mail that the follow-up was great. I will tell everyone straight off that Linda was a god-send to us. from the minute she arrived she has been the third musketeer and just so you know, her new name is "Boss". over and over again, we would just say, "Linda, you are in charge. show us where to go and what to do." And you know what? She did. Friday we got to Riga First UMC, dropped off our stuff and went to "Wal-Mart" for supplies: chips, cokes, fantas, cookies and cereals. we went to another store to get milk made in Latvia - we agreed with Linda that this is better. Support the economy! At about 4pm the Latvians begin to arrive. We wait awhile...yes, this seems like everyone...Linda orders 3 pizzas - Suddenly the Lithuanians appear! We did not expect them until morning! Linda is back on her cell phone ordering 3 more pizzas...all the drinks are GONE - even the water! After dinner in the meeting room at Riga First we push all the tables into the middle of the room and circle up for, chicken, i believe it is called? First, introductions with the standard funny question: what is your favorite kind of potato? And then we open up discussion. What have you done since chrysalis? What do you think about your chrysalis experience? What did you not like about chrysalis? We asked Inese to speak first. She told about the reunion group she has started in Liepaja. She said they would meet once a week to sing songs and read over the talks and discuss them! So great. Afterwards, many begin to share. Mainly Latvians: Gunta, Vivita, Gatis and Janis. Eventually some of the Lithuanians chime in and Siiri and Urmas from Estonia began to offer some good suggestions. After this, to the sanctuary for communion. Inese had candles all over the room and it was so beautiful! Devotion and communion was so good and then...everyone just sang and sang! After a while we left to go call home and they were STILL SINGING. When it was time for bed, Linda again becomes THE BOSS and tells everyone where to sleep. Not much sleeping...too much talking. Miraculously, all get up at 7 am with not so much grumbling and we breakfast together and disperse travel money. Then at 9:30, meeting begins. So we start with prayer by Violetta and devotion by Urmas. After, we begin with letter from Bob and explain what it means to be the lay director. Then we do the questionaire. This is a big hit. Well, the i-zone polarois is a bigger hit. Luckily we have enough film to take 2 pictures of everyone so they can keep one. The answers on the questionaire are so good! Good feedback to Chrysalis on them too. We also now know all the favorite songs. I know you will all be dying to read them; Michelle and I had so much fun going over them later, reading them out loud. After, a small break and the hard part: ground rules. Everything goes ok i think. After those rules, which I dreaded, everything is just a piece of cake (sorry to be so trite). On to committees. We explain all 6 that we planned to organize and the need for countries to spread out. We take a break to think about that and then we assign prayer partners, also across cities and countries and have prayer time together. It's going so well! Then, we let everyone decide what committee they would like to work. This had the potential to be disasterous, but we prayed hard and did it anyway. I know this is not what we discussed, but was suggested by Violetta and Inese. And it worked! Good mixture of folks from all over. Only exception is that all Estonians want to work meal service. We changed a few of the assignments from Patrick and Dale's list; hope no toes are stepped on. Linda wanted very much to work agape. We let her head up the group, though she said she would help still in community events. Siiri from Estonia will lead meal service; Violetta (Lithuania) will do refreshments (they picked a party theme: Hawaii!); Brigitta (Lithuania) will lead worship. Aglee (Lit) and Ilze (Lat) are in prayer chapel and seem very into it. What else? Ah, yes. Michelle talked to the guys doing talks - Patrick, I think you have Arturs running scared. He looked a little green around the gills and left the room to talk to Urmas. Very interesting. Then we get into committees and Michelle and I meet with each one to talk more deeply. Actually, Michelle spent all her time with agape and I talked to all other committees! The girls doing committee events are quite excited. I put mimes with that and they had a fit (in a good way). They wanted to know how many times they could be mimes! Siiri has meal service well in hand. She told us in Estonia they have a tradition at Emmaus of doing dinner themes. Like sunday morning is 'heaven'. They take communion together in the morning and then the tables are in the shape of a cross and the servers dress as angels. Michelle and I told her to go with this. hope that's ok. We limited it to one theme per day though, like maybe only at lunch or something. Then we explained sponsorship and got a good response. The girls asked good questions like the ages, the dates, and even could they sponsor someone not from church. We talked a lot about how to handle that and making sure that any boy asked to go understood the rules of the camp. Urmas got up and gave quite a good talk about sponsoring and how to approach non-Christians for letters. Very helpful. Then late lunch and time to clean up! I think cleaning up took longer than anything! We owe the church a new tablecloth! We owe Riga First so much for letting us use their church.
Love to all
dmw
daisywinfrey@aol.com
