Week 8 & 9 1/2

In my last post, we were leveling the floor in the fellowship hall at the Riga First Methodist Church.  This is a project not dissimilar to many improvement projects - one improvement leads to another.  As we got closer to putting in a new laminate floor, we realized the walls and the ceiling needed to be repaired and painted first. The District Office also has offices in the church and District Superintendent Gita Mednis wanted the hallway, outside the fellowship hall, ceiling and walls patched and painted as well – and the front steps of the church repaired. 

The walls and ceiling of the fellowship hall and hallway needed quite a bit of attention.  We had two members of the church working with us – Janis and Urita.  Both were a very important part of the team and fun to work with. 

 

Janis and Urita working on the fellowship hall ceiling

Clarence clearing off the new step we poured

 

Richards and Clarence making final touches to fellowship hall

Newly painted hallway

My final day in Latvia was not spent working.  Rihards Germans, our main go-to-guy, our construction manager, and the Office Manager for the District Office took us to a few of his favorite tourist spots along the coast.  In the evening, we went over to District Superintendent Gita Mednis house for a picnic with many of the people at the Riga 1^st Church we had gotten to know.

 

Beach at Jurmala

Picnic at Gita Mednis' home

Picnic at Gita Mednis' home

My flight home was on Friday, the 14th. It is nice to be home, but we have seen and learned a lot - and made many new friends.  Latvia is very much a country worth getting to know.    

Week 6 & 7

We finally visited the one remaining Methodist Church in Latvia that we hadn’t been to yet.  It is located in the city of Jelgava. They rent a meeting room from the Department of Health for Sunday mornings and one evening a week.  The pastor is Janis Baumanis.

Janis’s main job is running an alcohol outreach program in Riga.  It just so happened that there was an administrator from a Methodist alcohol rehab center in Germany visiting the church the same Sunday we were there.  It was fun to find out about their Methodist Church in Germany and its large rehab program.

Rev. Janis Baumanis, his wife and son, and our translator

Janis during the church service

Clarence and Torsten-Micheal Ufer from Germany

The majority of the last two weeks we have been leveling floors, first in a Sunday school room and then in the fellowship hall.  There had been quite a bit of floor settling over the years and both rooms had formerly been two rooms.  In the Sunday school room there was a 3 inch correction that had to be made to make the floor level.  The pictures kind of show the process we used.   We patched the bad spots, in some areas removed some of the previous floor so we didn’t have to raise the floor too much and put shims on top of the existing floor - at 30 mm intervals.

Clarence and Rihards inspecting bad area in Sunday School Room

Adding shims to the floor

Sunday School Room with new level floor

Fellowship Hall during floor leveling

 

For fun, we went to ethnic craft fair at a large open air museum on the edge of Riga.  The Open Air Museum has over a 100 architectural exhibits, over 87 hectares of land.   A lot of the buildings are log buildings, some dating back to the 18^th century.  The craft fair is almost a national event, with people coming from all over the country.  There were a folk dancers performing all day.

Church Building at Open Air Museum

Inside Church Building

Traditional Farm Buildings

Traditional House Built Along the Coast

Traditional Barn

Craft Fair

Folk Dancers

Another Group of Folk Dancers

There will be more to come next week.