Last Friday my team, Zealous Love, arrived in Riga, Latvia. If you haven’t been to Riga before I would highly recommend it.
We arrived via train and the hunt was on to find our hostel in Old Riga for the weekend. The train station was a nice refresher of “normalcy” as it would compare to that of a modern American mall looks like: full of people, fancy stores and new decor. After winding our way through the train station we came outside to a large busy intersection. Old Riga sat across the street with more shopping on our side of the street. Gathered our stuff and took off towards the underground crosswalk to start our adventure into the city.
Once on the other side we were greeted with historical architecture dating back to the 13-18th century. It was beautiful and breath taking. How in the world these buildings have survived over the years is beyond me. Walking the cobble streets, I mean real cobble streets. Not the nice pretty relatively smooth bricks you mostly see in the States. These were legit stone cobbles, ranging in size and spacing between them. I was stunned by how sore my feet were that night after walking around on them all afternoon. Gazing at the buildings, wandering through the streets and taking in all the sights and sounds Riga has to offer – we stumbled upon our hostel.
After dropping our gear, we took off once more to go be “tourist” for the remainder of the evening. Checking out all the coffee shops, restaurants, old churches, statues, the river front, street vendors, and more….it was truly delightful.
Friday night a group from the squad decided to meet up with a ministry contact that another team knew of in Riga. Seeking for more, I choose to go and was blown away. The ministry focuses on prostitution and brothels. Quickly we learned from the contact that Riga is the place to go in Europe to experience exotic nightlife. It is very cheap for Europeans to fly to Riga, alcohol is cheap, and its legal to engage in this activity as long as it is “one-on-one.” With Riga having the beauty of Old Riga and relatively cheap nightlife, it is prime for this activity.
The contact challenged us to open our eyes!
Go out in groups and keep our spiritual eyes open! Be open to looking beyond the common nightlife scene you are used to seeing in the States and be mindful what is really happening. The goal was not to engage and be this superhero out of the latest “Taken” film but rather to go out in prayer, to go out in love. This web of sin is far deeper and more complex than can be solved in one weekend but our prayers will always resound on those cobbles, in the spiritual realm. The bike taxi drivers who transport people to these spots will forever ride in the presence of prayer.
I went out with a group of three other men to further discover what is truly happening in Riga. To look with spiritual eyes to see how God is at work here, to rain down prayer, and speak truth over the streets. We did go into one of the bars where this behind the scenes nightlife happens. Sitting at the bar you witnessed groups of men being escorted to hidden rooms in the back by a woman. It was sickening.
Then two of these women approached me and another guy from the squad at the bar to entice us into this lifestyle. We went and sat with them at a table. Heard their stories of where they come from, what they do, and how they find joy. I had the opportunity to share how/why I ended up in Riga. Offered to pray verbally over her, which was rejected, but my heart was crying out for her to God. To meet her in such place and to share God’s love was priceless.
The moral of the experience is not how beautiful Riga is or how filthy the nightlife scene is but rather opening our eyes to where God is working! God is at work in every city; and what causes Him to weep is right below our feet. Are we opening ourselves up to the work that He is already doing?
