I wake up still wearing my grey wool socks from yesterday. I wiggle out of my sleeping bag, wrap my sweater around me, and head to the kitchen for my breakfast yogurt. The old wooden floor creaks a little, so does the door out of the living room, but I manage to make it back from the kitchen and on to the couch without too much of a ruckus. This is how I start my day: curled up on the couch, Bible in one hand, yogurt in the other, still marveling at the fact that I’m in Latvia, all cozy in my winter clothes.
The morning passes quickly, as free time tends to do. At the grocery store on the corner I pick out a cheese (there’s so much of it in this country!) to go with my meat and dense brown bread. I’ve missed sandwiches so much that I plan on eating them every day for the next two months.
At around 12:30 I fasten the buttons on my blue coat, zip up my brown boots, and join my team on the walk to the church we meet at every day. It’s a church plant, a room in the corner of a building on the corner of a street in a poor area of Riga. Our contacts tell us that it’s a neighborhood that the government has decided is worthless.
But the members of this church know something that the government doesn’t. They realize that the people in this area of town are not worthless at all. They have great value and deserve to be seen. That’s why they planted the church here, in what others say is a hopeless spot. That’s why they spend their free time evangelizing and handing out food. That’s why they are waiting for a miracle. And that’s why I’m so excited to be working with them this month.
Today we have more translators, so we split into smaller teams. My translator is an 18 year old girl who spends every Saturday evangelizing. In fact, I believe she heads the evangelizing team. I ask her what she wants to do when she finishes high school. She says she wants to be a missionary. I tell her she already is.
After a short worship and prayer time in English and Latvian, we pick up plastic food bags with our mitten-covered hands and bring the church into the street. We pray for wisdom and divine appointments, and God answers. Ashley spots a woman on crutches, and suggests we go over and ask if she’d like us to carry her bag. The woman suggests that we carry her instead, which makes me instantly like her.
The woman says she is on her way to the market, so we ask if we can shop for her instead. She is so grateful, thanking us again and again. She hands Ashley her money and her bag, and we promise to meet her at her apartment in about an hour.
It’s a long walk to the large market, which makes me so glad that we decided to shop for her. At one of the dairy counters a woman scoops milk out of a pail and pours it through a funnel into one of the bottles our new friend had in her bag. It’s apparently cheaper to do things this way, although I’m not sure my American stomach could handle it.
All the way to and from the market we hand out our food bags and invitations to come to the church. We give a couple to a Russian Gypsy woman who has three children, another to a man in a wheelchair, and others to people we meet on the sidewalk.
We pray that God leads us back to the correct apartment, so that we can give our new friend her groceries. We walk up several flights of stairs in the rundown building. I’m amazed this woman is able to make it up here on her crutches.
When she opens the door, I’m relieved to see that God led us to the right place. She wants to give us money to pay us for running her errand, but we decline. Her apartment is nicer on the inside than I would have guessed from the hallway. The kitchen also has a shower in the corner, which is a little strange, but the living room is actually quite lovely, with a wooden floor and a bookcase filled to the brim with books I cannot read.
And then she brings out the letters.
Our new friend had a daughter who passed away in December. She was married and living in Ireland, and all this woman knew about her daughter’s death was that it had happened. Her son-in-law had sent letters explaining details about her daughter’s last days, and how she had died. But the letters were in English, and our friend only speaks Latvian. She had been holding on to this precious information, with no way to read it.
And so God put a group of World Racers on the street at the exact same time this woman was walking to the market. Five minutes earlier, five minutes later, we might have missed her. Isn’t it wild how much God loves us? How much He loves this woman, to orchestrate something like this?
I sit next to my new friend on the couch while Ryveta (whose name I don’t know how to spell correctly) translates the letters. They talk about how the daughter had just become a Christian in October. How she loved her garden. They talk about how the husband held her in his arms as she died, and how she’s in a place with no more pain.
My new friend is sobbing. I put my arm around her and she clutches my knee.
Cassie and Ashley share some words of encouragement, and a bit of their stories. They talk about the hope and peace that Jesus brings. This woman is probably the most broken woman I have seen on this trip. She keeps saying things like, “What good is hope if I don’t have my daughter? What good is peace if I don’t have my daughter?” She’s sobbing. It’s the kind of sobbing that you do when you’re not sure how it’s possible that you have the strength to cry at all. The kind that comes from the very deepest part of you, out of one hundred percent desperation. Because how is it possible to cry when a piece of you is missing? How is it possible to breathe? How can you get up, put on your coat, walk down the stairs, out the door and to the market when a piece of you is gone? How can you possibly go on existing?
I’ve cried this way before. I’m crying a little with this woman now. I tell her that I understand that her hurt is deep, and there are no words that I can possibly say to make it better. And I tell her it’s okay to cry. And it’s okay to miss her daughter like crazy. And even if she doesn’t believe it now, God has not forgotten her. God is with her right at this very moment, hurting with her. I rub her back as I tell her that God loves her. That He values her. That she is not forgotten. I tell her about the years that I spent asking why. And about how God has this crazy big picture plan that I may never even understand, but that’s okay.
How can she possibly go on existing? She can because God is existing right there with her.
She thanks us and gives us her number so we can follow-up with her later this month.
We walk down the run-down staircase and back out onto the street, talking about how crazy good God is. How he literally doesn’t leave us alone, even if we think He has. He sent Cassie, Ashley and I all the way around the world to be His arms for this woman today. Meeting her on the street was no coincidence. It was a total God thing.
Later I think about how in each one of the thousands of apartments here in Riga, and back home in the US, there are people who could be hurting just as much as our new friend. About how there are people walking down the street who are just dying to be SEEN. To be HEARD. To have someone say, you have value. You are an important part of this world. That’s part of our ministry this month. To meet people on the street, and sure, give them some food, but also say, “You are loved. You are known. You are seen. You add value to this world. You are not a mistake. You are not forgotten."
I hope I can remember to live like this when I get back home, too.
