LATVIAN SENIOR CONFERENCE

The second day of our Senior Adult Conference in Cesis, Latvia went well.  We were honored by those who came and I think they enjoyed the time of learning.  It is very difficult for Senior Adults in Latvia.  Unemployment is somewhere close to 30%.  There is little place for anyone over sixty.  They are often viewed as being from another era ... an era they would really like to forget.  And they carry the psychological weight of everything they experienced under the fifty-year totalitarian rule of the Soviets.  Alchoholism is rampant ... especially among the old.  Suicide is common. There is little to live for.

I met a man who told me the story of his family.  When he was eight years old his father was a poor farmer. His family was eating dinner one night when the KGB barged into their home.  They rounded up the entire family, marched them into a train boxcar and 2 days later dumped them in a Siberian concentration camp.  It took them eight years to get back to Latvia.  I was speechless. What do you say to him?  We talk so glibly of suffering ... but we don't know suffering.

One lady at the conference took the train from Riga to be here. The train station is a one hour walk from the conference center.  She was on a crowded train for three hours and then walked one hour to get to the conference.  She's eighty years old.  Think about that the next time you complain about church going a little too long ;)

I hope we were an encouragement to these wonderful people.  I hope we were able to teach them something ... I know that they taught me a lot.