last day in Riga

Today is my last day in Riga. I leave early tomorrow for Manchester. These last several days have been wonderful to spend with my brother and other friends.

Crystal getting some lovin' from Spike.

Probably one of my favorite funny experiences was with my brother in the cinema. We were watching the previews and a movie came on that looked like a French version of the movie "Jack Ass", Brian and I were laughing SO hard, at the end of the preview we noticed that in the entire theater NO ONE else was laughing. Dead silent. This in itself is funny, but when you are already giggly it's trouble. We tried as hard as we could to stop laughing but we couldn't, we were crying we were laughing SO hard.

Beware of Dog!

So the next few days after this experience we tried to blend more and be a little more culturally sentative. Here are just a few pictures from around Riga, hope you enjoy.

...and I am still wise?

Yesterday I had an appointment to get my wisdom teeth pulled, but...there is always a but(t); the dentist told me that my teeth were too complicated...hmmm. So I am still wise, eh? This is fine, it gives me more time to spend with staff and my brother.

Brian and I in old Riga.

all gone

BBI's summer projects, both Art Camp and teRiga have closed. The American team have packed their bags and headed back home to the US. It was sad to see them go because such good friendships developed during the week.

Saying goodbye is hard, last night of teRiga. (from l-r: Crystal, Gita, Keren, Zita)

A small team of BBI staff will stay to do final wrap up, please pray for clear understanding and communication as we complete our work here.

teRiga is completed

The cross-denomination service project of teRiga has officially ended. On Friday we completed our clean up of the storage unit sight. We were pleasantly surprized at how much was completed, we thought for sure we would be unable to finish the project, however the team stayed an extra hour to fill up the last garbage bin and brought the entire mound of rubble level with the ground.

Before

After

Saturday was our next unknown, we had planned a work project in one of the cities most honored parks, Mezaparks, the sight of the Song Festival which is held every 5 years and incorportates tens of thousands of people. Our goal was to not only have the youth serving but also the adult memebers of the congregation, we were wonderfully surprized...about 200 adults from 32 different churches throughout Riga and surrounding cities came for Saturday's work project. Add to that the 130 teRiga youth that had been working the past week and you have about 330 people serving their community, that is a loud statement. It is very exciting.

Sweeping the sidewalks in the park.

Workers of all generations came to help in the big work day.

Silent witness to those passing by.

We closed with a celebration service for everyone in the park, some local bands played...my favorite "Metanoia" (who will be comming to the valley and Dox (?) in October) finished out the concert. It was pouring down rain, but the spectators didn't care, youth and adult and senior stayed in the rain, singing along with the bands, worshiping in the rain.

Metanoia in Mezaparks.

Keren Baldwin (middle) worshipping with fellow teRiga participants. The unity between Latvian and American youth in worship is beautiful.

and we are still working

teRiga officially started the 25th. the first evening was orientation, stuff like that. Monday the 26th was the first day of our work projects.

teRiga team: 130 Latvians and Americans

I am currently working on a demolition clean up crew. There were these 4 car garage sized storage units, two of them, that were bulldozed, we are cleaning this mess up. They were bulldozed with all their contents in them, some really cool stuff and a lot of really gross junk. There are about 30 students and adults working on this sight.

teRiga team cleaning storage rubble. This is one of seven sites cleaned during the week.

The first day was amazing. The lady from the city that set up the dumpsters came by early in the AM, we had only been working for 45 minutes. By the time she had arrived we had already filled one dumpster, she was shocked, she thought we would only fill 2 dumpsters the entire day.

Crystal and Kaite working at the storage site.

It was cool to see her excitement at our enthusiasm to get the job done. The next day she was waiting for us at the work site, all smiles, she had arranged to have many more dumpsters available so we could be even more productive than the day before. There are a lot of hazzards with this site, a lot of rusty nails, a lot of broken glass, a lot of basements with rotting top boards, please pray for the teams safety. We have only had minor scrapes up until this point, praise the Lord for that.

Crystal picking up rubble from one of the collasped basements.

Thank you all for your support, this has been my hardest trip so far emotionally. It has been harder to focus on the task at hand with so much going on at home, please also continue to pray for my family. The service for my Grandfather is Thursday. Brian and I will not be able to attend, but the family has promised to get the whole thing on tape for us.

Well, peace out from Latvia, more to come, keep checking. Love you all, behave while I am gone, eh?
Crys

we have arrived

I have arrived in Latvia, with my trusty traveling companion, Spike (my brother's 9 year old chihuahua).

For those of you who haven't heard, I received the sad news that my Grandpa passed away Sunday morning. This was expected, though still hard. It made sence to me to continue with my trip to Latvia, not only to work on the projects but to also spend some time with my brother who has been in Latvia since June. When I get to a computer that has the capability I will add pictures of the various things going on. I don't know when that will be, so please hang tight on that one. Thank you for your prayers, the trip went with out hitch, even getting Spike into the country was smooth.

American girls: Joanna, Crystal and Allison on the tram getting ready for teRiga.

The first day of teRiga starts tomorrow, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Tonight is the first night of getting to know our Latvian friends who we will be working with through this week. There are 100 Latvians participating, and 12 Americans. Already relationships have begn, the Latvians are really outgoing and cheerful, a trait not commonly seen until they get to know and trust you better. This is a great sign. More to come...stay tuned.

teRiga

In just a few weeks Crystal will be headed off for her third trip to Latvia. As part of her ministry with Bridge Builders International she has been able to assistant the American participants that travel to Latvia with BBI each summer.

Crystal with American participants of teRiga 2004.

This summer she will again be helping with teRiga. teRiga is a strategic service project with the intent of making the church more relevant to the community. Many youth and adults will serve throughout the week by participating in service such as city beautification projects and many others. The idea behind teRiga is that the church will earn the trust of the community by serving and thus be an effective tool in sharing the gospel. Recently, in our own church, Doxology, we have been challenged to answer the question: “If your church were to disappear completely, would anyone notice?”. We truly want to live a life on this earth that is reflective of our Savior:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind... and LOVE your neighbor as your self.”
Matt. 22:37


Ways to help with Latvia:
· Pray..for each day of the trip. July 24-Aug 9th
. Financial support: Checks can be made payable to BBI and sent to:
PO Box 625
Philomath OR 97370

Viva Las Vegas

We enjoyed a trip to Vegas to attend friends’ wedding.

Here we are celebrating after…”the kiss”

Fun times...

We celebrated Scotty’s Dad’s 50th birthday with a surprise dinner cruise party on the Willamette River.

The entire Kelley family.
Here we are enjoying the nice evening on the deck of the boat.

Mexico Update

There is SO much to tell about our trip to Mexico back in March. First, we would like to say thank you to everyone for supporting us, both in your prayers and with your money. You guys made this trip possible for us and we thank you for participating with us in this work.

The team was amazing, we had about 25 college-aged young adults on the trip. The team was quite diverse; skills ranged from experienced construction workers, loving children’s ministry, fluent in Spanish, to just plain hard workers.

We finished the house an entire day early, and that is with taking half a day off to wait for the first coat of stucco to dry. We really worked together as a team and grew in our love and respect for each other.

Here are some pictures to give you an abreviated play by play:

Doxology team with family in front of their old house.

Scotty and Crystal leveling the foundation.

Raising the walls.

Resting on the finished roof, while letting the first coat of stucco dry.

Children flocked everyday to the American girls who served with childrens' ministry.

Pete (Scotty's brother and pastor of Doxology), was able to share the gospel message with the family, and also present them with Bibles in Spanish.

God protected our team, even when one of our vans caught on fire on the way home.

One of the daughters who will enjoy her new home.

Look out Mexico...here we come

Doxology has several mission trips coming up this spring and summer. They include “teRiga” and the Art Camp that BBI is putting on, helping in a medical clinic in Honduras, and building houses in Tijuana, Mexico.

We will be going on the Mexico trip which will be our first mission trip together as a married couple. We are thrilled. We have both built houses in Mexico in the past with The Hub, Peter’s old youth group. Crystal went a few years ago and Scotty has gone several times. Last year he was able to use his work experience to lead the construction of one of the houses. He was in charge of 15 awesome high school students for the week. They built a home for a family of six in only five days.

The homes we build are very simple. They are 20’ by 11’ with two rooms, two small windows, stucco siding, and a cement floor. The cement and stucco is all mixed and poured by hand, and all the wood is cut with a handsaw. To us the house seems primitive, but to the families it is a dream come true.
We will go to Mexico during Spring Break (March 19-26). The total cost of this trip is $800 for both of us. All of these funds will cover travel expenses and building materials for the house.
We’ve been looking forward to this trip, for the past several months. We have been setting money aside to cover our lost income during our week serving in Mexico.
We would welcome your involvement with us in this mission outreach. Below are some ways you can help us.
Love,
Scotty and Crystal


Ways to help with Mexico:
· Pray for our safety during travel and construction.
· Pray for the families that we will be interacting with in Mexico.
. Financial support: Checks can be made payable to Doxology and sent to us.

new member of the family

Ahhh-Ha...made you look. Some of you will be relieved, some disapointed but the fact remains, we got a dog...(not a small child).

Many of you may have heard stories about our cat, “Puppy”. You will be excited to hear that we have expanded our family by adding a REAL dog. (No, her name is not “Kitty”.) About three weeks ago we got “Joei” from one of Crystal’s friends from work. She is a golden lab/great dane mix, about a year old, and has LOTS of energy. She eats everything. We lose more socks to her than we lose to the dryer. We are training Joei to wear a “doggie backpack” so she can hold her own while we’re camping.

Puppy and Joei are still learning how to be polite to each other. Puppy thinks Joei is trying to kill her while Joei thinks Puppy’s swats and hisses are just in play. We are learning patience and conflict resolution. Please pray for them (and us).

suffering for the Lord

We’re leading a new community group at Doxology that has an emphasis on the outdoors. This is an exciting and perfect fit for us because we love any excuse to play outside. We are “suffering” for the Lord.
We led a small group rock climbing to Smith Rock in Central Oregon. Here Scotty is leading a route for us to climb.

A nice vew of the canyon, the area we climbed on is to the right of the river.

back to school

Scotty and Crystal working on Math homework together.

We’ve been keeping ourselves out of trouble by staying busy. We are both going to school full-time and working full-time:

Scotty is studying Business at Linn Benton Community College. He plans to transfer to Oregon State University for Spring term. His favorite class right now is Business Law. He is also taking Introduction to Business and Calculus. He is still building houses with Steve Oien Construction in Philomath, but he has to cut a couple hours in order to attend school. To make up for this he has taken a weekend job at Paul’s Place, the restaurant he worked at in high school. He really enjoys working there again as he missed some of his old friends.

Crystal is enjoying her first year at OSU. She is majoring in Communication and really loving it...you all know how much she likes to talk. She is still working as the bookkeeper at Bridge Builders International. In addition to bookkeeping she has been helping promote the summer projects that BBI will be hosting in Latvia. The projects are similar to last year, there will be the 2nd Annual Thomas Kinkade Art Camp and “teRiga”, a city service project with American and Latvian youth volunteers. More to come on these later.

Doxology

We have been attending “Doxology”, the new college-age service at Jefferson Baptist Church, for about nine months. Peter, Scotty’s brother, is the college pastor there. We have been a part of the core leadership team since the beginning of Doxology. Scotty is in charge of some of the operations of the service and Crystal sings in the band.
Doxology is a little bit different than what you may expect from a Baptist church. There is a strong emphasis on art and community. The walls display paintings, photos, poems and many other forms of art. The worship band plays mostly original music, and there is often interpretive dance and artistic videos as a part of the service.
There is a coffee shop after the service every week. It has a casual atmosphere where people feel open to converse with people outside their social bubble. There is also a small stage where musicians from Doxology have an opportunity to share their talents.

Crystal to Latvia

Crystal went to Latvia with Bridge Builders International. Returning to Latvia was a wonderful experience; it was amazing how familiar things were. This feeling of familiarity and comfort with the city and the culture made her more able to focus on the people and the ministry.

Crystal with good friend, Renalda, in Latvia.

Matthews Church, church that Hub partnered with in 2003

Streets in Old Riga.

Blackhead Sqaure in Old Riga at night.

Her time was mostly dedicated to the TeRiga service project. TeRiga is a practical service project that brought together Latvians and Americans from over 25 churches.

teRiga participant cleaning up at the most visible sight the city allowed us to clean.
Before and After shots of this sight below.

Before

There were about 100 Latvians and 12 Americans working simultaneously on 8 project sites. The work ranged from repainting play structures to clearing underbrush to major cleaning of a burned down market. TeRiga was seen and heard. Many people stood at the edge of the work sites and watched, by the second day many of these people began to approach the participants and ask “What are you doing?”. Their actions spoke for them and gave them the opportunity to share that God cares about people and Christians want to serve their community and share the love of God.

Latvian participants explaining their works to passerbyer.

Another part of the project was to bring the Message to people in the form of music outreach. As you may know Latvians are crazy about all art, but music is their passion. There were two music events, both in very populated squares or parks. Many local and international Christian musicians showcased their original music and used their music platform to share Christ. The cool part about all this is that the Latvians took ownership of the projects. The Latvians did all the communicating and up front spotlight time so the rich-Christian-American-trying-to-convert-the-world stereotype was broken. Many more people were reached this way.

British band performing in Blackhead Square in Riga.

During her time in Latvia she was able to connect with quite a few friends that made last year. These friends are involved in youth programs at their churches and even going on international mission trips. It is encouraging to see as we minister to the Latvians they are in turn going out and ministering to others.

Crystal with Anna (next to Crystal in white), a friend that was made in Hub's trip to Latvia summer of 2003.

Before

After

Scotty to Mexico

Scotty went with his brother (Pastor Pete) with the youth group to Mexico to build homes for a couple of families. This was Scotty’s first trip where he was in charge of the building of one of the houses. That was a challenge for him, but he left good about it at the end of the week and his crew said he did a good job. He is hoping to go back and do that more in the future.

still newlyweds

Hello from the newlyweds! No doubt our last 8 months have been quite the adventure. We are adjusting to being married nicely. We have been busy with work and school; we even took a couple classes together this last term. Scotty is working full-time as a framer for Steve Oien Construction in Philomath and Crystal is still working as a bookkeeper for Bridge Builders International (BBI).

Scotty and Crystal on the bus during our honeymoon.

We just moved from Lebanon to Corvallis a few weeks ago. Even though this means we are a half an hour away from Crystal’s family, it is nice that both of us are that much closer to work. This also puts Crystal closer to the band she has been singing with lately. This gives her more opportunities to sing at shows where she can also sing some of the songs she has written. The lead singer in the band just put out a CD with Crystal singing backup vocals. That is really exciting for us.