Thursday-Monday sorry it took so long!

Sorry we have been very busy these last few days, but here is an update and some more pictures before we travel home!
Thursday: We began the day as usual, songs and a bible story in the morning. The Bible lesson for the day was Jesus healing the paralytic man, the deaf mute man, and the blind man. The younger classes learned these using fun actions while the older classes learned idioms. The English lesson for the day was friendship, we learned what it means to be a friend in English and adjectives to describe how friends treat each other. We celebrated another special day, Pastor Vinovskis had his 20th year of ordination. All of the ladies in the church were given flowers to give to Pastor (an old Latvian tradition) and he received letters and pictures from all of the children at camp that they made on the sly.
Friday: The bible lesson for the day was the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It was a very powerful day in all of the classes. Before classes Mr.Coe talked about how our Lord came and died so that we could be forgiven and after classes Marcis, someone the young boys look up to very much spoke in Latvian about the resurrection. It was a sad but also joyous day around camp because that day it was more about Jesus than about learning English, all of the teachers were excited to tell their kids about Christ. The English lesson for that day was Holidays, so the younger classes celebrated holidays while the older classes discussed the cultural differences between holidays.
After classes were over and we ate dinner we headed to Zvejniekciems to watch the sunset on the Baltic. A few of us took a swim in the 8 C water, it was absolutely frigid, but got our adrenaline pumping. The sunset was gorgeous (seriously look at the pictures) and after it went down we headed home for some much needed sleep.
Saturday and our last day of camp: the bible lesson for the day was ascension and the return. This day was set up a bit differently because at the end of the camp day we had a program where each class gets to perform a skit or a song that shows what they learned in English. After doing the bible lesson all of the classes practiced their skit or song and then we let them have a little free time for a change. Brian did a great job keeping them occupied outside playing four square, jumping rope, and just being active. Sharon also put out all of her extra craft supplies from the week and helped everyone who wanted to make more, they really loved making friendship bracelets! When the time for the program rolled around everything was set up, all of the kids parents and family came and it was showtime! The first show was Heide's class, the youngest children, they sang two songs wonderfully and used great English with their actions. The second was Katie and my class, the beginners, they all wore different animal masks pretending to be on Noah's (Brian's) ark, after each announced their animal name and sound in English we sang a song about animals. The third was Priscilla's class, they sang two songs, and used hand drawn letters to spell out CHRISTIAN from "I am a C", it was very fast paced and I'm sure took a lot of practice. Next was Pastor Vinovskis class, they did a skit where they pretended to be ordering food from a restaurant, they were very funny and used very many idioms such as "they eat like pigs!" Pastor Schuschke and Suzanne had the advanced class and they performed a skit mostly of things their group found funny, it was a little wacky but all of the characters in the skit showed a very high level of proficiency in English and some even hardly had an accent. Larry had three adults, one was a very elderly lady and a middle-aged married couple, each hadn't studied very much English in their lives and just wanted to spend a week learning. For the program the elderly lady said John 3:16 in English, it was very touching, and the middle aged couple told jokes in English, which was hilarious. After all the talents were over we had a great big dinner for everyone, the actual dinner food was Latvian and delicious, but as a team we brought supplies to make s'mores over a fire and the kid's were crazy about them! It was an amazing night of fellowship and we all hope that everyone left with their hearts full with Christ.
Sunday: We all woke up and went to Church, which was quite possibly the best thing so far, so many children from camp came to Church! We had been inviting them all week to come and sing our English songs for the congregation at the end of the service. It was so great to be all together praising God! Pastor Shuschke gave the sermon and was translated by Vanda, it was really powerful and he used the story of the paralytic that the children had heard earlier in the week. After Church we visited Sigulda and saw a Medieval Castle and visited one of the oldest churches in Latvia. It was a very nice day.
Monday: We began our last day in Latvia getting on a train and visiting the occupation museum in downtown Riga. It is such a moving experience because it is hard to understand without actual information how recently Latvia actually was occupied and how many people actually died due to terror or disappearance (550,000). After we spent a while in the museum we had lunch and of course did some souvenir shopping. It was a beautiful day and we all got to see so many flowers and green grass even being in a big city. We traveled back by train and were invited to dinner by Marcis's family to eat at their house. It was such traditional Latvian food, homemade, everyone loved it, and loved the last night we all got to spend together. After dinner we sang a few songs and said a few goodbyes to those we won't see before we leave.
Tuesday:HEADING HOME (we may be able to update from Amsterdam)