Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
In August I attended a Lutheran Free Conference in Riga, Latvia. The topic of the conference was the liturgy and featured speakers from several countries, including Dr. Petkunas, pastor of the Palanga Lithuania Parish. I will not bore you with a travel log, but I do want to mention a few things that might be of interest.
Unlike Lithuania, which is predominantly Roman Catholic, Latvia is predominantly Lutheran. LCMS is in "pulpit and altar fellowship" with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia.
We arrived in Riga on Saturday afternoon. We had not slept for nearly 24 hours so we “slept in” Sunday morning. We arrived at “Dom Cathedral” a few minutes before noon and, to our delight, we got there just in time for the Divine Service! Although we could not understand the words, we could follow the service since it was much the same as our liturgy and we recognized the tunes to all of the hymns!
I marveled that we could travel so many miles to a little known country, with a language so strange to our ears, and feel so at home in the Divine Service! I must say I was a bit saddened to think that there are children who are growing up in congregations that no longer use our traditional Lutheran hymns and liturgy and may never know that joy.
In front of us sat a mother with her son, who was about three years old. The mother was a remarkable example of Christian piety. She knelt on the bare wooden floor for the confession of sins, the Lord's Prayer and the words of institution. Most, but not all, of the congregation did the same. We also knelt for the confessions of sins, but that was about all my old knees could handle! The son was a typical, but well behaved, three year old and she did not insist that her son do the same. I thought to myself what a wonderful example this loving mother is for her son!
After the conference, we traveled to Palanga Lithuania to tour the building project we have been supporting the past three years. The work is progressing, but much slower than expected. Pastor Petkunas is working very hard to keep the cost as low as possible. By next spring the construction should be to the point where we could have some crews from IDE go over to do interior work. We need to continue receiving financial support for the project. Make your checks to “LCMS World Relief & Human Care – Palanga Project.” You may send your offerings here to the District office and we will make sure it gets credited to the Palanga account. Every penny will go to the project!
We did attend Sarka’s wedding, as I wrote in the last edition of IDE TODAY. Her husband’s name is Pavel. In the Czech Republic a civil officer conducts all weddings. The clergy are not authorized to conduct marriages, as they are here in the U.S. After we arrived Sarka asked me to do a “Christian blessing of their marriage.” Thankfully the order of service for “Blessing of A Civil Marriage” was available on the LCMS website. So all I had to do was modify it to fit the situation. Not very many of the wedding guests could understand English, but one lady who did understand English was so moved by the service she asked for a copy of it. I am going to send her a copy of the Luther’s Small Catechism and Augsburg Confession in Czech, also a copy of the CPH book For All Eternity, which is a devotion book centered around Luther’s Small Catechism.
The Czech translation of these confessional writings is done by The Lutheran Heritage Foundation. If you know someone who does not speak English and you would like to share the Faith with him/her, I suggest you check with The Lutheran Heritage Foundation to see if they have anything in that language. The Foundation will send the copies to you free of charge. They would, of course, appreciate a donation to their work. Lutheran Heritage Foundation phone number is (800) 554-0723. If you would like to learn more about the organization, go to www.lhfmissions.org.
