July 21, 2025, 8am MDT
Estonian folk music swelled around Lance McGavin, breaking rain clouds and the sun broke, sparkling the roughly 110,000 people gathered in Tallinn, Estonia for the Estonian Song Festival.
Near the tears, McGovern proudly joined 31,000 other performers, a language he learned on his mission 16 years ago.
His mission left him an indelible mark, and he finally achieved his long-standing goal of performing at Estonian Song Festivals, but without God’s help, he said.
Accepting culture
While serving on missions in Estonia from 2009 to 2011, McGavin developed a deep love for Estonian culture. He even met the president of Estonia while he was there.
“I don’t have an Estonian heritage, but I felt like I had adopted this Estonian heritage as my own,” he said.
In preparation for his mission, we learned about the Estonian Song Festival, a four-day festival of traditional songs and dances that celebrate Estonian identity.
“This whole festival of songs is truly their way of showing their freedom,” McGovern said, explaining that the small country has been under the control of many different countries throughout history.
As the song festival takes place every five years, McGovern could not witness it during his mission. He returned to Estonia in 2014 to see the festival firsthand.
McGovern had a deep desire to participate in festivals and knew that people from other countries would occasionally be invited to participate in song festivals, but he had no idea how to make that happen.
There’s no coincidence
Fast forward to 2024: McGavin met a group of Estonians from New York who happened to be practicing at the 2025 festival. They invited him to join the choir and travel with them to travel to Estonia.
“It was like a dream come true,” he said. “My wife and I were able to have this amazing experience because we decided to make it work whatever it was.”
The choir was based in New York, but McGovern lived in Florida, so he arranged for the song to be practiced remotely.
McGovern said meeting the Estonian choir in New York is a soft mercy.
“God knows us, he knows our desires,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Full surcal moment
Earlier this month it was time for McGovern to travel to Estonia with his wife, parents and two children.
The song festival began on July 5th with an eight-hour parade of all performers marching through the city of Estonia. McGavin described it as a “full-sake moment.”
“It seems I was just there as a missionary, I contacted people, I knew people, I knew little about the language,” he said. “And now I’m marching towards the Song Festival Ground.”
Over the next two days, singers from various choirs performed Estonian folk music from 2pm to 11pm
The night was not approaching when McGovern’s choir took to the stage at 7pm on July 6th.
McGovern said the audience chanted an encore after every song, and his choir sang all 12 songs twice. He said they were on stage until about 10:30.
Sowing and harvesting
For McGavin, the trip wasn’t just about a song festival.
“In these types of experiences, I tried to praise God in a way,” he said.
When a native asked McGovern how he knew Estonian – he has been going on since his mission – he got the opportunity to tell them about his mission experience.
“I think I’ve influenced people like that,” he said. “Just plant a small seed you know.”
In addition to planting new species, McGovern also had the opportunity to see the fruits of his mission’s labor during this trip.
“When I was a missionary, I was, ‘What did I accomplish on the mission?’ There were a lot of seeds planted when I was,” he said. “But I’ve come back 16 years later and have seen how some of these species have bloomed and the ripple effect they had.”
McGovern specifically mentioned that the women he taught were baptized and learned that they ended up inviting friends to church. The friend was baptized and eventually married the branch president.
“It was a really big testimony for me too,” he said. “It’s just to see how the Lord works in a mysterious way.”
Lifetime mission
McGovern is sure his connection to Estonia doesn’t end here. He encouraged others to do the same.
“You can still, in a way, be useful in your mission for the rest of your life,” he said.
