Another niece/nephew on the way!!!!
i (lynnette) am so excited and happy that my sister vicky and her husband jonathan are expecting a baby sometime in the begining of december! i feel so much better now that i dont have to keep it a secret anymore...although it was much easier to keep it a secret over here! if i was at home i probably would have spilled it long ago! WE LOVE YOU GUYS lots and cant wait till the baby arrives....even though we are across the world, we will survive with just seeing pictures...i guess! if you need any name suggestions, i can offer some great (?) hungarian ones....zoltan, bogi, chaba, peti, attila, istvan....your choice! CONGRATS!!!

house hunting hungaryian style:

alright calm down...no need to worry it was not for us, we headed down to lake balaton to stay with joska and sandi who are looking to buy a place there. it was a great time of relaxing, and seeing the area we will be moving to (hopefully by september) and also attending the local church. we helped them paint the place they are borrowing and then headed out on the hunt with them. and what a hunt it was, they are looking in smaller towns just a bit away from balaton and there are some amazing quaint farming towns up in that area, and when i say town i mean it, the smaller of the two towns had maybe 12 houses and a phone booth. oddly enough this booth was in the middle of their field. house hunting is very unique compared to back home as real estate agents are rarely used and its mostly done by word of mouth, so you either head to the local coffee house, to the local pastor or you head straight for the mayor himself. The local reform pastor was nice enough to take us around all day and show us all the houses for sale. You rarely leave a "viewing" without something to take along, one house we picked a bag of fresh cherries, yes they ripen early here, and from others we left with hand fulls of flowers, we actually had to sneak the second hand of flowers into the trunk without the old women seeing the first batch, didnt want to seem ungrateful but they smelled amazingly strong (hello allergies!) and were exactly the same as the first load! The pic bellow is of the property way up in the smaller village, as you can see there used to be a structure of some kind that is now burned down to nothing but a little walls, this was actually a great piece of land and its probably better than any places that actually have houses on them cause most would have to be completely torn down anyways.
the pastor was telling us a little history of the catholic reform battles that have happened in this town and it was quite amazing to hear. his church which he gave us a tour of was the third reform one, the first was completely demolished by the catholics and the second was burned down. during a reform service the catholics came and barricaded the doors with all inside and then light it up, all escaped though, this all happened during the reformation days but he said it can still be felt within the town, he also showed us a bible that was 300 years old, lynnette is very proud to be able to say she has flipped through a 300 year old bible, i was quite nervous one of us might rip a page out or something but it survived! when you think of it that bible that we held was the cause for all the battles in that time, the catholics trying to keep the bible in latin and in the church only and the reforms translating into hungarian and getting it into the peoples hands.

The pic below is of a man we ran into on the banks of the balaton, as we walked up he pulled in a foot long fish which looked like a bass but i was told it was a variety of the carp, which the balaton is overrun with not that the hungarians mind, we helped him to pull his catch net in and had a good laugh as he got soaked by the waves, he then proceeded to slowly sit down remove his shoes and dump the water out and the hork up a huge spit ball which the ladies were oh so impressed by, old men are great... not a care in the world!

 

Our very own hungarian pet.....kind of.
well the other day kyle was sweeping out infront of our door, when he discoved it. he kept sweeping over this one tile and noticed it was moving, he couldnt figure out what it was until he lifted the broken tile up and found 2 frogs! so i snapped a picture because i thought it was funny, but i think they have now left the premises, and no they have not come into our house....we have ants as pets inside! supposedly its a popular indoor pet here in hungary...so we just embrace them and give them some "food" while they stay.

on another note...today we went for our first meeting with the hungarian couple to practice speaking more. it went really well and they we so helpful and patient with us. we will meet them next week again and hope to keep up this weekly. one funny thing that happend at the end of our morning was when we were saying good bye. ok, here they do the "kiss on the check, both side thing" like italian style. this is all fine if both persons go to the right sides. i thought i had this down pat, but apparently i was confused on which side to go to first and almost kissed the lady on the lips!! she laughed and so did i out of embarrasment.....she didnt think that we bonded that much in our 2 hours of speaking hungarian!!! yeah so that was a pretty funny note to end on. but we are seeing our progress in learning this language and are thankful for all those who are praying for us, it is much appreciated and needed!
i am also greatful for all those who are praying for me (lynnette) as i am preparing for the english classes. at the beginning of the week i was feeling VERY overwhelmed and wanted to quit....but good thing for kyle and his encouragment, he didnt let me!( i really wouldnt have anyways) but the last couple days have been good progress and i have about half the days done, yahoo! so we still have 2.5 weeks before we go out on outreach to prepare and are looking forward to it alot. for those of you who want to know where we will be (all those who like looking on maps...vicky....) the town is called "Kubekhaza", try and find that on a map! it is in hungary, but right near the serbia and romania border.
anyways, thats all for today. this post is for you mom, since i just finished talking to you and you asked for a new post, so here it is! ask and you shall recieve. ok not always but for today here u are! for future warning if any of u recieve a call from us please dont assume and emergency, sometimes we just wanna talk to you! but thanks for caring for us mom and whats up with many others of you who are to "busy to pick up", the call display said hungary and you automaticallly think telemarketer or something?! oh well maybe next time

pot holes and those that fill

for this weeks instalment of our lives in hungary we thought we would fill you in on the roads of erd and the lack of road crews! Erd has the great rep as one of the few larger towns in hungary that still has dirt roads, and of course with dirt roads comes dust, mud and of course pot holes, it was just election time here so of course many roads were quickly re done but that involed a steam roller and some loads of gravel. a great band aid but not too helpful. the locals also have their own remedies to this problem, grass, roof tiles, branches and basically anything that fits is put into the holes. the pics dont do justice as this is something to be truely appreciated in person,.......hint hint (come visit one and all) now this may also be a local way of trash removal but it seems to not exactly solve the problem. erd is formally a summer home place for people looking to escape the concrete jungle of budapest. so the roads are very sporatic and really not a ideal place for those relying on bike for transport. cautious travel is the name of the game and shocks would defiantly be a plus, lynnette claims that on the way home for language study all knowledge attained had been shook out of her head.
on the way home yesterday we were treated to a man just down the roads weeding in only his underwear, not exactly an expected sight, i guess its not so strange for the locals, maybe he was taking the scare tatic on the weeds, lynnette had a hard time not laughing and lets just say she failed miserably, he didnt seem to understand what was the problem, wish i had a picture but then again you probably are grateful for that! he was probably in the process of bringing the weeds out to fill some holes!
this past while we have been busy preparing for our upcoming outreach in june (11-24th). lynnette is in charge of the english classes/lessons, and preparing for all of them. she is feeling a little overwhelmed since she has never done such a thing....so if anyone has any good/creative suggestions on teaching english to people who have no previous knowlege...she would greatly appriciate it! and i am generously (this is now lynnette talking) helping her in her plans. but i will also be invovled in the sports activities...socccer/baseball, so we have kept busy with that stuff.
one huge answer to prayer that happened in the last week.....we found a hungarian family that we can practice our language knowlege with!!!! we are so grateful for this family (we met with them last week), we will be going there once a week to just practice talking with them. so thanks to all who prayed for that...it is much appriciated!

the week of aggression release

well honestly we not so full of aggression but if we were this week would have been a great time to release, we headed off on tuesday (kedden for those wanting to learn hungarian) to meet joska and sandi who had been all weekend with 30 teenagers and join in a little paintball action, it was a great time helping joska let loose on the kids that gave him a hard time all weekend. This is also a new evangelistic tool, it must fit into the holistic ministry approach somehow! We both only left with minor welts as most of the kids suffered a little more. Today we went out to Matt and Melinda and little Olivers place, they are part of the OM team and are working with a church plant in a smaller city a half hour from here called Tatabanya. They recently bought a place, actually we moved into the place that they lived in before moving, and their new place has many garages out back, so today was d-day for garage number one. As you can see everyone was put to work even Melinda who is 6 months pregnant, alright were not that cruel but hey it makes for a great shot! We had agreed not to blog this pic but we just couldn't resist! Sorry Melinda! Here also is a pic of little Oliver and his scooter/motorbike as he would call it, now just to give you a little background, these scooters are as much a part of the hungarian culture as goulash and carp soup. Its practically a given that all kids own one of these little things, sunday family walks in the park are always accompanied by kids cruising with their motorbikes. Little Oliver is the funniest kid and whats most impressive is he speaks both hungarian and english, you can also tell his dad is a worship leader because lynnette over heard him signing "how great is our God". Too cute! We had a good time helping out at their new place and then headed off for a picnic dinner and checking out the local caves. Thanks for the great day Edwards family!

 

mi beteg vagyunk.....

for all you non hungarian speakers out there that is "we are sick", and for all you hungarian speakers out there if you wouldn't mind handing over some of that knowledge it would be much appreciated, yes we have both come down with a nice cold. It seems like and sickness here are much sicker if you get what I mean, anyways Lynnette caught it first and now has so nicely shared the wealth with me. I guess this is un-avoidable living under the same roof. From all the coughing Lynnette had a couple days of man voice and then a couple days of no voice at all. I joked and told her she wouldn't be not allowed to lead women's bible study as they were unsure of whom was speaking to them. We also had a very exciting week as we were able for the first time to go to the bakery and instead of grunting like cave men at the bread we were able to ask for what we wanted like proper civilized people, I know that this may not seem like a big deal to you but we were quite proud of our selves. Although the day before I swore at our language teacher who is also a pastor! Apparently I need to be a bit more careful on some of my pronounciation, we all had a good laugh after we caught onto what I did, oh well who said we would make no mistakes, better it being our language tutor then the lady at the post office, whom probably would have a couple words back for me! The joys of language learning. We also ran into a couple at bible study who are moving to vancouver in sept.They are from montana and will be going to SFU/Regent so naturally we are their tour guides/advisers, which reminds me to ask if any one knows of a place that may come up for rent in vancouver in sept, thought i would throw it out there for them, you never know! We also had a couple come to our team prayer day to share, and guess what they are from abbotsford! Craziness, he is hungarian by birth but escaped hungary as a 9 year old on his own and some how found his way to abbostford, alright the storys longer than that but he had an amazing testimony. This brings me back to a certain ride at disneyland with some catchy tune, cant remember it maybe it'll come back to me later....hehe. Thus concludes my thoughts for the week, as you can tell my thought pattern is short, sweet and sporadic but hopefully not to boring, oh well i guess its your choice to read or not.

 

peer pressure blogging....!


i will warn you now before you decide to read on that this post is only for those of you who seem to be impatiently waiting for a new update. this post will not contain any of the following..... funny stories of us making cultural mistakes....... exciting adventures and escapades of ours....or complaints about our continual struggle of language learning, ok i guess that was just covered and it may come up again....... i apologize in advance for this but i guess not every post can be the same so continue if u wish but you have been warned!
this past weekend the om hungary team headed out to a castle for our team retreat, ya it was pretty neat. the castle is fairly new in the world of castles, it was built in the early 1900s and was hardly used until recently, due to wars and communism. 5 years ago calvary chapel bought it and turned it into a bible school, quite the bible school! anyways we all (about 30) headed out for a weekend of game playing, team building, scavenger hunting and some teaching, oh ya and kite making! one of the families here is brazilian and apparently kite making must be right behind soccer in national sports. Speaking of soccer, we also had a game in the back gardens of the castle, quite the place for a field! Most of the weekend was spent in the coffee lounges inside though, for all you coffee experts, you will be happy to know that starbucks was served, so as you can guess most of the students are american, the two just cant be separated i guess. We were challenged by the speaker in many ways, one of the quotes that has stuck with me is "God takes people who think they are somebody, makes them realize they are nobody without Him, so that he can reach everybody through them" That is so true for where we are at right now, God is in the process of breaking us and making us realize that if we rely on our own strength to learn the language, to adapt, to...... well you get the idea then we will get nowhere, but when we realize that without his continual strength we are nobodies then he can use us. It so reassuring to now as we feel like we are only struggling to know that he is using just that to make us more effective.