28.8.06


Just a little something I've been learning as I was reading through Luke, in luke 1 we read the story of Zechariah the priest and how he is holy and blameless before God and how when he entered into the inner sanctuary he was met by an angel, the angel goes on to tell him how he will have a son, and how his son will make ready the way for Jesus. Now Zechariah being a priest would have been waiting for the coming messiah, but what are the first things out of his mouth after hearing the news, "but I am old". It just struck me how he totally misses the spiritual implications of the message and only sees his own physical weakness. He misses the fact that the saviour of the nation and mankind is soon to be coming and only sees his own limitations. How often do we do the same. How often does God ask something of me and I only see my limitations. I'm to tired, I'm too busy, I'm not quailfied (this is one that often comes up for us in missions), I'm too old, I'm too young. God wants us to see the spiritual implications of our "call", whatever that may be, and look past our physical weakness. As we step out and do things seeminly past what we see as possible in our own strenght and rely on his strength to pull us through it is then that we can truly say "your strength is made perfect in my weakness." Posted by Picasa

25.8.06


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August 20th in Budapest: This past weekend we headed into the city for their big holiday celebrations. August 20th is basically the big holiday of the summer and it was a day packed with air races, fireworks and many other suprises! Benni and Christina spent a couple extra days with us after the outreach before heading back to Germany so together with them we headed to the river to what we heard was going to be a air show. Well an air show it was, it was actually an air race, ya i had never heard of this before either but it was one of the crazier things I have ever seen in my life. They had a track with pylons set up on the river that they had to go through, and when I say through I mean it. They were flying maybe 15 feet off the water and if they went above the cones they were penalized. oh ya and did I mentoin the start and finish line was under a bridge, they had 12 meters of clearence from bridge to water, thats like going under the #2 Road bridge back home. Some of the guys got penalized for going too close to the water (1.5 meters). Every time they went under the bridge we all cringed because it looked way too close. Well you'll see on the video but obviously it doesn't quite do it justice, as we took them on our digital camera, if you wanna see some better videos check it out on redbullairrace.com.
The same evening they had a big fireworks show, kinda like symphony of fire, but they shoot the fireworks off of 3 bridges and one off the hills in the city. So we thought what better place to watch some fireworks then from the walls of a castle. Seemed like a good idea to us, well along with 2 million other people in the city, we got trapped in the storm of the year here. 10 minutes into the show all of a sudden a huge wind swept through the city which sent us all sprinting for cover. we hid along with a couple hundred other people under a archway but the wind and rain was so strong that we all got completely drenched. We felt like we were in some medival war, cowering under the castle wall with fireworks going off all around. Quite the dramatic evening. After about 20 minutes of this we said alright lets just start walking since we are soaked anyways. The castle also had a folk festival going at the time and the stands for this were all ripped to shreads from the storm, but all the people were still just standing there half in shock half protecting their stuff. As we made our way through the city were realized just how bad it was. One out door cafe had tables all around outside still with food and drinks on the tables, but all the people were jammed undercover and a couple of the tables had been smashed by fallen tree limbs. Aparently the subways had to be shut down because so many people were crowding into the stations for protection that people were being forced onto the tracks and 5 people died when a tree came down and through them into the river. We realized that the castle may have been the best place to be since it protected us from the worst of the wind. But needless to say it was an adventure not soon to be forgotten!


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21.8.06




Kiskunhalas English Camp

So August has already come so quickly and we are already back from our big english camp! It went really well with over 50 kids that came out. (Youngest aged 6 and the oldest: 51!) Obviously this outreach was in desperate need for more people than just our OVM team of 4. So we had a team of four come from the states and also our friends Christina and Benni from Germany travelled out to provide us with much needed english teaching skills. Christina teaches English in Germany and Benni is now studying to be a highschool english teacher. So they we a great wealth of ideas for us and gave us some tips to use in the future too! (thanks again for coming and helping us guys! we really appriciated it) Lynnette and Benni lead one class while Christina and I lead another....we thought we would spread out the knowledge and wisdom a little! We used the book of Ruth in the first week as a base for our teaching and in the second week we taught from the life and death of Christ. We normally would read the story then use these as a base for teaching. This provided many oppurtunites each day to share the message of the gospel with the kids, and in turn we had many great dissucions with them. It gave us chances to challenge those who were believers already with what thier faith really meant to them, and bring the gospel to those who had never heard it before! We thank God that he gave us so many oppurtunities to share our personal testimonies and lives with these kids.We also had baseball everyday, which is always a popular thing with all the kids! Then in the evenings we had many different programs, including movie club, worship night, and games night among other things. We were also treated to a hungarian bogracs, my personal fav in the hungarian cuisine! It's a popular dish cooked over the fire in a big pot, with all sorts of tasty spices, potatoes and meat, mmmmmm I'm craving it just talking about it. As an extra to the English classes, we set up a town wide scavenger hunt for the kids which was as much fun for us to preapare as it was for the kids to do. Lynnette and I had the playground challenge where we had kids of all ages (8 to 45) played on the slides, swings and teeter-tooter. Then they had to try to fit as many of them onto a small horse as possible, very funny to watch. We also had the kids sitting on the "sinners stone". It was placed in the center of the town in the 17th century. Anyone caught in sin was sent off to sit on the stone for a little public humilation. Here is a pic of Lynnette "warming" the stone. The stone now sits beside the local reform chruch and honestly it looks like it had a lot of use over the years. I'd love to have met the man who thought this was a good idea. Imagine bringing this big stone into the town square, or maybe infront of VMB or something and saying: "ok, if you sin you have to sit here for the next 12 hours." Maybe people starting padding their shorts to lessen the puinshment! Because I'm pretty sure this didn't rid the town of sin.This last picture is of Benni and I doing a little improv skit for the talent show we had on the last day. Ok, we had a little help from our lovely wives who quite enjoyed feeding us breakfast, combing our hair, shaving, and even putting on some lipstick! It was a great way to make the kids laugh! Please continue to pray with us for Kiskunhalas...for all the seeds that were planted in the hearts of the kids and for the pastors and workers to do follow up work. Thanks so much for all the prayers as we were away, we really could feel it and it made a huge difference for us! THANK YOU!!!! Posted by Picasa

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2.8.06


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slight distractions from studying:
well just thought you may enjoy a view from our front window, and a little of the daily happenings. This car going by, well ok you have to wait for the second car is the local gypsy's looking for scrap metal, your probably wondering what exactly they are saying and honestly we don't know and most people here can't understand it either, to me it sounds like a war cry or something, it was really strange the first time they came but after awhile it just becomes part of the week, and as you can tell they spotted me, and stopped but sadly i had to turn them away, i'm kinda looking forward to the day i have some scrap metal to give to them, i think that would make me really feel part of the culture, any donations?!


study by absorption...if i stare long enough maybe it will jump into my brain!
yes this picture looks like kyle is just staring at the back of our kitchen door, but really he is studying. it looked so funny i had to take a pic of it. but we have some notes taped to our door to help us study a little more. so yeah, thats what we have been doing this past week a lot, unfortunately nothing too exciting to post about. usually we try to go to the local coffee shop and study...less likely to get distracted then at home, plus its also a good walk. we are still meeting with our hungarian tutor and its going really well. sometimes we can see the light at the end of the tunnel...of grasping this language at some point! but we are understanding a lot more, the frustrating part is not being able to answer people back!
on sunday we leave for a 2 week outreach in a city called kiskunhalas. please pray for us if you think of us in the next 2 weeks. there we will be doing an english camp and basball of course. we are excited about it, especially because we have some friends from germany that are coming out to join us for this ministry! one of kyles friends from bible school...she is married now and they are both skilled in the english teaching department...so we are hoping to get some pointers from them too! they will stay with us for 2 days after we get back and we will be able to show them around budapest. the summer is quickly passing us by, cant believe its august already! but we are enjoying our summer, even in the crazy heat here. last night there was a huge thunder/lightening storm with rain that was coming sideways...so it cooled off the air alot and we are now enjoying the little bit cooler weather!