a little taste of home....sometimes we do get a little homesick, and after talking to my mom and sister yesterday i felt it again! they were telling me all about their fun "girls weekend" in seattle, and yes, i did get a little jealous. so i thought i would make some good 'ol chocolate chip cookies to make me feel better. i used your recipe mom, but they just dont turn out the same with the hungarian ingredients....but good enough! and thanks for the chocolate chips too mom!
but the cookies werent the only thing that made me feel better....it really was my amazing husband and his encouraging words. we talked a while last night and he reminded me that sometimes God asks us to sacrifice things in our lives...and at this time it means being away from family, friends, and the comforts of home. and at first didnt like that answer...but i thought about it and i know that God is teaching me total trust in him and just to rely on him for all my joy and strength! then kyle proceded to tell me (this was probably around 11:30pm) that if i wanted to talk more i could just wake him up at night...."because thats what friends are for lynnette" What a great husband i have..couldnt survive without him! just thought i would share my thoughts - lynnette

Your days are numbered.......

We took a stroll through Budapest on sunday and went by the parliament and site of the biggest riots last week. Infront of the parliament was a large demonstration and tent city and there we found this little "tribute", a pre-made coffin for the prime minister of Hungary. Now we are not trying to make light of the situation Hungary finds itself in but I just find it interesting that only a politican could head to work one morning to find his coffin already there waiting for him. I guess he is now reaping what he has sewn literally, oh thats pretty chessy isn't it, oh well guess i'm a little chessy. Also something we found interesting and unique to Hungary is this. Armyish looking contraption, what is it you ask, maybe a mobile chemical lab, maybe some sorta sprayer, no its a mobile kitchen. army issued mobile kitchen handy for all your protest needs!
Thankfully the riots have calmed down after 3 straight nights of trouble but pressure will stay on the government for reform. In other news we will be heading off for the weekend to help do a teens camp. The theme will be on rock music, so I'm sure this will lead to many good talks and challenges to the kids to really think about what they are filling their minds and hearts with. We will also be moving next week and tomorrow we will be making a trip to the moldovian embassy, I know weird info but how many times in your life do you get to say I'm making a trip to the moldovian embasy, gotta take advantage of these moments when they come up!

Riots in Budapest,
today we woke up to news of mass riots in budap
est, the riots were in response to a taped confession by the prime minister, here is the translated versions of what he said "We have not much choice. Because we have screwed it up. Not just a bit, big time. No country in Europe has ever done anything so impudent(boneheaded) as we have done.We have obviously lied over the past one and a half to two years. It was absolutely clear that what we were saying was not true... I almost died when I had to pretend for one and a half years as if we were governing. Instead we lied in the morning, we lied in the evening and at night."
We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, we lied at night, now how would you react hearing the head of your country admit to such things. Now I am in no way saying rioting this way especially with the amount of violence is acceptable, (almost 115 police were injured by the crowd of over 10,ooo) but these statments are something to shock even the most un-political person (lynnette!). The taped admissions was geared towards his own party and not supposed to be for the public, but he is saying he really doesn't mind it being released.
Now I don't pretend to know all the reasons behind his statements but this is geared towards the "political elite" of the country. I agree with him that it is more than just a one party problem, and this is not just a problem in Hungary, as we saw in Canada with the 100 million dollar advertisment scandal only a couple years back. During the recent elections, promises were made to lower taxes here and recently it has been the complete opposite with taxes sky-rocketing, and now with this tape coming out Hungary is at a cross roads of were the future may lie. Now having the largest defiect in the EU and with this will cause the economy more damage there is un-certainty of what is next. Pray that God would use these days to open hungarians eyes, that man may fail us in trust and hope but God will never. Obviously these pictures were not taken by us but we will be in the city on sunday and since where these riots took place is on of favorite squares to just go and sit we may have to stroll by and see the damage, so we will keep you all up-dated.

Lecso and more:

I know you are all craving some real hungarian cuisine so here is installment one of our favorites, lecso is a very simple dish made onions, hungarian peppers, tomatoes,hungarian sweet paprika and some sauasge, we would write out the whole recipe but you can get it the same place we got it, matt and melinda edwards blog, see link on sidebar, we wouldn't want to seem like this was our idea and plus then you can see their new baby boy, congrats and thanks for the recipe. As you may not be able to find all indregients back in the homeland, mix and match as you see fit and its great with a little extra kick of hot sauce. Plus as a added bonus, heres a pic taken today up in the buda hills, we headed up after church for a little hike, super nice woods area just outside of budapest, was nice to go for a walk away from cars and dirt roads, so there you have it, nothing too exciting but good food is always worth sharing.  

A glimmer of hope...
today we were in a store and started up a conversation with the girl that was working there....and we had a whole conversation in HUNGARIAN for probably 10-15 mins!!! i know, not long, and at some points we didnt understand what eachother were saying...but its progress for us, and we felt very encouraged after walking out of that store! so all that studying IS doing something! we tried to explain to her what we were doing here in hungary...i think she got it, or she thinks we are crazy for learning her language for living here for only 2 years! oh well, we might go back and visit her when we can tell her more! 

 

Sunsets in Croatia

One of the perks of living in Hungary is its only a 8 hour drive to the Croatian coast, so this last week thats exactly what we did. Yes missionaries take holidays too, sorry if this dissillusions any one out there! But hey we get tired out too and just need some beach sitting time. Well ok not just beach sitting, dont want to make us sound too lazy. Our team mates Joska and Sandi were also heading for the coast so they very kindly offered to let us car pool with them, so they dropped us off on their way. We found this super cool town just south of Split and we weren't dissapointed, crystal clear water, nice sandy beachs and a old pirate town within a short walk. Ómis is a place full of character, a place where the town goes right up to shear cliffs, where the crystal clear sea is met by a kool-aid blue river and did i mention it was a old pirate town? i couldn't help but imagine as we sat, ate pizza and seafood... pirates running through the streets and women hanging out the windows, basically like the pirates of the caribbean ride! i know it was probably much different but whatever let me live in my dream. i didn't spot any parrots, wodden legs or patchs, oh well too bad.
One of the days we took a trip to visit the OM Logos Hope, a real pirate ship, ok just kidding the organization we work with has two ships and they are currently re-building a ship to replace one of them. the old one is actually the oldest sea going vessel in the world, so as you can imagine its high time for replacment. The ship is a former ferry from the Farrow Islands, (find that on a map) and is being re-fitted in Croatia. We went up and had a tour of the ship and then had lunch with the workers. Its simply put a huge project, amazing to see. The ship will be able to have 500 crew aboard, it has a ampheditre to hold meetings for 300-400 people and a huge area for the books, which is the main ministry of the ships. The project should be finished in the coming year and hopefully it'll be out floating soon and touring the world, but as we saw there is a whole lot more work to be done as you can imagine! The town that all this is being done is called Trogir just north of Split. we enjoyed walking the old town center which had a real venice feel to it, as in the look of the buildings, minus the streets of water. I love just getting lost in the little narrow cobblestone streets, and finding little hidden corners were you really get a feel for what these towns where like hundreads of years ago. On the drive back home from Croatia we had a one night stop of at a national park in Croatia, what an amazing place it was. In the park was 10 or so lakes that we all connected by waterfalls, the water was this amazing almost neon blue, almost like a glacier feed lake but these were not. All these lakes were connected by these cool walkways that hugged the cliffs and waters edge, it was really a surreal place, the pictures hardly do the place justice, so as you get the idea we loved croatia, the vacation was relaxing, refreshing, enjoyable and seeing the ship was a really good experience as well. So now its back to buisness, well work, ok ministry I guess thats the only real way to explain what we are back to. Tomorrow I (kyle) are off to the Erchi house project to help pour the floor, hopefully we can have the family in by next week and Lynnette is babysitting some team mates little girl, they are leading a training school for a couple weeks so we are helping were we can, now you see why I can only call it ministry because its a very all encompassing term that basically says, take each day as it comes and expect to be doing a whole variety of things, and thats exactly the way we want it to be!