"Lomtalanitas"ing it!
Birthdays in foreign countries are always filled with un-expected “special” events but I honestly can’t say I ever thought it would involve such a “cultural” experience. We were invited out to team mates of ours for a nice day to visit their church and the such, the other small detail involved was a little garage cleaning. They moved last spring into a new place and the back garage was formerly an upholstery shop, and was filled with well... a little bit of everything and a whole lotta old cushions. Lomtalantas is a time when residents can put anything out on their front drives and the city will take it away for you, so for a day the whole neighbourhood turns into something that resembles a mix between war and flood zone. Quite the sight to behold. This happens twice a year and so Matt and I thought we would take advantage of it and pile as much as possible infront of his place, as you can see we were very successful and now the next question is will they take it all! Of course with piles of garbage comes scanvengers and we had our fill of those throughout the day, we decided this should be a new addition to missionary manuals for networking as we had all sorts of vistors and neigbours coming throughout the day for metal, vacuums and just to stand and look in wonderment at our great wall! At one point we even had some old residents drop by to give us a little history lesson of the house and back gargages of the Edwards place, which was a one point the town butcher and auction barn, then turned into a uposltry shop which was quite easy to figure out given all the evidence we hauled out all day. We figure if this place was in north America we could have made a killing selling of all the relics we found, early 1900 photos, a birth and marriage certificate from that period also, hand crafted seats, sofa’s and tables and even a old combing wheel used to make the stuffing for cushions, oh and did I mention the cushions were filled with animal hair, ya I found this out upon throwing one in the fire, not such a good idea, the smell reminded me of burning my knuckle hair or something, the stench was terrible to say the least.

The day wasn’t all work we also went to their church plant in the morning for their Sunday service. This is a very new church and already has between 20-40 attending, it was a really special time to be involved in such a fresh and vibrant church. We really enjoyed the service and people you could really feel that God was going to do special things with them in that city, pray for the Tatabanya Calvary Chapel as they continue to grow and reach their community. Matt just last week started their first youth event! Thanks again guys for the great day and cake! Yes as you can see I got a birthday cake and for those of you who can remember Lynnettes birthday my candle even out does her giant matchstick! And mom yes it was really marzipan!

The weekend also included a trip to Esztergom with some friends from church, it was a cool town of course dominated by a huge cathedral, we climbed to the top of the bell tower which made for some cool views, the bell inside was huge. I think something like 6 tonnes As we were standing there we realized it was just about noon so we all prepared to make a sprint down the stairs at the first sign of movement of the bell. But we found out later that the big one is only used for special occasions and the smaller one is used daily. We also took advantage of the close proximity of the slovakian border and took a walk across the bridge for a stroll in slovakia, not everday you can say that! They had a big fair and market on the Slovak side so it made for some interesting sights.