This past weekend the OM team here in Hungary headed off for our once yearly team retreat. no complaints when it means spending the weekend with friends and staying in a castle! Vajta is a small town here in Hungary and in it is a Bible school which has completely renovated a old palace/castle. the story of the castle was that it was built in the early 1900's by the 5th richest family in hungary, they fled during the 2nd world war and the camp fell into the hands of the communist party and was used as a vacation home for leaders and their families, it was then converted into a camp for handicap children. but after the fall of the iron curtain the government could no longer afford to keep it up and it was abandoned. in 2000 the palace was bought and converted into a bible school complete with everything from a pool, to two i must say pretty cool coffee bars. we spent the weekend playing games, we had a guest speaker, and a trip to the pool which included what is needed for true team building... a giant pool wrestling match. we had a great weekend of catching up with team mates, getting beaten in a variety of card games and sipping good coffee. here's a shot of how we've been getting around hungary now a days, it's slow going what can i say. these are all the rage for kids here, there super funny to watch all the kids roaring around on them, i just had to give a try. apparently i'm a little to big though. but really north america should wake up and get their hands on these, we are actually thinking of starting a export buisness to introduce these to the american market! i think it will go. but in reality we do actually have wheels here right now, we are borrowing our english team mate's (jill) car, believe it or not we have had a car since october. first jill's then when she came back and our south african team mates (pranesh and heather) lent us their car and now that they got back jill once again lent us her car as she doesn't need it. and now we found out our brazilian team mates (carlos and rita) will go home for the summer and told us we can us their car......! what can we say but the Lord provides and we have great team mates! this last picture is of our team leader rodney and his wife kitty and their two boys mark and patrick. they are leaving the team to go back to the states. we have enjoyed getting to know them so much and will miss them greatly, we will especially miss their boys who refer to us as kyle basci and lynnette neni which is the formal way to great people but they are the only ones who do this for us and plus their really fun and funny guys to have around. rodney and kitty you will both be missed but we know the Lord had amazing plans in store for you in the states. this coming weekend will be filled with helping our team mates move out and in of various places and also on sunday we have baseball games, our boys team won both matches last weekend, even beating a un defeated team, which we had earlier lost 23-3, and we just found out that we have qualified for the hungarian finals which will be happening in two weeks time, so "hira" pirates! GO Pirates!

well, another week has flown by again....haven't been so great at updating our blog, guess that means we are busy! i have to think back about last week and try to remember what happened

...i will share about english classes...last monday we met with olga again. we are now teaching her how to ask for directions in english...apparently what i thought would be a one week lesson, is turning more into 3 weeks! but we had a great talk with her these last 2 weeks. she is opening up and asking lots of questions. we have talked a lot about assurance of salvation and just shared with her that there is hope of heaven in christ ...and of living eternally there...not here on earth as she thinks she might! but she shared with us that she really isn't even sure where she will go after she dies. today i showed her a power point that a team mate has made, its a presentation of the gospel in hungarian...we are praying that God really uses this to waken her heart to Him.…and that her stubborn heart would be softened! last week when she was talking quite fast (and i wasn't understanding anything she was saying)...i was just looking at her and it really saddened me because i see that she is totally lost. i saw a women who needs God and is so far from Him....and its hard to talk to her because she is old, and her heart and mind are set in their ways! but my prayer really is that God would work a miracle in her life and draw her to Himself. this morning i was reading in a book, just thought i would share something i found encouraging...

“I cry out to the God Most High, to God, He will perform the cause I hold in my hand.” Psalm 57:2

“The very thing that I hold in my hand- my work today, this concern that is beyond my control, this task which I have greatly overestimated my own abilities- THIS is what I may “cry out” for Him to do for me, with the calm assurance He will perform it.”
-streams in the desert

we also have a new student….she is actually the mom of the newest kid that comes on Fridays. I will meet with her on Friday for the first time for English lessons. I have spoken with her lots (in Hungarian mind you) at baseball because her daughter plays with the kids team. So I am excited to start meeting with her on a weekly basis and continue to build a relationship with her. (yes mom klassen, its Adrienne and Atilla’s mom!)
we also got to help with some of our team mates who are doing a church plant 45 mins from here. They are holding English clubs on Saturday nights for teenagers who want to practice speaking. Only 5 kids showed up but it was a good time, we look forward to helping more with it when it starts back up in September. we are also looking forward to seeing my parents in only 2 short weeks...yahoo!!! (-lynnette)

in other news we are enjoying 30'C weather and it should be holding round there for the next couple weeks, summer has defiantly come! sorry to rub it into you vancouverites! oh ya and Go GIANTS Go! (-kyle)

mothers day in hungary.....well not actually since here in hungary we celebrate a week earlier....ahead in time and in celebrations!
yesterday as we told you in our last post we had a outreach in ercsi, a community about a half hour drive from home. the swedish/finish team has been here all week meeting with different families and holding meetings. last evenings meeting went really good, some students from the local christian high school came also and lead worship. i briefly shared my testimony with translation of course! as much as i wished my hungarian was good enough to speak in front of people it just ain't. (my english is also on the quick road downhill!) then we had some special gyspy music from the swedish team and also they shared a message for the people and invited people to the front for prayer, with many people responding to this. this video is some little excerpts from the evening.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photosthe two middle clips are a mothers day gift for my mom. while they were here they met little robbie and she especially asked for some video of him. robbie is such a special little guy, blind since birth but he has a glow and fire that really can't be described. you can't help but smile when around him, with his sporadic loud AMENS, and Hallelujahs. and he sings like no other kid i have ever heard, as we pull up to his street he always knows and comes running out of his house yelling CARLOS, CARLOS (our brazilian teammate). the other videos are of the swedish/finish team with some gyspy music and also a little three part translation which was quite funny to watch, from finish to roma (gyspy language common throughout europe), and then to hungarian since not all the gypsies speak roma. praise the Lord for the work he is doing in ercsi and pray for a continued openness in the people there!

april showers......

well this month has been quite a busy one as you can see from the lack of posts,..but we have had a great time hosting family. Catching up on old times and making lots of new memories, it was so great to be able to just "be" with family and also get to show them life and work here. we look forward to the coming months as other family will also be coming. but it has also made us really miss home and especially our new niece and nephews, some of who we have only seen over web cam. but we will be able to catch up in only a few short months which will fly by!

this shot of me was taken in vienna while there with my parents, we convinced lynnette to go and give this "statue" some money but as she walked up he lunged out and freaked her out, the rest of us had a great laugh and she refused to go back and give him the change.

we also had "take your family to work weeks", we had told our family that if you come, your joining us where ever we go and basically that's what happened, hope you guys didn't mind it! they joined us at English club, clothing bazaar, baseball, and many other things, mom even cooked team lunch on tuesday for over 20! thanks again mom! we also ran into a older couple in our neighbourhood, while on a walk back from ice cream. Their grandson plays baseball with us and lynnette has met the grandfather a couple times at the field and chatted with him. they invited us all back to their place for drinks and snacks, we had a great time. the picture is of lynnette, my mom and the lady, they broke out the family pictures and gave us a tour of their small farm (backyard). it was great since moving to our new place we were hoping to get to know our neighbours and now we have a great relationship with this family (good for practicing our hungarian too!), the grandma promises to stop by for tea every time she walks by with her grand daughter!

baseball continues to go well the boys teen team had games last weekend out of town so we had a good time heading out on the road last weekend, we can see them improving and they were quite excited to win their second game. we also have two kids from the team now coming to weekly English club so we are thankful that the relationships built at baseball are reaching further than just on the field. this is the teen team at our game last weekend.

we are really excited for this coming week since a team from sweden will be joining us to work in ofalu and erchi with the gypsies, they are also gypsies who speak roma (gypsy language) and have been here numerous times and have great response in these communities, on sunday we are hosting a special evening in erchi. we have rented out the community hall in erchi (the same one we used at christmas) for a outreach evening. it's always a good time with this group and we know they will be excited to see were there semi truck of donations went from christmas, although we have worked through a good chunk of the 1000 banana boxes they sent there is still plenty more clothes to be sold/distributed. please pray for this week of outreaches. we also took my parents and mark and bonnie to visit miklos and eva, carlos and rita (our team mates) have a weekly bible study at their place, they are both doing much better but continue to pray for them both.

more visitors....we are having a great time with mark & bonnie here...always good for laughs when marks around! we love having you two here!