just a quick update since we will be gone for the next week, beth and meghan left our presence on tuesday and are currently enjoying the sunsets of venice, we try not the think of that too much and the rest of our week was fairly uneventful, except for a couple flat tires and a muffler which decided it no longer wanted to be part of the car we were driving. to the rescue 3 hungarian men and a long piece of wire. nothing like a little extra excitment!

we head off tomorrow for another week of outreach in a city 1 hour drive away. we will be going with our OVM team (us and joska and sandi) and also a team from Northern Ireland. A group from a organization called Exodus which is very involved in discipleship of young people and taking them on short term trips like this one, very cool work. We have 5 teens and a leader joining us and we will be putting on basically a day camp for kids, english club, baseball and film club. So far over 40 kids have signed up and we hope for more to join as the week goes on. We will also all be staying with host families in the city so it should be a really fun outreach. Please pray for the team and for Cegled, that God would move during this week and bless the local church, we have really felt your prayers and have seen God moving in amazing ways this summer so far and are really excited to see how he will move in the upcoming weeks.

kiskunmajsa/kubekhaza outreach

well to say the least our last week has been an interesting one! first of all it was scorching hot the whole week, with thursday being hotter in budapest than in bagdad. meghan and beth joined the OVM team for a week of english/kids camps. we traveled first to kiskunmajsa where we joined an on going english camp that was held at an old communist military base. and well, the girls got there fill of interesting stories, enough in their words that they "could go home now and be chalk full of experiences". although we had to deal with everything from cockroaches in our beds, to enough flies in the eating area to feed the camp on it's own the camp went really well. the conversation groups we held went really really well and the kids had a week full of hearing testimonies and teachings. beth and meghan were quickly latched on to by the kids. on the first day we arrived the boys were proudly showing off all sorts of old military gear that they found around the camp area..... jackets with hammer and sickle buttons, army caps and old machine gun shells, but when they told me of a landmine it was too much for me believe! so a couple days later they took me to the field to show me, here is gergu proudly showing off his find. personally i thought it a good idea to keep distance from this but he very adamantly told us it was diffused. but still we demanded he not touch it, as you can see he didn't listen and even saw no problem with holding it while smoking! as you can tell gergu didn't think he needed to listen to us and thought it hilarious that when he threw it in the air we all ran in the other direction.

our second half of the week was spent in kubekhaza, a town we were in last summer also. we also had an english camp but for smaller kids and it went extremely well also. the week ending on sunday with the baptism of two of the teachers of the camp. joska was asked to help along with the baptism. something that was a great blessing to him and the team. and really it was a special day with one of the kids from our group taking the step in front of the camp of accepting the Lord, praise God for how he worked in this last week! the baptism was held in the backyard of a local lady who accepted Christ into her heart 3 years ago while joska and sandi were in kubekhaza. since there is no church in the town we resorted to using the kiddy pool in her backyard, quite the scene to say the least.

thank you again meghan and beth you guys did awesome work and really were a joy to have stay with us. it was "good" right beth?!

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after only a few short days of work beth and meghan transformed the blank canvas of our ministry center wall into a work of art. we left it open to the girls to do whatever they saw fit to paint with only the one challenge being something that would get people thinking as they came through the room for the clothing sale, seniors clubs or many other events that occur in this room. we were i won't say suprised but very impressed with their work. you can be the judge yourself and watch this time lapsed clip of their work. we havent worked them to death....we took them into the city today and enjoyed some great weather and the lovely city of budapest!

tomorrow we will be saying a tearful goodbye to andrea and warren as they head off to amsterdam and then home and we will also be leaving along with beth and meghan for a one week outreach in the south of hungary. so the week ahead will be busy but we are all looking forward to it.

also we have a link to our latest ministry/prayer letter on the bar on the side.

so after half a week of hard work by beth and meghan the upstairs mural has now been completed, very impressive work i must say and now it's off to the downstairs where they will also do two smaller paintings to brighten up our main room where we have the clothing bazaar..... here's a time lapsed video of their work! notice the sweet matching shirts to begin, they say they didn't plan it...we think they did! we have had a great week so far with the girls here, thanks for your help. we have also been busy painting some walls downstairs after there was some water damage earlier this spring. so its a painting party here! stay tuned for a part 2 in the "paintings of beth and meghan"...

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from one outreach to the next set of visitors....well andrea and warren arrived on monday and we have had a busy week with them already. its been great! we showed them around all our favorite places in budapest of course, and put them to work too! but they have been such a great help to us already....and are willing to do anything! here is a picture explanation of some of the things we have been up to this last week:

saw the city

sanded a wall in prep for a new painting that will be done next week by beth and megan. (not too sure what i am doing in this picture!?)

had a nice dinner out

cleaned up a bunch of stuff out of the OM centre attic. this week the OM centre road has the time where you can stick out all your garbage you cant normally throw away out on the road...poor garbage men that have to clean that all up!

and went grocery shopping....this picture needs a little explanation! as you can see they are not holding on to the handle but the buggy isn't going anywhere....it the magic of magnets! they thought it was hilarious so i snapped a picture to remember the moment....i say they need this technology at home too!

Bóly:

this last week we have spent in the south western hungarian town of Bóly. we worked along with the local reformed church and put on english clubs, kids club, sports camps and a video night. we had a great time hanging out with the local teens and learning many new hungarian words like "durva" (hardcore) and mesztelen csiga (slug-but literally translated is "jersey-less snail, or naked snail), and "pupu teve" (camel....i laughed really hard at this one!) and hopefully we were able to teach them some english too. the teens had a good base of english so we did more discussion groups and talked about all sorts of topics. it was really great to get more in depth with these guys and just hang out and have fun. the guys had much to ask about canada since they loved watching whistler mountain biking and squamish climbing videos. so of course they all now have an open invitation to come and check out vancouver. this is Gabor who proudly wore his canada shirt to show us! some of the guys also took us to the local city of Pécs, well actually by the book Bóly is a city but only 3000 people live there. but they were very stern on correcting us when we called it a town, but anyways close by is Pécs which has been voted the cultural capital of europe for the coming years. a very nice city to say the least! you may be wondering whats up with the locks, well its a tradition in Pécs that couples in love go to this fence and clip on a lock, our guides for the day had a lock some where on the fence but he was unable to find it. i can see why in that mess, but im sure his girlfriend would have been able to find it. the pastor who we worked with serves that town together with 15 other towns, and 9 of those he holds monthly services, just to give you an idea of the demands and lack of pastoral workers here in hungary. we had a great time serving alongside janos (the pastor) and his wife francie (a former OMer) they have a great work going in this town and you can see how much the teens respect and enjoy just hanging out with their pastor which was really cool to see, as it is kinda rare here in hungary. pray along with us for Bóly and the surrounding area.

We are also very excited since tomorrow my sister Andrea and her husband Warren will be arriving to visit us. it'll be great catching up on old times and showing them a little bit of Hungary. we also will be preparing for our next outreach in 2 weeks and doing some work around here. My cousin Beth and her friend will be coming in a weeks time to help us locally here and also on our next outreach. So we will be doing some painting prep work at our team center in Ofalu for our arriving artists (Beth & Megan) to complete a mural in the center there. so times are busy but it's a good busy, so there you go our weekly update, and a happy canada day to all, eh!