second time around in kiskunhalas

last summer we travelled to this southern Hungarian city to put on a 2 week English camp in the local reformed high school. this year since our summer was already committed to other places, we instead were invited to come into their regular English classes and be guest teachers. very apprehensively we approached this task since none of us are trained as teachers and all we had to offer were some activities and being native speakers. this happened to be exactly what they wanted and the week turned out surprisingly well. at least we thought so, hopefully them as well! we taught in the grades 9-12, and were quite surprised at their level of English knowledge. most of them being in an English intensive program, we taught in about 3-4 classes a day. and we taught each class a little about Canada too as we did a presentation in each new class we were in. we also used many speaking exercises and songs to bring along their English. on going we really didn't know what to expect and had a tough time seeing where we would have chances to share muc more than English with the kids, but we realized at the end of week that we had tons of great talks. monday and wednesday we were involved in their evening bible studies and on friday we were given a class block to do skits and share testimonies. so we saw once again how God works in ways that we are not prepared or expect to happen! many kids we saw last year we again talked to and we were also able to talk lots with the teachers. with one teacher telling us how she didn't really enjoy reading the mandatory morning bible verse in class as she "wasn't really religious" as she put it. but then at the end of the week she told us how she was really thinking through the stuff she had been hearing and that it made a lot of sense to her.

as we shared our canada presentation we would always mention how young canada is...only 140 (1867), and how my parents church built in 1950's has historic landmark plates on it and how there are many buildings in hungary older than our country! and one class spoke up and told us there school building was built in 1890 so not much older/younger than canada and the school was founded in the 1600s. one class we taught in was even in the historic library with the picutres of the school founders looking on, a grand piano in the corner and many books older than well too old for me to explain. we originally had a game planned called a "running dictation" which as the title suggests included running but we felt a little apprehensive about that and decided to calm it down a little, "a strolling dictation" when we taught in that class room.

we got home late friday night and saturday night we headed out to our team mates church plant to help them with their english club. we did our canada presentation one last time (sixth time that week) and sharing some good old maple syrup, and explaining about a little place that has too many doughnuts to count. sunday we were in ercsi for the first church service. and even did a skit to boot. yes we are "pantomime extraordinaires" as our team mates put it. we put it more like we learnt two skits and now are called on to perform all over the place. oh ya and i (kyle) sang on the worship team (in hungarian). ya ok strange and funny to say the least but you never know just what you may do here! thankfully and by coincidence our mic cut out after the first song, maybe it's a sign from God. He's saying you can do the skit all you want, at least then your mouth is shut, but sing, come on that's where i draw the line, zap!

we had about 25 people come out so we were thankful for that. and yes it may not be your typical service, or far from how any of us may think a service may run. (ask us in a couple months all the details when we can tell you in person) but honestly it went well, to some one who may walk out of a north american church service and into this one may think it is total chaos, but hey that's just how things run at times! but amidst it all we know God is moving and especially see it in the lives of Miklos and Eva who we can see just light up whenever God is shared with them. and of course all the kids were out, which may have a little to do with the chaos but again when they all walk close to an hour to get to the church service it shows they desire to be there! so there you go hopefully a little taste of our last weeks, sorry it took a while to update, but im sure you can all appriciate our busy-ness and forgive us.

this weekend we head to czech republic with our kids and teenage boys baseball teams for friday and saturday for a couple of games. so that should be a good time away with them all, the last event of the year with them all and a weekend away is always fun for the kids, especially for the kids who haven't played a game in months.

off to the bazaar tomorrow!!!