31.10.07


just when you think you got things figured out disaster strikes... so we had a little extra time today in between doing some work at the team office and opening up the bazzar for the weekly clothing sale and we thought a good way to kill some time would be in the cukraszda, (coffee shop). we ordered our stuff for some odd reason the lady laughed after i had completed our order but we thought nothing of it, we figured it was just our funny canadian/ hungarian accents and so we sat down, lynnette went off and returned to the table to find me sitting there with this...... with a strange odd look on my face. we had ordered a piece of cake each lynnette ordered a cappucino and i ordered a latte. apparently my latte must have had a slight pronunciation problem i i ended up with the "kaszty" cake also and no drink. ok not such a disaster who can complain with two pieces of cake. we tried to explain while ordering the new latte our mistake but the lady didn't catch the joke and probably thought us kinda strange since we were laughing still about my two slices of cake, oh well they tasted good. but i guess this still wasn't as bad as when i tried to order an ice coffee for our friend Jon when he was visiting us last summer, we ended up with a quadruple shot of espresso with some ice cubes in it!

this weekend is a long weekend so not much happening here, Thursday is the holiday but when there is a mid week holiday hungarians will always take the day around off also. so friday becomes a day off since the whole country works on the saturday before. it's actually considered a work day. we had been in budapest on last saturday and wanted to park, normally free on saturday but we were surprised to find out we needed to pay, thankfully before the ticket arrived on the car!

we spent most of the week putting together information letters for the baseball teams, since the field we have been using will no longer available to us next year. telling people about the proposed plan for next year the need to build a new field, (converting half a soccer field in another part of the city) and about year end wrap up parties and when next season will being. lynnette met with olga on monday as always, every week olga complains about us leaving and tells us to stay, we will miss the weekly meetings with her! but an american girl who is joining the team in may will be able to pick up all our english students so we are happy about that.

26.10.07

update of sorts....well life here is moving along quickly as always. people always asking us when are we going home? do you have a countdown going?....so we are thinking about it lots but in the meantime still trying to stay concentrated on things we are still involved with here. its sort of a weird feeling trying to think about going home and leaving here and all we have come to love about hungary. we are very excited to be coming home (don't get us wrong), but it will be hard to leave here. we look forward to seeing many of you when we get back, hanging out with friends and catching up with family and meeting new members we have never seen! but if you think of us in the next 7ish weeks, please pray for us to be able to say goodbye to hungary and be able to readjust to great canadian living once again.....thanks!


OK on a totally different note, this last wednesday we were in ercsi for a dedication of miklos and ava's house. it was so amazing to think about where God has brought them from remembering last year and them in the tiny house, to now in their warm, dry, and safer house. and also looking at their lives and how God has moved in them and changed their personal lives. i just had to sit back and be amazed! the mayor was out and the pastor from erd along with many others. although it was a cold day and my feet almost froze off, it was cool to be there for it. you may notice in the pictures the lovely color the house got painted....miklos picked it himself and they love it....its supposedly the new style here in hungary! the other picture is of their youngest son mario....he is very cute, but a little trouble maker, but we love him and i couldn't resist not putting this cute picture of him on!

23.10.07

to england and back......


a really late birthday present... this last april for lynnettes birthday i promised that we would make it out to london before we left for home and seeing how we only have a couple weeks left what better time than now. thankfully europe is the center of cheap flights and so off we were to visit the great city of london, which just so happens to be home of our friends alison and tristan. lynnette went to high school with alsion and hasn't seen her in 2 and a half years. so really the trip was more to see them and it was a plus to see all the sights. we flew out on friday and landed in sunny london, which it stayed the whole weekend, much to the surprise of all london! what can we say... we know how to pick our weekends. saturday we headed out to the countryside to do some "geocache-ing" and see more of england than just the city. what is geocach-ing you may ask, good question we still aren't so sure, basically its a GPS lead treasure hunt with coordinates found on the internet and little canisters hidden all over the place that you have to find. basically it was a good excuse to get out into the woods, and a bit lost. alison's GPS telling us the spot was within 7 feet of where we once stood, and us searching ever tree but the one directly in front of us. oh well we eventually found it! just as the girls were voting to give up eagle eye tristan made the discovery and we all headed home satisfied. sunday and monday were spent in the city seeing the sights and catching up on old time, and making new ones, (riding the double decker buses, saying high to big ben and racing up escalators), it was kinda strange to be back in an english speaking country for the first time, but we really enjoyed the city wandering the streets and sipping drinks in places winston churchill frequented. there are few cities that just emit history like london, oh and of course the cars on the wrong side! all in all a great weekend, with great friends, thank again alison and tristan!

17.10.07


a night at the opera

last night our long awaited trip to the opera was upon us. not that we are huge opera fans, neither of us has actually ever been but more for the building and the event of it. and it being close to my birthday we thought it a good way to celebrate. so off we went and when your are spending it in a theater over 100 years old who cares if you understand only part of the story. Madame Butterfly was the opera and the language sung was italian with a monitor above the stage with hungarian subtitles. so between the two of us we could put together most of the performance. plus the symphony probably would have been reason enough to go. and no, we didn't talk through the whole time
trying to figure it out, we were afraid of being shunned by all the faithful opera fans. although the seats creaked like crazy so you had to sit perfectly still not to make tons of noise, the acoustic being so good the smallest sounds could be heard from all....... heres some shots we took while at the show, the one below is specially for andrea.
it being her birthday this weekend (happy birthday), we laughed so hard because it was like a scene straight from the muppets.....her favorite show!
and her favorite characters so heres to you andrea! haha.......now you get a view of our box from the front and back........ so as you can see we had a good time, and no the people in front of us weren't real life muppets but actually french, i didn't ever think i would be spending my 25th birthday sharing a box at the hungarian opera, kinda funny. but as you can see from the pictures the place is quite the sight. and tickets to the shows really aren't too bad since you can pay anywhere from $100 to $1.50. we payed about $20 and the seats were super nice. it was totally worth it!



15.10.07


happy birthday kyle!!!


well, today kyle turned the big 25. it was a pretty relaxed day, i made him some pancakes for breakfast, we went to ofalu to teach english...he fixed my broken bike (what a man) then on the way home from ofalu we stopped for some cake and coffee at our favorite place near by. this evening we were invited over to team mates for dinner....i brought a cake (mocha mousse, thanks mom k for the recipe)....but the funny thing that stuck me was that because we are biking everywhere now, we had to find a way to bike and get the cake over on our 25 min ride to dinner. so we put the cake in a box and strapped it onto the back of kyles bike. on the way i asked him if he ever thought he would be spending his 25th birthday riding a bike in hungary with his birthday cake strapped to the back....we had a good laugh. (and the cake made it there in perfect condition if you wondered) tomorrow we will continue the celebration by attending the opera in budapest. this is something we have wanted to do since getting here and i thought that this would be a perfect time....i hope its good...we will see and post some pictures tomorrow maybe. can you take pictures in an opera?? anyways, just wanted to wish my wonderful husband a very happy birthday...love you babe!

12.10.07

every morning you can find these elderly people down the road from us near the centre of town. they set up tables and sell their flowers from their garden, walnuts from their tree, or eggs from their chickens. i always like buying from these old ladies for 2 reasons.... 1. they are just so cute sitting there and 2. its part of their income. the pensions here are really low so the elderly are forced to work here after they are retired too. so today i bought a little
bunch of flowers from the lady on the far left....she gave me a 5 minute run down on what to do with them when i get home....and of course she instructed me to carry them upside down on the way home too.... its a thing they do here.

7.10.07



God works in ways we sometimes may not expect.....


so, many of you will remember our accident of last June. i remember just after it happened thinking "God why"? why after all the work that has been put into these vehicles and all the pain we had to go through, why? why would you allow this to happen? and maybe we will never know fully the reasons for it, except to tell and share how we were saved from serious injury and maybe even death... and also to tell of how God has better plans than ours. After hearing of the accident an OM worker in Finland who has worked for years in Austria and throughout Eastern Europe for years... took it upon himself to bring the "Bus 4 Life" to reality. And after a year and a whole lot of hard work here is the fruit, quite exciting to say the least. This bus will not only serve Hungary but will be a tool for all of Eastern Europe. It's been equipped with tons of room for books, a projector and screen for movies,a kitchen, 2 beds, bathroom and all sorts of extras for different ministries. We got to take it out to Ercsi this last weekend for our kids ministry there and it set the perfect backdrop and attracted kids and adults from all around. Here's a shot of our team mate Petri who just joined us from Finland and is our bus driver, no not our personal one, although we stopped for groceries on the way home and laughed that we had never taken a bus to Tesco before. Pray for him as taking the bus on is a huge responsibility and for safety on the roads.




We spent the second half of last week hosting the Budapest Christian High School's "service days", so we had a whole crew of Grade 7 and 8's in Ofalu and Ercsi mostly doing clean up work. but they also did a kids program each afternoon and on the saturday. On Friday with the younger kids we walked the city of Ercsi handing out tracks and invitations to our church services and also our team mate matt accompanied us with guitar in hand. we soon found out where one goes with a guitar one must expect to sing, as we had requests from a number of people. so we had a great time singing songs and praying with people in the community.




Today we had our second Ercsi sunday service as well and it went alright, all things considering. Since we were unable to use the same place as last time we were in the school gym not a ideal place but it worked. please pray for us as the team tries to find a long term place for the services. And also pray for the services themselves that people would come to seek the Lord and not to cause trouble, and for wisdom for Carlos and Rita as they lead the ministry. We know the Lord has great plans for these places although at times it may look like we are just spinning our wheels, He is moving and it is him that makes the seeds grow.

3.10.07

"Boldog névnapot" Helga:

well since neither of us can celebrate this key celebration in the hungarian culture we will celebrate it today just for the sake of it. and plus it works out nicely that it's my mom's, so "happy name day helga", this francia cremes is for you. or for me in your absence. i know your mouth is drooling just thinking about it! this was her favorite during her time here! now for those of you who are saying what are you talking about "name day" well the hungaian calender also has names on each day, sometimes more than one on a day or some names with more than one day per year, depending on the popularity of the name. this day, depending on which hungarian you ask is a bigger day than your birthday. and for those of us with out a hungarian name too bad no celebration for you, or you find a name closest to your , like Lynnette could take "Annette" or I could take "Karoly". But we don't,...... although some people like to constantly call us other names, like i get called kayak, or karl or even Tomi!

so if you ever want to make your hungarian friends day, or year, look it up and remember to wish them a "boldog nevnapot". Sorry the cake is not in top shape minutes before picking this cake up from the shop we got half attacked by a dog, Lynnette being terrified of dogs, was able to pin herself between her bike and a house and the dogs owner finally called it off, so of course she was not happy about this and was still shaking after, and accidentally crushed the cake with the loaf of bread we bought.

1.10.07

mark your calendars...its official, we have booked our

tickets home today. so the date is.....DECEMBER 16!!!!!!!! its sort of weird to think about going home already...i counted yesterday and its only 11 weeks till we are home...now that's crazy! not that we are counting. OK maybe a bit. but we are still looking forward to many things yet that we have here before we go.

this weekend (thursday-saturday) we are hosting a group from the budapest christian high school. they will be helping us at the Ofalu ministry centre with some practical work. and on sunday we have another service in ercsi (with hopefully the help of some swedish friends!)

hope you all have a good week...looking forward to seeing you all in only a short couple months!!!! (sorry no picutre this time!)