thoughts from hungary....

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:31:00 +0000

well i guess this may be the last post for this blog...if we start a new one, who knows, but we will let you all in!

we just wanted to say thanks to all who came out on saturday. we were so amazed and overwhelmed by the support and to see so many people out. in the end there were about 125 people there. apparently the goulash soup went over well (so we are told) i will post the recipe at the end of this because i have had so many requests for it! we are so thankful for all who have kept up with this blog and followed us along in our journey in Hungary for the last 2 years....we hope to keep in touch with you all....

a little update on our life now.....i (lynnette) found a job yesterday!!! yahoo, i will be working at an orthodontic dental office starting monday....kyle is picking up some odd jobs with his uncle till my parents come back from their holiday when kyle will work with my dad. we are in the midst of finding a place to live in vancouver close to where i will work. we looked at a place today and hope that we can get it! we are living at my parents now, house sitting and dog sitting. life has been pretty busy since we got back with catching up with family and friends. but its been great, we even had the chance to visit my brother and sister-in-law and our 2 nephews in alberta over new years. (the pictures are from our drive out to see them...we were reminded again what a beautiful country we live in as we drove through the Rockies!)

thanks again for all your support and prayers for us over the past years, and we ask you would keep us in your prayers as we continue to adjust to life in canada!

ok, and here is the recipe:

hungarian goulash soup (serves approx 6)

2 onions (diced)

2 tablespoons oil

400 grams beef/pork (i used 2 medium sized steaks) (cubed)

3 potatoes (peeled and cubed)

4 carrots (cut into thick strips)

4 parsnips (cut same as carrots)

1 green or red pepper (whole)

1 or 2 whole onions

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons paprika (hungarian sweet works best!)

water

1. dice onions and fry in oil until clear

2. remove from heat and stir in paprika

3. return to heat and add water (approx half the pot) and meat. over med-low heat cook until meat is tender (approx 1/2 hour)

4. add salt and pepper to taste. you can also add in a dried hot pepper diced (or hot pepper flakes) if you like it spicy. i used 1 pepper for a pot.

5. add carrots, parsnips and potatoes now. you might need to top up the water if its too low.

6. you can also add a whole onions and green pepper now if you like.

7. cook until all veggies are done. enjoy!

hope it turns out for you!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:22:00 +0000

just a reminder to any of you reading the blog still and living in vancouver area we will be having a thank you dinner for all our supporters/prayer partners or anyone interested in what we've been doing. Saturday Jan 12th @ 5. we will be having some hungarian goulash soup and sharing stories, showing some pictures from our experiences over the last two years. we'd love to see you all out there and ask that you give us a call if you will be coming, at either of our parents places 604-272-4462 or 604-271-3620, it will be at our church but we can give you the directions when you call.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:02:00 +0000

so we have arrived.....
crazy to think we are actually at home, on one hand it feels like we have been gone less than a month but then one the other like we've been gone forever, & we sometimes have to question ourselves if we the last 2 years really happened at all.

the flight was mostly un eventful, long hours of sitting on planes and in airports, not so exciting. all our bags arrived although we had to be separated from some prime hungarian sausage. apparently meat is a no go in canada, especially hungarian kolbasz. we had been given it the night before we left and thought well lets see if it will make it, and i guess it didn't.

we had a great evening catching up with family and friends. always a little funny walking through the airport doors to be greeted by all. but especially strange when two reindeer show up to usher you back into canada. we were making the rounds hugging and greeting people when one of friends tells us we need to hug the reindeer in the crowd too! lynnette quickly saying no way i'm not hugging some strange airport workers! well it turned out to be two of my good friends who i guess were feeling quite festive! great laughs of course. thanks all for the grand re-entrance.

we mentioned a couple posts back about how on our last day we were joining team mates to go to ercsi and hand out christmas bags, it went so great and really was the perfect way to spend our last day in hungary. we had packed 73 bags and handed out 72 of them on the one block! visiting 10 homes, a couple we had never before been before. so it was a great way to build some new contacts for our team mates. we told the christmas story, sang some songs and then prayed with the families. here's a couple shots from the day. thank you again to all of you supporting us through prayer. hungary holds such a special place in our hearts, our last two years have been so incredible seeing God work in the lives around us and in our own lives. we really have felt so blessed to have been able to serve in hungary and to be blessed by such a great team there, who were so patient with us and so encouraging. i guess a two year wrap up blog will be soon coming so until then merry christmas.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:14:00 +0000

only 3 days till we are home....crazy! we are busy moving and cleaning up our place. tonight we have a team christmas party and send off for us. tomorrow finish packing and cleaning because saturday we will be busy. we will be in ercsi giving out christmas packages to the children there, we made up over 70 bags, so hope that will be enough! speaking about kids....we cant wait to meet these cute family members for the first time:

Charlie

Lila

Elias

and of course to catch up with growing

Ben

cant wait to see you all next week!!! if you want our flight info maybe call our parents as i dont really want to post it here for all the world to see!

p.s. hope you dont mind i stole these pics off of your facebook and blogs (cheryl, vicky & mark) but i had to crop the one of baby elias a bit! hehe!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:00:00 +0000

many of you i'm sure have heard about the shooting in denver at the YWAM base, i know there have been so many of these sort of incidents in the last year but this one really hits us personally hard. i guess because these are young missionaries getting ready to head out to the unknown. YWAM is doing so many great things around the world and here in Hungary. I guess the most difficult thing is that these missionaries were getting ready to head out all around the world and give their hearts where ever that may be in what ever dangers may come but the last place you would think would be right at home. our thoughts and prayers are with all of YWAM and with all involved.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:42:00 +0000

went to ercsi today to visit miklos and eva, they are doing good.....i got to see my friend melinda which was a highlight. she comes from a family of 9 that lives in the house behind her (which is the size of a small bedroom) its amazing to me how she always is smiling, full of joy even though she comes from a rough family....it reminded me again just how i have been given in life ...and how i need to be daily grateful for what i have. she brought joy into my day today with just her little smile. its going to be hard to leave here next week. lynnette

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:39:00 +0000

so some of you may be wondering, "it's been two years, am i really going to remember what kyle and lynnette look like?" "what if they come through the doors at the airport and none of us recognize them?"

well be comforted ...here is what you should be expecting upon our arrival.... i know i know your thinking, my oh my when did you become so fashionable. well to be honest we always had it in us it just took us some years to develop.

honestly the christmas market is now officially opened in budapest and we took a stroll by today and couldn't resist the photo op., and rest assured no animals were harmed in the making of these pictures although i fear the same cannot be true in the making of these hats! yes fur is in fashion here.

the snow has already come and gone although our street still remains a skating rink. i guess the fact that it's dirt and never sees the sun lends to the fact it's one of the few still with some hard packed snow. i even got in a good game of snow football, with all our neighbours looking on in strange wonderment. we had a good week meeting up with friends and team mates, on monday we headed out to a city 1 hour out of budapest to spend the night with our team mate and family, which is always a good time. they are doing a church plant in the city and it was so great to hear how God is working there.

Today we also spent the afternoon with our team mate jill and took her to the much anticipated trip of coffee at the new york. a very old and classic coffee house here in the city. it had been closed for a year for renovations and since opening last year we had promised to take her there. She got us thorough our first year and spent many of coffees filling us in on all the little details we were missing, showing us all the in and outs of hungary and listening to us complain!thanks jill, for all that. so it was just a little thanks plus we really wanted to see this place and experience it so it was a great reason to go. Here's a couple shots from there.

Our week ahead is full of ministry and starting to get things moved, this last week we went in and closed our bank account here, which was really strange, it was sorta the first thing that really made me think wow we are actually going home soon. our main moving will be next week but i guess we need to get things in order. we plan to do chirstmas bags for the kids in ercsi and ofalu so we will also be helping our team mates with that. on sat the 15th we will head our to the houses and give the bags out and also something small for the families, we really look forward to this, spending some time with the families and just being there one last time.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:36:00 +0000

Well this last week was busy again, not quite as busy as the week before so i promise not as long of run-on sentences. But no guarantees there, so hold your breath. Just think of it as lung capacity exercises ok vicky! We had our regular ministries, Olga on monday, office on tuesday, wednesday clothing bazzar. On Thurday and Friday we had year end team meetings, plus we celebrated American Thanksgiving, our team mates had us all over for the big meal, so good! We had over 35 people packed into there place enjoying all the fixings and a 37 pound turkey (un heard of in Hungary), the ovens are too small! IT was a great time with the team and yes we had stuffing and pumpkin pie (not together).

Friday our english students invited us to their daughters music school for what we understood as the teachers guitar concert. We were ushered into a small class room together with many parents and before we knew it our hosts were gone and we were stuck in the class recitals. Looking around a bit wide eyed after 15 minutes ...of well to say it nicely new guitar students playing their pieces and still no hosts in the room we began to think ourselves in the wrong room. To make a long story short our friends came back and we sat through the rest of the plucking of strings. They treated us to some tea and hungarian sweets afterwards at the local coffee shop.We then headed back to our place... or so we thought, but instead we arrived at their place for the evening english lessons. Apparently our hungarian skills were taking an off day (we were very confused on many parts of the evening and what we had agreed to...all good though!), on the upside i (kyle) found some hockey games on there tv while lynnette taught english. We spent the evening with the family and had a good time, they are from a catholic background so we had some good talks about why missionaries would come here to a "christian" nation.

Saturday and Sunday we also had some wind up things to be at. Saturday we were invited into the city for a re-union of the summer camp we lead with CE. We played some games, i shared a short message, and they had a little send off for us so that was nice to see that group again. today we had the end of the baseball season party @ our team center. We showed the kids a bunch of sports bloopers which is always a hit for the kids, and had some games and slide show from the season. I also had the opportunity to share my testimony with all the kids so it was a great opportunity to share the reason we have come all this way.

This coming week will be spent visiting all sorts of friends all over the place as we begin to say our good-byes. I didn't think it would involve weeks but i guess better this way then running around the last week closing things down. We also have some team meetings and have english on monday and friday.

Coming up we are putting together christmas packages again this year, but this year will be more focused on the kids of ofalu/ercsi. The day before we leave we will be putting on a christmas service in our ofalu center. Or i guess we will be attending and trying to help our team mates with what we can but we really look forward to this time and it will be a great final evening send off i think. Please pray for this as we share the christmas story with all the kids!

here's one the kids from ofalu... you can pray for him, his name is alex. here's a shot of him this last wednesday, we gave him this bike and as you can see he was quite happy!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:50:00 +0000

a different kinda week......
so this last week has been a little up and a little down, here's a little synopsis for you all, monday was spent riding down to ofalu & meeting with olga and then riding back quickly only for lynnettes bike to break thankfully near to home, for some reason the "transmission" has gone out, her legs must be too strong! she can pedal and pedal but go no where, and yes the chain is on! tuesday we went to the office for team meeting but with so many people out of the country it was a short one and then we had tons of stuff to do around the office, our team mates pranesh and heather were expecting a baby this week so on tuesday we picked up their kids from pre-school and helped her grandmother the next day to drop them off and show her how the whole place worked, because on wednesday meghan anandlal was born.....congrats heather, pranesh and family! wednesday we had ofalu bazaar as normal, and it was normal in it's own crazy way. thursday we headed into the office to help organize books for our team bus which was headed to romania, it was freezing cold, our train was late and the walk to the office was long. we tried to get done what we needed to but of course other things come up. so we headed out to the local mall to pick some stuff up for friends, and yes not everything we wanted was there and we needed to get more stuff done, oh well. we got home only to have our computer crash.....ahhh...oh yes and we got an sms from a person we know here saying looking forward to seeing you at the meeting tomorrow, hold on i didn't agree to any meeting tomorrow, plus we have some english students at that same time. apparently it wasn't only the computer that crashed. the train ride home was long, crowded and included a song or two by some one in the next compartment with a wooden flute, and we stopped in the middle of no where and some lady just hoped off the train, literally she had to jump as the train was high off the ground, lynnette, so suprised by it that she yelled out "this isn't a stop" with me saying "Lynnette whats with the yelling plus why in english!" it was funny and strange all at the same time. Friday we headed again to the office, short train ride, cold wind and a long walk, we got done what we needed to then walked down to the local resturant for some hot soup and coffee, it was sooooo good. now we are at home, the computer needed a system reboot, apparently we got a virus or something, so we lost everything that was on it. thankfully all our important stuff was backed up on a external hard drive, but we are happy it didn't cost anything and we are back in buisness. tomorrow is bazaar again in the morning, then into budapest for the afternoon, picking up stuff while we can, and sunday our neighbours kid is being baptised so we are going there and then back here for the after party and some stuffed cabbage. should be a great time of fellowship here. so there you go a little glimsp into our strange week. hopefully next week is a little less un eventfull and a whole lot less stressful, some how i think not! (seeing how we have only 4 weeks left here)

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:09:00 +0000

"csak a kispest!"........ the cry of the honved Football Club faithful, our landlord and I headed out for a true hungarian soccer match in budapest this last week, figured i needed to experience a little hungarian sports action, it was a great time, a little cold as you can tell from the picture a little stormy but good. honved is the top team in the country but had a disappointing game tieing the 6th place team but controlled the whole game, so of course that had the fans going a little crazy on their team but made for a good atmosphere.

this week we headed out also for some house visits with families we have got to know during the time, on thursday we headed out to Cégled to spend the day with a family that hosted us for a week during a summer outreach. The bonus was that Kati (our hungarian mother as she refers to herself as) took the opportunity to train lynnette in true hungarian cooking teaching her to make "gulyas leves", (number one soup of hungary), "korozott", my personal favorite, basically a onion, cheese, paprika spread, turro teszta (pasta with cottage cheese and bacon type stuff in it) and "piskota" (a fruit dough dessert) we also visited the church where we served and sat in on their ladies evening, giving a report on our work, they told us about how great a time the community had when we had been there and how many new faces were in church, which was great to hear. we also visited Miklos and Eva in ercsi, who are doing really well, which was also such a great thing to see as they have been having a tough time. since the house dedication they have appeared on the local news and are now "celebrities".

it's snowing now so this next week could be interesting, without a car and relying on our bikes makes snowy conditions a little tricky but then again i've been looking forward to some good snow fall so i can't complain, so let it snow!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:36:00 +0000

some little random facts of what we will miss from here and what we look forward to over there: out of order and incomplete but here you go:

from home:

- mom d's fresh baked cookies & buns

- mom k's tortilla soup

- a dryer for our clothes

- english speaking country

- the smell of the ocean

- donuts

- niko

- waking up on a clear morning and seeing fresh snow on the local mountains

- sidewalks

- my own bed

- waffle maker & rice cooker

- white spot breakfasts!

- carpeted floors

- frosted flakes

- VMB

- walks on the dyke

- a freezer large enough to hold more than a tub of ice cream

-our bikes (ours here constantly gets flat tires and lynnettes pedal some how loosens every ride)

-our roller blades and a place actually smooth enough to ride them

-hockey night in canada

-and of course family and friends

things we will miss from here:

-walks through Budapest

-good and cheap coffee spots

-bath houses

-the history

-being able to actually enjoy the fall (little rain)

-the christmas market

-being able to travel to vienna for the weekend (same distance as going to seattle)

-festivals every week of the summer

-trabants

-team mates and new friends

-our patio and being able to use it for half the year

-public transit system, being 5 minute walk from train station

-langos

-my BBQ

-our neighbours

-not our neighbours dog (mono)

-un-paved roads

-when people come to visit and are actually surprised we have a flushing toilet and heating

-our church, calvary chapel

-travelling the country in the summer

-paprika

-turo

-H&M (lynnette will miss this)

-the buda hills

-budapest by night (the lights on the river are awesome)

-olga and her weekly kisses for us (although a little wet at times)

-working together (every day all day), it's great

-cheap flowers from old ladies

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:52:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:34:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:11:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:57:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:34:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:27:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:08:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:48:00 +0000

"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.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:38:00 +0000

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!)

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:36:00 +0000

to the czech and back in a day and a half........

so apparently this is something we have picked up since being here calling the czech just that "the czech". not the czech republic as was pointed out to us. i guess we are on a first name basis. so after almost 1000km of driving, 2 baseball games, sleeping on a gym floor with 27 kids (needless to say not much sleep) and a tour of a castle we are back home.

we were invited up by the czech coaches to play their kids and teens teams at a town just outside of Ceske Budejovice, it was a interesting couple games to say the least. in this town they have 2 full time baseball coaches and a facility to rival anything. Compared to us with players who had never seen a baseball before this year and our field well not quite as perfect. we won't say anything about the 2 canadian coaches who are far from

full time. so we were in charge of the kids team and our team mate terry took the teen games. and altogether i guess we played not so bad. considering our kids have only played one other team all season, it was a good experience for the kids and a good challenge to play the czech guys.

between the games we had the chance to visit the local castle which was a big plus. actually the fields were right below the castle so it was quite funny to look down from the castle down onto the sports complex, complete with golf course. not exactly what was in the original plans of the castle i'm guessing. we spent the night sleeping in a gym and of course it took till 1am to get the kids to quiet down but i guess that's to be expected and it made for a much quieter drive home. i was assigned to be the driver for the girls van, 8 girls in a van makes for some seriously loud giggling on the journey there, but home was a whole different story with the girls catching up on the lost sleep, no complaining here. but yes it was a good trip, sometimes felt a little like babysitting but it seemed like the kids had a good time so that's what it was about. many of the kids was there first trip to austria/czech so it was very exciting for them to be out of hungary, some of the kids picking every object up and saying wow a czech leaf, or a czech ball. funny to watch them.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:32:00 +0000

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!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:01:00 +0000

just a couple things before we head out for outreach tomorrow. today we went to ercsi for the new Saturday kids program along with our team mates carlos, rita and niki. we meet at the house that was built for miklos and eva, notice the nice new tiles and green walls. Above is a little clip from the day, a hungarian version of "this little light of mine", the kids of course loving to yell "nem" (no) we had around 20 kids, sang with them memorized, John 3:16, made salvation bracelets (with the 5 colours) and fed them. it's always a joy to be in ersci but also quite difficult with the surroundings and just the conditions the kids are in. please continue to pray for ersci and the programs there. next sunday will be the first "church" meeting which will happen twice monthly at the community house. please also pray for miklos and eva as they continue to be in very difficult times dealing with jealousy, others being jealous of their new place and causing many problems.

in other news our new prayer/ministry letter is hot of the press and here for you to see,

click here, and follow the links. it will also be coming in the mail for those of you who receive it.

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:44:00 +0000

so in the past we have asked you to name that sign, while us knowing the sign wondering what your creative minds can come up with, well today we actually need your help, what on earth is this sign telling us? ok obviously the Popsicle and alcohol makes sense fair enough, although you would hardly ever see a Hungarian eating a Popsicle (ice cream is the treat) and well somebody obviously sees no problem with drinking on the bus but whats with whatever is in the middle? what are those? please help, we are confused!

noreply@blogger.com (Kyle and Lynnette) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:24:00 +0000

so another week is suddenly done and we find ourselves with only a couple months until we are home, and if you want to know what our plans are for when we get home well, (not that we are counting down)..... let me direct you to this sign, maybe it will answer your questions, and maybe it won't... all i know is i get confused every time i look at it and in the end well all roads lead to.....well other roads. so enough said. alright so life here, well the last week was spent starting up English club again in Ofalu, meeting with good old Olga and also with our friday class, daughter and mother so it was good getting those groups going again. we are also preping to head out for our last OVM outreach, next sunday we will leave for kiskunhalas a city we were in last year for a english camp, the only difference is this year we will go into their class rooms to teach english, yikes! we made them know and realize none of us are trained english teachers so most of what we will do will be more activities based and not so much teaching based. but it should be a good week being in the local high school and hopefully doing more than just teaching english! the other exciting thing is that the ersci church will be starting in the next weeks! Carlos and Rita our brazilian team mates who we have worked alot with in Ofalu and Ercsi are planning to start meetings in the local community hall. We will be helping them with this and also every Saturday we plan to do a kids program, possibly in Mikos and Eva's house/yard, this is the house that was built this last year. It's really exciting to see progression happening in Ercsi and we have many families who have showed interest and have been asking us when we will begin meetings, it is our prayer that as we begin these meetings that the message of Christ would be clearly spoken to the people, that he would move in the hearts of those in ersci and many would come into relationship with him, we are excited to see how God will work in the next coming months. please pray for these coming months, for the ercsi church that both hungarians and gypsies would attend, (which is usually un common). maybe your wondering what does the car photo have to do with anything, well nothing i just like the picture so thats why it's there.