ok so here is our latest installment of label that sign, once again to the best response (as chosen by us, with no bias of course)goes a boci (hungarian choclate) bar and for extra incentive a pack of hungarian sweet pepper seeds, for your very own hungarian vegtable garden. for some extra fuel for your creative minds this was found outside the bear pits in cesky krumlov, czech. we blacked out the original text so we will also let you in on that later, we will announce the winner this weekend so there you go, have fun and as an extra hint lynnette has a bias for the more humours side and not neccesarily the accuracy side. (ok maybe we have a little bias). so shoot away!

week in review

well this week has flown by like every other one lately. ravi and amanda left yesterday morning so we are just back to the two of us. it was so fun to have visitors and some old friends to hang out with. as much as Hungary is feeling like home to us it's so nice to just be able to relax with good friends and have a taste of home, they even brought us some ivory soap which was a smell of home, funny how things like that can bring you to another place and of course we are looking forward to our next visitors who come in only a months time...mom & dad klassen (that's if the passport people decide to give them their new passports in time!)

anyways, on monday kyle and i had 2 classes of English and worked on our new prayer letter, while r&a were exploring budapest. on tuesday we were at team prayer meeting and in the later afternoon we met up with our friends to take them to a thermal bath house...experience true Hungarian culture! we spent 3 hours in there, it was pretty funny, watching all the regulars play chess in the pool and standing over the "healing jets"...amanda wasn't quite a fan of this part of the experience, oh well it was funny to watch her! on wednesday we went into ofalu to do some practical work (painting basketball backboards) and set up for the clothing bazaar. r&a were quite willing to help us out, so we put them to work...just kidding, but thanks again for helping us guys! i put on 2 pics of the bazaar before anyone came to show the amount of stuff that we have. (im hiding in one of the pictures!) every week we put out different boxes of clothes. we still are opening new ones too, the people love it when we bring out a new bag/box...it gets a little crazy. at the end you cant see anymore boxes cause all the clothes are spread in huge piles on top of them. then we get to clean them up and pack them all away every week, so its a big job. but its always interesting, we have regulars that come and we are getting to know them quite well. they always end up trying on all these crazy clothes and laugh hysterically....we all end up laughing by the end. rita (our co-worker) is thinking of starting a womens club once a week for all these ladies, we hope it works out and they come out. on thursday we finished painting the b-ball boards and it was time for baseball practice. this was the 2nd practice of the year. now we are coaching the kids and teenage boys team too. we have about 14 kids come (mostly new kids!) and about 20 boys. so its a good turnout this year. ravi got to be the back catcher for the kids team....thanks! i got nailed in the big toe with a ball thanks to little Attilla...he said sorry and felt really bad, but it was a good practice and we even have 4 girls on the team. yesterday we had english club with the 3 kids. im not so sure that friday is the best day for them....they we so hyper and excited. we taught them the different kinds of weather. the one kid kept saying "claudia" for cloudy, but i think he learned it in the end! it was hilarious, we ended up laughing a bunch and played a couple of games. thats our week in a nut shell.

its saturday morning and we just finished eating a breakfast made by my lovely husband...egg mcmuffins, yummy. and now kyle is vacuuming and mopping, so its my turn to do my part of the cleaning...the bathroom! sorry if this blog is a little random....have a great weekend.

cesky krumlov,

on our way back down to hungary we made a couple day stop in a little town in the southern part of czech. it was such a cool place complete with winding cobblestone streets and a super colourful castle. instead of a moat filled with crocs protecting the castle, here they went more unique and chose the bear pit instead, with three live bears. ravi and amanda found this place while looking through some travel books and it was quite the find! we also enjoyed some of the local cuisine, "roasted pig knee", hey you gotta branch out and try what the locals eat, but honestly i can't say i would order it again. here's our wives in one of their best shots, they enjoyed browsing the many shops in town while rav and i brushed up on our hacking (hacky sack) skills, something we also spent many of hours doing throughout europe while waiting for trains, buses and just about any time we could get it in. Ravi's hack has spent time on window ledges, pipes, rail tracks and covered in grime, dirt and other things from many different countries. To us it may be a prized possession but to our wives not so much, Lynnette took a errant pass of her lips and well she wasn't too impressed, we informed her though that she just kissed most of europe ......good thing for amandas hand sanitazier that was quickly wisked out, Good times!

czech with friends:

this past week we took some days off to go meet up with some friends and see a little of the czech with them, i (kyle) went to bible school in spain with ravi 4 years back and travelled around europe with him afterwards. he and his wife (amanda) headed out here to meet up with us and make some new memories, and our wives had to put up with us and our "remember when we were travelling and.....""we got lost in italy"or"we slept in that train station"or"we forgot our jackets at that hostel way up in the swiss alps and had to train back for a whole day just to get them".......

we had a great time touring around Prague for 2 days, including a trip out to Terizin, while in our hostel we met a man who was doing research and putting together information on a little known former Nazi compound outside of Prague. Here during the war jewish people were taken and held while waiting deportaion to one of the many death camps. The interesting part of Terezin is that the nazis used it as a front, they shot footage here for a propaganda film and even toured the red cross through, complete with coffee houses, swimming pools, and theaters they passed it off that it was kinda like a getta way for the jewish people, but these things were only operational for the time of the films and the tours and in reality it was a place of death, torment and hopelessness. The main objective was to starve and work the people to death and it that didn't work then to ship them off to auswhitz, or one of the many other death camps. As neither of us had ever been to one of these places before it was a real eye opening experience to what really happened in those terrible years. The picture here on the left is what you find at many of these places, it is right as you walk into the main entrance "work will make you free", a lie right from the start as in those times, work killed many but freed not one.

Driving Miss.Dragam,

Amikor mentem az iskolába autóval a mi utcánkban egy idős néni odafutott az autómhoz. Kinyitottam az ajtót és ő beszállt. Ez nagyon korán volt és azt gondoltam, hogy álmodom. A néni nagyon gyorsan beszélt. Én azt mondtam, hogy nem beszélek jól magyarul. Megkérdeztem hova megy. Sokat beszélt, de csak azt értettem, hogy posta. Amikor megálltunk a piros lámpánál ő kiszállt azt mondta, „Nagyon köszönöm drágám” és átfutott az úton egyenesen a postára.

Well if you didn't understand the above then I guess you'll be missing out on todays blog....... ok fine I'll fill you in, plus i thought some of you may be interested to see what this hungarian language is all about and for any hungarian readers out there, all 2 of you, this ones for you. We told this story to our language tutor and he thought it was so good he had us write it out, so heres the product of last nights language lesson, this story is from wendesday morning, I headed out to some early morning basketball at the international high school. I never thought i would wake up a 6am for basketball but some friends convinced me too, so i bundled up, grabbed a banana and a "jo reggelt" (morning breakfast bar) and began driving down our road. I hadn't got far when I noticed a older lady (maybe 65) running towards my car, it being early and not knowing if i was dreaming i unlocked the door to see what she wanted, well she hoped right on in. good thing i grabbed the banana off the seat. and she proceeded to talk really fast, again i remind you it's really early and my mind has not even begun to work in english never mind hungarian, i ask her to speak slower and tell her i don't speak hungarian well, she again begins speaking much to fast but i am able to pick out "post office", and its on my way so i put two and two together and figure out shes late to wherever shes going and she wants to get some where near the post office in town. so i shake my head in confusion and off we go, me and my new found early morning friend. as we get closer i ask her if she wants me to stop at the bus stop but she says no the red light ahead will do. and as we get there i finally have woken up enough to realize i greeted her quite rudely (reasonable for that time i guess) and am able to say good bye politely, (literally translated "i kiss your hand") and she responds "thank you my precious". and then off she runs again across the street.

well, haven't posted in a week, so i thought we should update on our last week or so. kyle is keeping busy with more school visits to do baseball teaching in the gym classes. he told me today that they have handed out over 600 flyers (to the upcoming baseball camp) and seen probably 800-1000 kids in the last couple weeks! i was surprised by how many kids they have taught this game of baseball to....but its great that they are allowed into the Hungarian schools to do this, usually with quite a welcome. i went along once and we noticed a funny thing. as soon as the teacher walks into the gym all the kids line up in a row and say "good afternoon" (in Hungarian of course!) to their teacher....sounds normal right? well its a little weird because the say it in this monotone voice all together and REALLY slow. like its the military or something...not sure why, but its funny! but in 2 weeks there will be a baseball camp (over the weekend, 3 days) that they are inviting all these kids to. and hopefully they will end up joining a team after the camp! so with all the "fun" in playing baseball...the real hope is that we can some how share Christ's love with these kids. the season starts in the beginning of April and we will be helping coach the kids team again....or at least kyle will (and i will when i can.) so please pray with us that lots of kids would come out and that we can share the news of the gospel with them!

i on the other hand, have been busy with English teaching. in the last couple weeks we have gone from 1 lonely student (Olga) to adding 5 more! its great and i am enjoying it! i don't see them all on one day because their levels are so different. so on Mondays i meet with Olga, very beginner. and on every other Tuesday i meet with Zsuzsa (good Hungarian name) she knows a little English from high school. on Fridays we meet with 3 kids (Dori, Zoltan & Gergely) the are around 10/11 and they only know the basics too, but they are a great bunch on kids, very fun! and recently i have been meeting with another girl (Timi) for her to practice her spoken English skills, she is preparing for an interview and a job where she has to know English well, so she needs some help with speaking skills. she comes on Monday and Friday mornings. very quickly we have gotten really busy with English and baseball, but its been good. we are really praying that through these activities we won't just teach baseball or English but that God would use our lives to bring to more to Him.



and since a post isn't finished without a picture, we will leave you with one from a day at the used clothing sale we have on Wednesdays in Ofalu. there is always something interesting to find...a couple weeks ago Rita and I found these toques! (Rita is a fellow OM'er that we work with in Ofalu) the other girl in the picture was visiting Rita, she works in Bosnia with OM....hopefully she doesn't mind this picture of her on the internet!

just wanted to share an article for any that are interested. often people ask who are these gypsies you are working with, what defines a gypsy, and whats the background on this people group? this is an excellent article written by a OM worker basically giving a history of the people and talking about the work that OM is doing with gypsies throughout Europe. if you click here or on the link on the sidebar under articles of interest it should download. read and pray for gypsies... a people group that is so discriminated against here, that they would see that "all are equal in the eyes of God" and that they would continue to come to him!

winter has officially skipped us here..... personally i'm kinda disappointed, i was looking forward to some crisp snowy winter days but i know lynnette is celebrating, but then again maybe we are jumping ahead of ourselves and we might just get a late hit of snow?!

this last week ministry wise has been really good, we started meeting with new english students, one new girl on tuesday and two kids on friday, and all of them seem really fun and easy to teach which is of course a big plus, please pray that we would find ways to share the gospel through the english classes with those that attend, a friend in the czech. had some theme days where her english students brought friends to the center and dressed up as cowboys and had different events, so maybe something like that would be cool to do, anybody wanna send us some cowboy hats and horse shoes? also on mondays i shared that while lynnette meets with Olga and teaches her English I have been hanging out with some local kids playing soccer, so this last monday we also started to read through the gospel of John, we read through the first 15 verses. as we read through the word i pray that it really speaks to their hearts. on fridays we also meet with them and this last friday our team mate asked them how many have accepted Christ into their hearts and two of the boys that come on mondays said yes. praise the Lord that he has already been working in their lives. we really see hope in these boys and i pray that as they hit their mid teens they would make some positive decisions that would bring them out of the darkness and hopelessness that is around them. praise God that he promises a hope and a future for these boys! we've also been invited to teach baseball to the local elementary schools during their gym class so these last couple weeks have found us in a number of schools and this week we will visit 2 more. we've probably taught a couple hundred kids and invited them out to a baseball camp that we will be helping to put on at the end of march. this spring again we will also help to coach one of the kids team and the great thing is the field is right around the corner from our place here. it's always a good time teaching a kid who doesn't even know what hand to put his glove on and seeing them the next week celebrate their first hit (and then forget to run to 1st base!).

the ercesi flea market is a spot,well where you can find just about anything. we had read about this place a couple times and finally decided we better check it out. and well it didn't disappoint, a great place to find all sorts of old antiques, war memorabilia, old furniture and plenty of conversation with locals. we had no intentions of buying anything and left with just that but we had a great time looking at all sorts of things and talking with some of the shop keepers, our item of interest is these old irons they have, 150 years old, they use hot coals as the source of heat, kinda cool but i think a little to heavy to haul home. on this picture take a look at the canes, i had to stop lynnette she desperately wanted to buy the hoof one! yikes!

this last month has found us quite busy, trying to juggle helping with the missionary training course going on at our team center and also at the same time trying to keep up with our regular ministry, yesterday was the final day with everyone heading out to their countries. every sept and jan all new missionaries joining OM and heading to eastern europe first come here for a month of training, (we did this last year in jan.) this time around we had a german family heading to Albania, a american girl also going to Albania, 2 koreans going to Kosovo, one dutch girl going to Moldova. We also had Alba a Chilean going to Albania, please pray for her as she is still awaiting her visa to enter Albania. she is staying here in Hungary until then and it can be quite hard to see everyone else off while you have to wait. We had her over to dinner last night, i kinda had to laugh as i never thought I would say I'm having a chilean over for dinner who is going to albania in Hungary, the world is getting smaller these days! we had a great time as lynnette made us stuffed chicken with a feta, and roasted almond sauce in it, nagyon jo (very good)! and relaxed played cards together.

please also continue to pray for Miklos and Eva the gypsy family who we have been sharing about, i went out with some team mates to visit and miklos is doing quite bad and he and his wife are taking it really hard. the doctors have said he is beyond help and it's really difficult to see him and the family. pray for a miracle that his health would turn around and for his family that they would be comforted during this time.

here's latest edition of "whats with that translation." We found this at tesco, (big box grocery store) and just had to buy it, who every thought you could fight cellulite with a simple cup of tea. sorry if its not clear enough but yes at the bottom it does say "natural tightness", down with the artifical tightness.