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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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!

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)

"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!