marcius 15. day!


today was a national holiday, and well when theres a holiday here everything shuts down, all stores are closed, just some resturants and choice coffee shops are open. they even closed the main bridge into town and had a street fair. the day is in honour of the rebellion in the 1800s against the hadsburgs, they ended up losing it but celebrate it anyway. In many parts of the city there were live bands, horses marching, and people reading poetry from the time. We had the day off from school so we walked the city and enjoyed all the activites. Even picking up a free flag along the way to blend into the crowds. Alot of walking but it was a nice break from school. You can only absorb so much before feeling overwelmed. We've had a good time learning the languaging and laughing at all our mistakes. Some words make so much sense, like sandwich for example. Its spelt szendvics, simple just say what you see. nice and straight forward, now why cant the whole language be like that? instead it has things like the word for train station: "palyaudvar" or pharmacy: "gyorgyszerter". think those are not too bad well try fruit: "gyumolcs" and the word for good bye, short simple word... no, not quite... its, get ready, hopefully your mouth isnt full...... "viszontlatrsra", ya short and simple is the theory to the language here i think! and dont forget...all the letters in the words are pronounced, no silent letters here! well anyways as you can see we are in need of much prayer and the ability to pronounce these marathon length words!

Canucks in Hungary!

Couldn’t believe it, we were early into language class so we went for a quick warm up coffee in McDonalds... I know im embarrassed to say McDonalds but it was the only place close to school, anyways I was perusing through the free daily paper here... alright I was looking at the pictures and picking our all the few words I knew and what do I find on the sports? the canucks.... it was so surprising..... too bad it was about them losing but who cares they were in there. Of course I had to save it and find a place on the fridge for it, a nice taste of home. Apparently they are big canucks fans here... the first thing we saw getting out of the airport was a taxi driver with a canucks hat on.... its a random place here, never know what you may see. We are now done our first week of language school is done and well, we have the vocabulary of a 2 year old, if we dont get going our little nephew ben will catch up to us. It's quite humbling i must say, we can say ”the pen is red, the pen is green”, and you can only say that a couple time over and over before going a bit mad. But every once in a while we are encouraged to see that we are actually learning stuff. we co uld never understan d what the bus driver would ask us in the morning and finally this week we figured out he was asking us if we were "diak?"/students. This also got us a free scarf at the local market. Lynnette wanted to by one, and I being a true menno, thought I would try to barter a bit. and he would budge at all in english, but then as we left i said something in Hungarian (magorul) and he excitedly invited us back and gave us a free one, but only when he found out we were learning the language, we promised to come back weekly for practice sessions with him. I dont know that we need any more scarves though! Lynnette was also very proud of her soup invention today and after tasting it i agreed that it deserved a most honourable mention on the blog. look at the picture, a soup with such an array of colours, very rare in a soup i must add. anyways just wanted to assure to you all that we are eating w ell here. with all the walking that we have to do here makes for quite the appetite!

Home at last:

Well after almost a month and a half of living out of suitcases.... literally......, we have unpacked and put them out of sight. We had been living at the training center waiting for another couple to move out of the team apartment, and finally we can call somewhere home. The team apartment used to be the offices and now has been split up into three seperate apartments, so our neighbours are a family from brazil and joska & sandi. The apartment is quite roomy... two rooms, a large kitchen and two bathrooms, alright thats a lie, a water closet (toliet closet, literally its a closet!) and a bathroom. Strangely enough they chose to put a sink outside this closet which is in the hall, and the sink well its so tiny you can hardly get your hands under it, but hey there must be some reason for this.As you can see we live in a world of all sorts. Look close, the hallways well they are very sauna like, the bedroom, quaint cottage theme, the kitchen, look at the border must have originally been a kids room, or someone likes the colour blue and stars. and my personal fav the bathrooms, 80s swimming pool, the local spa must have had some left over tiles. But really we cant complain its roomy, its secure and we can call it our own. Well at least for the next 6 months. Oh did I mentoin the toliet has zero water pressure. Chris your plumbing skills are desperatly needed here. There isnt even a tank on the toliet, just turn the tap on and pray it all goes down. We have to keep a bucket of water handy for those needed times. Anyways enough about heavy loads onto some heavier things, we started language school and well I think my brain is already fried! we are in a three week intesive course along with two other people and they weren't joking about the intensive part, no false advertising around here. The teacher only spoke in Hungarian and already gave us homework on the first day. I can already see that there will be times that I'll want to just get up and run for the border, but I'm sure after all is said and done and I understand a bit more of this crazy language I'll appreciate doing this. The joke here is how do you know that Hungarian is spoke in Heaven... because it takes a eternity to learn..... haha, maybe its funny for you but not for us who actually have to learn it. Well as bad as we make it sound we are so happy to have our on place and soon the second bedroom will be changed into a living room, Joska has some sofas and stuff stored up for when they move but he kindly offered them to us to borrow till then, so our home is quickly becoming a home and it feels oh so nice to have, and the language well we get it, one day...hopefully!

Little Riley on the way!

How exciting is that, my sister and brother in law have a bun in the oven. Just got the news today and we are pretty excited over here. And I even heard the due date is Oct 15, well ok Oct 12 but I already made a little agreement with my future neise/nephew and there gona wait a couple days so they can be just like their uncle. Sorry Chris about the pic but its the only one we have of you guys on our camera. Plus it makes me crack up every time I look at it. For those that are wondering no Chris is not a cyclops but he got injured at work! Anyways we are pretty pumped up, too bad we can't be with you to celebrate! We'll have to go and grab some more milka choclate bars and celebrate ourselves i guess!

OVM in transition:

Lake Balaton-
the largest fresh water lake in euorpe..... a one and a half hour drive from budapest and the new home base for OVM, which means drum roll please....we will be moving there, not till sept but yes we will be moving..... the picture beside is of joska and sandi, they are the american couple that heads up OVM and have been working in Hungary for three years now. OVM's main ministry up to now has been travelling the country bringing books, english classes and doing sports ministry to the unreached villages, always working together with a church. In the coming years the ministry looks to be focusing more on the balaton region. Joska and Sandi were missionaries in Austria before coming here, Joska's family is from Hungary so he always felt drawn back. In only the week and a bit we have spent with them we can already see how well we will work with them as a team and have built great friendships with them, over games of uno, dominos and a team meeting at the spa .... hungarian for hot springs and they are everywhere, basically like pools but really nice and relaxing..... anyways back to lake balaton, no OVM isnt moving there because the nice beachs or trendy areas, but because it's a strategic location to reach the surrounding villages that have little to no exposure to the gospel. We spent the night at the local baptist pastors place and it was so exciting to see a church so motivated to reach out. The town there is only 1700 people but they have a membership of 160 and have just recently built a new church basically all on there own. So exciting to see such a active church and also today we made a presentation in front of all the local reform pastors and elders and they voted unamiously to stand behind, work along and open doors for our ministry, Gods going to do amazing things in the Balaton region, we can already see it. The other pic here is of us infront of what will be our place, well the upstairs, its owned by a couple from the baptist church and the top floor is normally rented out to tourists but when she heard about our work she quickly offered it to us at a much lower rent. And the reform churches have offered for us to use their bus for the short term teams in the summer for free, we haven't seen the bus so who knows what it might be like, its exciting stuff none the less. Joska and Lynnette felt this as a opportune moment to clear their nostrils , what we have to put up with out here. And guess what Balaton freezes in the winter, can you say hockey ministry! Too bad i didn't bring my stuff, i'm suddenly envisioning a care package in the shape of a hockey bag! just kidding it would never make it through customs anyways..... the border guards would look like joska and lynnette...plugging their noses! Well I hope you all enjoy your weekend cheer extra hard for those Olympian cause we gotta at least beat the americans in the medal count!

Peace and Quiet

Well MTS is now over, the place is empty and quiet, kinda lonely but it's nice to now wake up to birds chirping rather than toilets flushing. Today was our day off so we headed into Budapest. It was the first day in 2 months that we've been alone. A warm spring feeling day, all the snow is melting and no need to lug our big jackets through the city. We did alot of walking, seeing the sights meandering through the parks getting lost and finding better stuff in the midst. The pic of us sitting was taken at this really cool castle, moat and all. Neat big chairs to sit back and soak in some sun. Budapest is such a interesting city filled with all sorts of sights but also hidden gems. We found a coffee shop and at first felt guilty as it wasn't very Hungarian but had great people watching leather chairs, we couldn't refuse so we became window mannequins for alwhile, so interesting to soak in all the styles both young and old, fur is in for the older crowd and tucking your pants into your high leather boots is in for the young. Plus huge, half covering your face sunglasses. The last pic is of a kinda freaky grim reaper ish statue that we came across,apparently its called the anonymous man. its dedicated to the man who wrote down the history of hungary, all i gotta say is i hope my name aint in his book, scared he's gonna come chasing after us. the rest of the week is filled with orientation meetings with the hungary leader and team, tomorrow we head back to ofalu to attend a bible study and share our testimony and hopefully this weekend we'll head out to balaton to meet the local pastors and see the area.

Its Different here!

well the main point that was put across at MTS is things arent wrong about countries, they are just "different". Not that we are suggesting that any of the following things are wrong just that we found them to be different, anyways u know what i'm getting at, so here they are......

1> sidewalks are fair game to drive on..... as long as they are sloped and not with a curb
2>toliet paper is not just orange and pink in colour but also scented....orange being self explaintory and pink smelling like rose...oh the jokes i'm holding back!
3>yogurt comes in the following flavours..... strawberry, cherry, pineapple, kiwi and my personal favorite "corn" thats hungarian for grape and wheat
4>when saying hello you say "see ya" and saying goodbye its "hallo"..... interesting to say the least
5>goulash is a way of life
6>a polite hello or simple smile can be met with very strange looks if any at all
7>street signs are ornamental
8>underwear stores outnumber all others by a 2 to 1 ratio
9>build a fence....put a dog iniside the fenced area.....then begin building house
10>the ice cream man visits even in the winter.....ok its the frezzer man, truck and all bellowing out the nicest of melodies.... p.s. this is the dogs favorite target!

so there you go a couple difference we have noticed...but like we say they are not neccesarily wrong just different although i disagree with this point about the toliet paper.... scented toliet paper.....thats just wrong!

Erchi.......

last saturday we spent the afternoon in a gypsy town called erchi which is about 30-45 min drive from here, but what a difference in terms of life and wealth..... the one family we visited literally lived in a shed.... the only heat they had was from a fire fed stove in their house and their axe was broken.... it was so sad to see...due to the smoke from the stove both little kids had bad asthma, we brought clothes food and sang and prayed for them. we also brought balloons and candy and once the local kids saw us driving in they all ran out to greet us and it was really nice just to be able to bring smiles to their faces, but still it hurt to see the conditions they lived in. the girl on the left came running up to us but as she got nearner i went out give her a balloon and suddenly she became completely terrified and it totally broke my heart because you could tell she had been abused either that or my looks just freaked her out, but she wouldnt let me or any of us with in 10 feet of her, we eventually gave the balloon to another kid to give to her and then she kinda gave us a smile, no kid deserves to be in that kind of life and it just opens your eyes to how we take for granted being brought up in such loving homes.

OM travels to this house, the family below,.... each month to bring them food and clothes and we bought them a new axe to go out next time they visit. hopefully this summer a short term team will come out and we will be able to build this family a larger place and something that will be able to keep them warm and dry in the winter. the picture below that is of the local firewood delivery service... horse drawn carriage a interesting site to see. cars would pass by completely loaded down with wood and we even drove by two guys with a 10 foot log balanced on their bike trudging through the snow, you could tell what the number one priority was in the town..... just to stay warm.

Ofalu Ministry:

Today we headed into a Ofalu and went and did some houses vists. the plan was to do a kids outreach also, but there was a big fair at school that we didn't know about, and the kids ended up staying there..... OM has a brazilian couple working full time in Ofalu which is a gypsy village just outside of Erd.... the mural here is in the center they use which is actually owned by the town but they allow OM to use it..... OM has fixed it up but now there is some problems because the Catholic church dosen't like OM's presence in the town. the church is telling the town not to allow us to use the center any more, but thankfully the mayor still allows OM to use it... pray that this would remain and that the village would trust the work and that Carlos and Rita (the brazilian couple) would be able to build on many relationships they have already started.... the mural in the background was painted by a short term team from moody bible instuite and the other wall is awaiting a similar painting...any artisits out there? The picture depicts our choice.... the dark side where most of the kids hang out (cause they think it looks cool) but the team is trying to help them to see that through the "tree of life" they can have eternal life and hope...its really a great evangalistic tool, and amazing painting!
A smaller group of us went to visit a home and it was amzing to see this family who had so little were so giving and hospitable, they even sent the men of the house out to get us pop to drink and sent us home with a bag of candy.....near the end of our visit we were informed that if we hear a strange sound under the couch we were sitting on not to worry cause its just their pet hamster! we all had a good laugh as lynnette and the other girl went all wide eyed and quickly lifted their legs...hopefully we didn't crush him/her/it..... tomorrow we will go again into this town to hand out tracks and do skits at the local market and then we will do some more house visits.....im sure we will have some more stories to share!

Optical Illusion?

Can you spot the illusion the pic with the dragon head..... when I put them onto the computer I thought that the camera had messed up, kinda weird, if I could have only have planned it....in case your eyes are much sharper than mine and haven't seen it, the dragons bottom lip and the building line up.... he's chomping the castle.... that was taken in budapest, we posted more of the pics on our link if ur interested.... the other pic is of a korean game that we learnt last night hard to explain but kinda like dice, we had a good time trying to learn it and ending up more confused than when we started, welcome to language learning.... we are currently being taught evangelism techniques and kids ministry tools and then at the end of the week we will be going to a local gypsy village and do a kids outreach on friday and on sat we will be selling used clothing at the market and singing songs/doing dramas/handing out tracks..... please pray that we would come up with creative ideas for those outreachs and that even though we cant speak the language that we would be able to share the gospel with them......