mi beteg vagyunk.....

for all you non hungarian speakers out there that is "we are sick", and for all you hungarian speakers out there if you wouldn't mind handing over some of that knowledge it would be much appreciated, yes we have both come down with a nice cold. It seems like and sickness here are much sicker if you get what I mean, anyways Lynnette caught it first and now has so nicely shared the wealth with me. I guess this is un-avoidable living under the same roof. From all the coughing Lynnette had a couple days of man voice and then a couple days of no voice at all. I joked and told her she wouldn't be not allowed to lead women's bible study as they were unsure of whom was speaking to them. We also had a very exciting week as we were able for the first time to go to the bakery and instead of grunting like cave men at the bread we were able to ask for what we wanted like proper civilized people, I know that this may not seem like a big deal to you but we were quite proud of our selves. Although the day before I swore at our language teacher who is also a pastor! Apparently I need to be a bit more careful on some of my pronounciation, we all had a good laugh after we caught onto what I did, oh well who said we would make no mistakes, better it being our language tutor then the lady at the post office, whom probably would have a couple words back for me! The joys of language learning. We also ran into a couple at bible study who are moving to vancouver in sept.They are from montana and will be going to SFU/Regent so naturally we are their tour guides/advisers, which reminds me to ask if any one knows of a place that may come up for rent in vancouver in sept, thought i would throw it out there for them, you never know! We also had a couple come to our team prayer day to share, and guess what they are from abbotsford! Craziness, he is hungarian by birth but escaped hungary as a 9 year old on his own and some how found his way to abbostford, alright the storys longer than that but he had an amazing testimony. This brings me back to a certain ride at disneyland with some catchy tune, cant remember it maybe it'll come back to me later....hehe. Thus concludes my thoughts for the week, as you can tell my thought pattern is short, sweet and sporadic but hopefully not to boring, oh well i guess its your choice to read or not.

 

peer pressure blogging....!


i will warn you now before you decide to read on that this post is only for those of you who seem to be impatiently waiting for a new update. this post will not contain any of the following..... funny stories of us making cultural mistakes....... exciting adventures and escapades of ours....or complaints about our continual struggle of language learning, ok i guess that was just covered and it may come up again....... i apologize in advance for this but i guess not every post can be the same so continue if u wish but you have been warned!
this past weekend the om hungary team headed out to a castle for our team retreat, ya it was pretty neat. the castle is fairly new in the world of castles, it was built in the early 1900s and was hardly used until recently, due to wars and communism. 5 years ago calvary chapel bought it and turned it into a bible school, quite the bible school! anyways we all (about 30) headed out for a weekend of game playing, team building, scavenger hunting and some teaching, oh ya and kite making! one of the families here is brazilian and apparently kite making must be right behind soccer in national sports. Speaking of soccer, we also had a game in the back gardens of the castle, quite the place for a field! Most of the weekend was spent in the coffee lounges inside though, for all you coffee experts, you will be happy to know that starbucks was served, so as you can guess most of the students are american, the two just cant be separated i guess. We were challenged by the speaker in many ways, one of the quotes that has stuck with me is "God takes people who think they are somebody, makes them realize they are nobody without Him, so that he can reach everybody through them" That is so true for where we are at right now, God is in the process of breaking us and making us realize that if we rely on our own strength to learn the language, to adapt, to...... well you get the idea then we will get nowhere, but when we realize that without his continual strength we are nobodies then he can use us. It so reassuring to now as we feel like we are only struggling to know that he is using just that to make us more effective.

 

Time sure flies by!

this past weekend we celebrated our two year anniversary, wow has time sure gone by and who would have thought we would be here two years ago! Not us! We decided to head out to Eger for a night after being told it was probably the nicest town in Hungary to visit. Eger seems to be the most tourist geared place in all of Hungary but luckily we went in the slow season and got to see the sights with out all the tacky tourists, oh hold on I guess we were those! Anyways we strolled through the narrow streets saw their famous castle and went and looked at some neat wine cellars. The weather cooperated with us so much that as we got to the train station to go home thunder, lightning and rain pounded down! The rest of the time it was beautifully sunny and hot! Eger also boasts the northern most minaret, its the furthest north the turks got before being pushed back and eger castle is famous for holding them off. Apparently the castle and 2000 men held off a turkish army of 40-50 thousand, the hungarians were supposedly helped by the superior knowledge of explosives. The picture beside was captured up in the castle, it was to funny to watch, i guess she figured "what better way to show my friends back home the advancment of weapons then by posing like a seal on it!"We also saw this same family later on as we ate dinner, this time she posed as the statue of liberity, very hungarian i must say. Only minutes before the cannon pose scene we had been sitting on one of the castle walls and suddenly we being whistled at, and I'm not talking about a normal whistle it was like a referee whistle, and a guy yelling "nem szabad" at us, apparently sitting on the wall not allowed posing on cannons like a beached whale no problem!
Lynnette also spotted this scene and declared it a bloggable item. I explianed to her that in hungary laws against false advertising were very strict and they we making sure you knew what the glasses looked like with eyes behind them! She would have none of that though. You think this weekend could be a reflection of our marriage? At times we are just strolling along enjoying the sights, and at times you just gotta stop and pose, theres always funny sights along the way, and a lot of enjoying each others company, oh ya and then we got a fine for getting on a reserved train without a reservation, hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come.

 

Retsag for easter:

This past easter weekend, we along with the OVM trailer, Joska and Sandi headed off to Retsag. Which is 2 hours north of Budapest. We spent the weekend playing chess, serving coffee, selling books and inviting the towns people out to a concert on the monday night.We worked alongisde with a chruch from a smaller town called Kemence. Kemence is a town of 300 people and the church there (agape church) has about 30 people. There hope is to have a church plant in Retsag which is a "city" of 3000, personally i dont consider a city to be that few people but they call it one, anyways there are no evangelical churchs in this town and their hope is to have a church plant here soon. So the plan was to set up the trailer build relationships with those who came out and get them out to the concert on Monday, we played alot of chess and went for many walks handing out invites and praying for the town. I can now add chess to my new found abilties, although it is something i defiantly need a whole lot more practice on, since I got humilated by children of all ages and simply avoided any player that came within 5 years of me! The scary thing is that even the kids here are chess masters, oh well call it a learning expereince! The pastor of the Kemence church took Lynnette and I up to the village, we got to spend time in his flat which is the ground floor of the local school but in a building that was built in the 1700s as a castle. Pretty neat to be inside something of that age. We got a tour of there newly renovated church which was also a sight to see, the woodwork inside was quite neat! It was so encouraging to see such an alive and active church in such a small community. A church of 30 looking to plant a church in surronding "cities" imagine what all could happen if all churches became so active! The weekend ended with a concert from the Kemence worship band at the Retsag community theater. About 80 people came out, pray that Robbie and Aniko who are the couple that will be leading the church would make many connections in town and a church would be formed. Every night the local teenagers all would come out, apaerntly the trailer was parked in their usual partying spot, but they stayed and played chess and you could really see the possibilties there would be for a youth program in town, they were basically searching for things to do. They said that all they did was walk around town all night, there is nowhere for them to go! Did I mention that Lynnette and I slept in the trailer! We were awoken every night to all sort of sounds, one morning even we woke up at around 4 am and heard two older women walking back and forth beside the trailer, now first of all kinda strange at 4 am that two older women would be out but also they were carrying buckets and putting them down what sounded like right beside the trailer, (we could hear the clanking of the handles if u wondered how we knew this). We were half expecting them to start washing the trailer but off they went for more, we asked the locals what this could be and no one could come up with an answer, just that they may have been waking out to the grave yard with stuff! Retsag was formerly a huge military barracks town and as you can see we came across some of the old towers and stuff. We also got our first ride in the famous eastern european car... the LADA, complete with cushy chairs and a animal antler for a gear shift. It may be an old tank but we found out that they can still fly! The roads in that area werent exactly smooth and we were travlleing right alongside the slovakian border and I couldnt help but think "oh well if we crash here it'll make for a pretty cool story, I can just see the headlines, "missionaries attempt to run border in LADA although attempt failed when car split in two due to exccesive speed". Lynnette later told me we were only travelling at 110 km but that LADA was shaking so hard it sure felt like a whole lot faster. All in all it was a really good weekend, even if at times we struggled with the language with the chess and with the lack of sleep, we enjoyed it and look forward to the next outreach!