week review in pictures...

kyle bbq'd some burgers baseball practices

drank some cappucinos

saw the city at night
...during the day!

took the tram
....and much more!!! we have had a great week. mom and dad klassen have helped out with so much....clothing bazaar, mom taught some english, baseball practices. its great having them here and showing them what our daily lives are like!

well since winter never really came this year it seems like summer wants to come a month early. just perfect timing for my parents to stop by for a little visit. they arrived on saturday in vienna and so we met up with them there and spent a couple days seeing vienna. we had a great time taking a tour of the summer palace and many sites around the city, it was alot of fun to tour mom and dad around since they had never been in a european city and ever site was something totally new, since a heritage site in vancouver is anything built before 1970 and over here it's more like anything built before the 1900's. the weather was great, so we spent most of the time walking around catching up, and of course visiting many cafe's along the way. we are no back in Hungary showing them our home and ministry, today we were out visiting miklos and eva and seeing the gypsy community. and yesterday they got to experince the clothing sale and we did a clean out of the ministry center, hey if we got them here might as well put them to work,.... they were more than happy to help actually. and this afternoon it's off to baseball practice were they full suitcase of gear which they brought will be put to use.....many thanks to you all who helped contribute to that, the kids will love the new stuff. oh and did i mention all the goodies we got, i got enough root beer flavoured things to last me a year plus all sorts of other treats, guests are so great to have....... not just for all the gifts they bring! so ya we are having a great time and look forward to the weekend when we can take them into budapest and show them around.

post from ofalu....well here i (lynnette) sit in the ofalu centre. i was waiting for my english student to arrive, but i guess she forgot today! so i decided to get my prep done for english club with the kids for this friday...finished that off! (we are still reading the story of david and goliath) and since they have internet here i thought i would just post on something i was just thinking about as i was waiting.....my student that was supposed to come today i meet with once a week. she is a great girl, super nice, a little older than me, but we get along good. she is such an easy student to teach too! last week before easter i gave her the gospel of john. she said that she had read the bible before, but she seemed excited to recieve part of it again. i havent talked to her since and was hoping that we could talk about it today! through out this week i have been re reading john again and praying through it, that it would speak to my student as she is reading it also. its amazing how many new things that God has been showing me through it too! but my prayer is that even though we meet to learn english....somehow God would use this time to speak through me and kyle and that our student(s) will come to see Him for themselves!!! please pray with me for my one student who didnt show up today,that we could meet again soon and have a good talk together.....thanks so much for all those who are continually lifting us up in prayer, know that God is using your prayers in a mighty way.

watch out ladies it's easter time in hungary,

and with easter monday approching the hungarian tradition of boys spraying perfume on women will happen once again throughout hungary, i was actually just reading a article on this hungarian tradition and about how it is slowly fading away, especially here in the city. the tradition goes..... that as the boys spray women with perfume they recite a poem that basically says "as one sprays water on a flower so it doesn't wilt.... i spray perfume on you so your beautywon't wilt", what does this have to do with Easter, honestly i really don't know. but it did get me thinking, what has faded/wilted in my relationship with God. in what ways has the power of Christs Resurrection faded in my life,in what areas of my life do i need to be washed anew to prevent my wilting. i'm pretty sure a spray of perfume won't keep anyone from the inevitable wilt, albeit disguise it for a while but i am completely assured that Christ alone can save me eternally.





many people have been asking about how miklos and eva have been doing, sorry to not have kept you updated lately on them, carlos and i went out to erchi last thurs to visit and bring out some new clothes for the family and he is doing much, much better. for those who don't know just after christmas he had kidney failure and was admitted to hospital, after being there for a couple weeks he decided to leave and go home, because in his mind nothing was wrong with him. after 2 weeks of ignoring ours and his families requests to go back he fell really ill and was given days to live, the Lord worked a miracle and he survived those very dark days and now is doing so much better, the doctors even going so far to say nothing is wrong with him. Praise the Lord. Miklos and Eva both received the Lord during this past christmas season and our teams is now having weekly prayer meeting in their house. During May a group is coming from Sweden to work in Erchi and other places and it's our hope that both miklos and eva and maybe more would be baptised during this time. we continue to be amazed at how the Lord is working in their lives. yesterday we also had a special kids club in ofalu, carlos and rita had a easter presentation for the kids, opening 12 eggs and each on containing a item that helped to tell the story of christs death, ressurection and why it is so important in our lives, it was really well done and the kids really got into it. it was so great to see the kids so captivated by what the next item would be, sometimes it can be really crazy specailly if there is a larger group which there was. we left really encouraged at the response of the kids. continue to pray for them. they have a really understanding of the gospel, but pray it wouldn't just be knowledge but that they would seek a relationship with the one true saviour. sorry no recent pictures both these ones where taken this last fall, but if you have a craving for something new here is our latest prayer/ministry letter

Boldog Szülinapod,

Lynnette! Well I know it's a day early but i figured why not celebrate and have some fun, plus it was a super nice warm spring day. Well me being the last minute planner i am was still piecing the day together this morning but thankfully it was a sunny day which makes things much easier. So in celebration of the coming 2010 Olympics in vancouver i thought maybe we would test our skills at the bobsled and begin training for our Olympic dreams! Canadian bobsled team here we come, ok not so much, as will be witnessed by the following video. We found two things out today, one we will never make the Olympics and two we should never get a motorbike, since as we went around the corner one of us, who will remain un-named leaned out of the corner and one of us leaned into the corer, nothing quite like sliding around a corner feeling every rivet on the slick metal and smelling the flowers all at the same time!
Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photoswe left with only a couple bruises, but the hurt of realizing your Olympic dream has come to a crashing end is what hurts the most! oh well makes for good laughs afterwards. since we were on a children's theme we headed up to the highest point in budapest via the children's railway. kinda a smaller scale train run by kids, now i'm sure you all have in your minds those tiny little kids trains where the conductor is larger than the engine he's sitting on. But it's quite a bit bigger than that and takes you through the rolling hills just above budapest, it really quite nice actually, we then hiked to the top of janos hill and took in the view. To end the day off we headed into budapest to our favorite Italian place for some good pizza and pasta, ( i know not so hungarian, but who can say no to italian).

nothing better than enjoying a great day with my amazing wife!

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.