BalatonNet Conference....and a bike ride...

so last night we got back from the first ever keswick conference in Hungary. it was conference combined with a missions expo also. we were part of the team that stood at the OM booth and answered any questions about OM and tried to recruit others to join also. Luis Palau was the main speaker of the conference along with many other hungarian pastors. we greatly enjoyed the teachings and it was a very refreshing time for us....it was a bonus that the conference was right next to the balaton lake (hungarys holiday hotspot!) so in our free time we found ourselves enjoying the waters of the lake.

one night after the evening meeting we were at the missions expo tent and a HUGE storm decided to join us. we saw the constant lightening in the distance, but thought it might not get us.....but we were wrong! it got super windy and started to pour rain...they had to tie up the doors of the huge tent that the expo was in....the frame of the tent was "waving" with the strong winds (like a piece of wet spaghetti) we have learned that when one is in hungary....one should expect any random storm to hit at any time. but....one of our team mates ordered pizza just before the storm hit and the lady actually delivered it right to the tent door during the worst part of the storm....we were happy because she shared with us....what a devoted pizza delivery service! (for a cultural info: this pizza did not include tomato sauce but sour cream instead...quite tasty, even if it sounds weird! sour cream is a staple in hungarians diet....we like it)

ok....now onto our modes of transport....as we have told you we have no car here but by the generosity of team mates we have been able to borrow cars since last october but no we are back to our much beloved bikes, not so beloved by our rear ends but hey i guess we need to get used to them again....we took them also down to balaton to give us a little freedom, we took the train down since it was the easiest to get the bikes down, each train has a bike carriage also on them, we were sitting here as we got close to our stop and suddenly at the stop before us the other two who have bikes on the train come running back and decide to get out at that stop, they got one bike out and on the platform but as they had the second one half way out the train starts to role and there is one of them running along with the train trying to stop it and the other pulling his bike in to safe it...so we are thinking ok we need a game plan....we have very little time so lynnette jumps out right away at the next stop i throw the bags to her then pass on bike quickly run back grab the other and jump out.....whew we made it, we expect to see the train rolling away just as i jump out but ofcourse when one is ready for things like this the train sits for 5 minutes which is exactly what this did...oh well a little excitement never did any one any harm.

as promised here is some video and shots from the race this year...you may remember from last year but i got some more shots form different spots. the video is specially for you chris..... some proof of the inverted helicopter....it's kinda hard to see but i'm sure you get the point... the shot a couple below is of the malev jet liner that was flown through downtown at just above building level, was quite the sight to see so low and close to the parliament. since yesterday was the biggest national holiday of the year there was also tons of stuff happening around the city. we also headed up to the castle district for the folk art festival, a great place to see tons of cool local handcrafts and eat our new favorite "langos bread". oven fried pizza type with all sorts of toppings. the evening also featured a huge fireworks show which we have heard is really good. but we will never know because for the second year in a row we got stormed out. (chistina and beeni will remember this clearly, or maybe you chose to forget it!) last year we had no notice but this year we had some... so we were able to get under a castle wall....flash backs form last year....after 1/2 hour we thought it was over so we began to walk down to the river....well we had to run for cover and found the only place the tunnel on the end of the chain bridge...probably as long a massey tunnel for you vancouverites...it was packed from end to end a couple thousand people at least...all fearing the worst like last year but other than rain it was fine. we had a good time laughing as we ran through the huge puddles and streams flowing down the streets dashing for the subway. good times and memories!

a few notes to those who will find faults in this post (vicky and chris) i'm starting to think these are our only two readers....well anyways yes the food is quite good even if it doesn't look so perfect and already has bites out of it and secondly upon closer inspection i see there was room in the middle of the tunnel, this would have been helpful to know at the time as we stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers and took pictures of them! and maybe it wasn't quite as long as the massey tunnel but who's counting and i've been known to embellish once in a while?!

Piliscaba english camp:

we spent this past week in piliscaba a smaller town not far from budapest, we worked together with a organization called CE (christian endevour) who were putting on this camp. in past years they have had a pastor from ireland helping them but he could not come for the whole camp this year and they asked if we could help. upon arriving to the camp we realized we had been chosen as camp leaders so our roles quickly grew. but it was a really good week, tiring but really good. each morning i (kyle) shared the morning bible study and after we would have discussion groups and also team tasks based also on the study, which added a little stress but each day we were amazed at the creativity of the kids. skits, posters and land art were the tasks and normally they were quite comedic! we really felt God moving in the lives of the kids, through the discussion groups, really good times of sharing with the kids and also in many other ways. we were really grateful for this opportunity to serve in this camp although it was stressful we really felt carried by God throughout this camp. we learnt that we can't completely prepare for anything, often times during the discussion groups i would have no idea what questions to ask or how to get a good talk going but was always amazed by how God would direct them, sometimes the kids would come up with the craziest questions, with one even saying on friday but what now? what happens when i go home? how do i keep driving the porsche? (this being my last talk, drive the porsche not the the trabant). as illustrated in the poster. it was a complete learning experience for us both, as i had never lead a series bible study and we really understood the verse "when i am weak, you are strong". we now have a couple days to catch up, going into the city to watch the Red Bull Air Race,

some video to follow, and then on Wednesday we will head off for a conference, we will spend 5 days at this conference were we will also be having a missions expo, so basically hangin around our new bus, also to be unveiled at the conference and answering questions, Luis Palau is the main speaker so we are looking forward to catching some of the sessions also.

bumper crop.....

well after months of toil and hard work we are finally seeing some results..... look at our spoils.... a month ago we had bought this little plant at the local veggie stand and thought we would see what we could come up with...apparently severe heat and being gone for weeks on end isn't so great for pepper plants, but hey i guess a couple ain't so bad! i'm kinda scared after being famished for weeks on end they may take a little revenge on me and scorch my mouth. maybe i can convince lynnette to try the first on.

in other news after a whole week at home we are back out.... we leave this afternoon for a week outreach where i will be doing the morning bible studies. the bible/english camp will have 25 kids around 11-16 years old so a wide margin of ages but we are looking forward to it. we will also have conversation groups and different activities for the kids, we had been invited to help by a organization called CE (christian endeavour) they do camps throughout the summer and this will be the first time OM has helped to it should also be a good chance to link our two organizations for future ministry.

OM and the Irish in Cegled:

This past week we spent in a city not far out of Budapest called Cegled, a great city where we did english club and baseball for kids from 4-15. It was a great week, and thankfully not as hot as our past outreach. Also we were joined by a group from Ireland part of a group called Exodus. One leader and 5 teens came and helped with our programs, basically like what north americans would know as VBS, we put on a program for the city in the reform church. We had around 45 kids depending on the day and then in the evenings also had film club, where we watched films like National treasure, Good Will Hunting and others and then afterwards had discussions on the film. Lynnette co-lead the english clubs and i the baseball where we taught many kids for the first time the game of baseball. quite funny and then afterwards had a testimony each day. We worked alongside the reform church of Cegled, interesting point... in Cegled there is the largest reform church in Eastern Europe. we had a tour of this church on Saturday, where lynnette proudly held the large old key of the church and also rang the bell, and deafened the rest of us since we were high up in the tour. (we also listened to an oragn concert in this church one eveining...very cool!) The church where we had our programs was actually built during the communist years, one of only 10 built in the whole country during communist rule. also quite interesting to me maybe not you, oh well you know now! we spent the week with some hungarian hosts, where lynnette learnt all sorts of hungarian cooking tips and even got her eye lashes dyed, long story.... she had a cosmetic shop attached to the house, lynnette disappeared into the shop for a while and i was quite interested to see what she may come out with.....they were great hosts and we got tons of hungarian practice, really it was so much fun to just feel at home in their place! this is zsolt one of our star students...ok well he required alot of attention, as he could hardly sit still for more then 10 seconds, but we really had a good time with him and saw him really thinking about things and responded so well as we gave him more responsibility and tasks. Going into these cities and towns we never really know what to expect and each place is so different but we really have enjoyed the diversity of the towns and we had such a good time in Cegled. hopefully we will be able to head out and drop into our hosts place for a weekend sometime in the fall before heading home!

just a quick update since we will be gone for the next week, beth and meghan left our presence on tuesday and are currently enjoying the sunsets of venice, we try not the think of that too much and the rest of our week was fairly uneventful, except for a couple flat tires and a muffler which decided it no longer wanted to be part of the car we were driving. to the rescue 3 hungarian men and a long piece of wire. nothing like a little extra excitment!

we head off tomorrow for another week of outreach in a city 1 hour drive away. we will be going with our OVM team (us and joska and sandi) and also a team from Northern Ireland. A group from a organization called Exodus which is very involved in discipleship of young people and taking them on short term trips like this one, very cool work. We have 5 teens and a leader joining us and we will be putting on basically a day camp for kids, english club, baseball and film club. So far over 40 kids have signed up and we hope for more to join as the week goes on. We will also all be staying with host families in the city so it should be a really fun outreach. Please pray for the team and for Cegled, that God would move during this week and bless the local church, we have really felt your prayers and have seen God moving in amazing ways this summer so far and are really excited to see how he will move in the upcoming weeks.

kiskunmajsa/kubekhaza outreach

well to say the least our last week has been an interesting one! first of all it was scorching hot the whole week, with thursday being hotter in budapest than in bagdad. meghan and beth joined the OVM team for a week of english/kids camps. we traveled first to kiskunmajsa where we joined an on going english camp that was held at an old communist military base. and well, the girls got there fill of interesting stories, enough in their words that they "could go home now and be chalk full of experiences". although we had to deal with everything from cockroaches in our beds, to enough flies in the eating area to feed the camp on it's own the camp went really well. the conversation groups we held went really really well and the kids had a week full of hearing testimonies and teachings. beth and meghan were quickly latched on to by the kids. on the first day we arrived the boys were proudly showing off all sorts of old military gear that they found around the camp area..... jackets with hammer and sickle buttons, army caps and old machine gun shells, but when they told me of a landmine it was too much for me believe! so a couple days later they took me to the field to show me, here is gergu proudly showing off his find. personally i thought it a good idea to keep distance from this but he very adamantly told us it was diffused. but still we demanded he not touch it, as you can see he didn't listen and even saw no problem with holding it while smoking! as you can tell gergu didn't think he needed to listen to us and thought it hilarious that when he threw it in the air we all ran in the other direction.

our second half of the week was spent in kubekhaza, a town we were in last summer also. we also had an english camp but for smaller kids and it went extremely well also. the week ending on sunday with the baptism of two of the teachers of the camp. joska was asked to help along with the baptism. something that was a great blessing to him and the team. and really it was a special day with one of the kids from our group taking the step in front of the camp of accepting the Lord, praise God for how he worked in this last week! the baptism was held in the backyard of a local lady who accepted Christ into her heart 3 years ago while joska and sandi were in kubekhaza. since there is no church in the town we resorted to using the kiddy pool in her backyard, quite the scene to say the least.

thank you again meghan and beth you guys did awesome work and really were a joy to have stay with us. it was "good" right beth?!

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after only a few short days of work beth and meghan transformed the blank canvas of our ministry center wall into a work of art. we left it open to the girls to do whatever they saw fit to paint with only the one challenge being something that would get people thinking as they came through the room for the clothing sale, seniors clubs or many other events that occur in this room. we were i won't say suprised but very impressed with their work. you can be the judge yourself and watch this time lapsed clip of their work. we havent worked them to death....we took them into the city today and enjoyed some great weather and the lovely city of budapest!

tomorrow we will be saying a tearful goodbye to andrea and warren as they head off to amsterdam and then home and we will also be leaving along with beth and meghan for a one week outreach in the south of hungary. so the week ahead will be busy but we are all looking forward to it.

also we have a link to our latest ministry/prayer letter on the bar on the side.

so after half a week of hard work by beth and meghan the upstairs mural has now been completed, very impressive work i must say and now it's off to the downstairs where they will also do two smaller paintings to brighten up our main room where we have the clothing bazaar..... here's a time lapsed video of their work! notice the sweet matching shirts to begin, they say they didn't plan it...we think they did! we have had a great week so far with the girls here, thanks for your help. we have also been busy painting some walls downstairs after there was some water damage earlier this spring. so its a painting party here! stay tuned for a part 2 in the "paintings of beth and meghan"...

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from one outreach to the next set of visitors....well andrea and warren arrived on monday and we have had a busy week with them already. its been great! we showed them around all our favorite places in budapest of course, and put them to work too! but they have been such a great help to us already....and are willing to do anything! here is a picture explanation of some of the things we have been up to this last week:

saw the city

sanded a wall in prep for a new painting that will be done next week by beth and megan. (not too sure what i am doing in this picture!?)

had a nice dinner out

cleaned up a bunch of stuff out of the OM centre attic. this week the OM centre road has the time where you can stick out all your garbage you cant normally throw away out on the road...poor garbage men that have to clean that all up!

and went grocery shopping....this picture needs a little explanation! as you can see they are not holding on to the handle but the buggy isn't going anywhere....it the magic of magnets! they thought it was hilarious so i snapped a picture to remember the moment....i say they need this technology at home too!