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!

some little random facts of what we will miss from here and what we look forward to over there: out of order and incomplete but here you go:

from home:

- mom d's fresh baked cookies & buns

- mom k's tortilla soup

- a dryer for our clothes

- english speaking country

- the smell of the ocean

- donuts

- niko

- waking up on a clear morning and seeing fresh snow on the local mountains

- sidewalks

- my own bed

- waffle maker & rice cooker

- white spot breakfasts!

- carpeted floors

- frosted flakes

- VMB

- walks on the dyke

- a freezer large enough to hold more than a tub of ice cream

-our bikes (ours here constantly gets flat tires and lynnettes pedal some how loosens every ride)

-our roller blades and a place actually smooth enough to ride them

-hockey night in canada

-and of course family and friends

things we will miss from here:

-walks through Budapest

-good and cheap coffee spots

-bath houses

-the history

-being able to actually enjoy the fall (little rain)

-the christmas market

-being able to travel to vienna for the weekend (same distance as going to seattle)

-festivals every week of the summer

-trabants

-team mates and new friends

-our patio and being able to use it for half the year

-public transit system, being 5 minute walk from train station

-langos

-my BBQ

-our neighbours

-not our neighbours dog (mono)

-un-paved roads

-when people come to visit and are actually surprised we have a flushing toilet and heating

-our church, calvary chapel

-travelling the country in the summer

-paprika

-turo

-H&M (lynnette will miss this)

-the buda hills

-budapest by night (the lights on the river are awesome)

-olga and her weekly kisses for us (although a little wet at times)

-working together (every day all day), it's great

-cheap flowers from old ladies

just when you think you got things figured out disaster strikes... so we had a little extra time today in between doing some work at the team office and opening up the bazzar for the weekly clothing sale and we thought a good way to kill some time would be in the cukraszda, (coffee shop). we ordered our stuff for some odd reason the lady laughed after i had completed our order but we thought nothing of it, we figured it was just our funny canadian/ hungarian accents and so we sat down, lynnette went off and returned to the table to find me sitting there with this...... with a strange odd look on my face. we had ordered a piece of cake each lynnette ordered a cappucino and i ordered a latte. apparently my latte must have had a slight pronunciation problem i i ended up with the "kaszty" cake also and no drink. ok not such a disaster who can complain with two pieces of cake. we tried to explain while ordering the new latte our mistake but the lady didn't catch the joke and probably thought us kinda strange since we were laughing still about my two slices of cake, oh well they tasted good. but i guess this still wasn't as bad as when i tried to order an ice coffee for our friend Jon when he was visiting us last summer, we ended up with a quadruple shot of espresso with some ice cubes in it!

this weekend is a long weekend so not much happening here, Thursday is the holiday but when there is a mid week holiday hungarians will always take the day around off also. so friday becomes a day off since the whole country works on the saturday before. it's actually considered a work day. we had been in budapest on last saturday and wanted to park, normally free on saturday but we were surprised to find out we needed to pay, thankfully before the ticket arrived on the car!

we spent most of the week putting together information letters for the baseball teams, since the field we have been using will no longer available to us next year. telling people about the proposed plan for next year the need to build a new field, (converting half a soccer field in another part of the city) and about year end wrap up parties and when next season will being. lynnette met with olga on monday as always, every week olga complains about us leaving and tells us to stay, we will miss the weekly meetings with her! but an american girl who is joining the team in may will be able to pick up all our english students so we are happy about that.

update of sorts....well life here is moving along quickly as always. people always asking us when are we going home? do you have a countdown going?....so we are thinking about it lots but in the meantime still trying to stay concentrated on things we are still involved with here. its sort of a weird feeling trying to think about going home and leaving here and all we have come to love about hungary. we are very excited to be coming home (don't get us wrong), but it will be hard to leave here. we look forward to seeing many of you when we get back, hanging out with friends and catching up with family and meeting new members we have never seen! but if you think of us in the next 7ish weeks, please pray for us to be able to say goodbye to hungary and be able to readjust to great canadian living once again.....thanks!

OK on a totally different note, this last wednesday we were in ercsi for a dedication of miklos and ava's house. it was so amazing to think about where God has brought them from remembering last year and them in the tiny house, to now in their warm, dry, and safer house. and also looking at their lives and how God has moved in them and changed their personal lives. i just had to sit back and be amazed! the mayor was out and the pastor from erd along with many others. although it was a cold day and my feet almost froze off, it was cool to be there for it. you may notice in the pictures the lovely color the house got painted....miklos picked it himself and they love it....its supposedly the new style here in hungary! the other picture is of their youngest son mario....he is very cute, but a little trouble maker, but we love him and i couldn't resist not putting this cute picture of him on!

to england and back......

a really late birthday present... this last april for lynnettes birthday i promised that we would make it out to london before we left for home and seeing how we only have a couple weeks left what better time than now. thankfully europe is the center of cheap flights and so off we were to visit the great city of london, which just so happens to be home of our friends alison and tristan. lynnette went to high school with alsion and hasn't seen her in 2 and a half years. so really the trip was more to see them and it was a plus to see all the sights. we flew out on friday and landed in sunny london, which it stayed the whole weekend, much to the surprise of all london! what can we say... we know how to pick our weekends. saturday we headed out to the countryside to do some "geocache-ing" and see more of england than just the city. what is geocach-ing you may ask, good question we still aren't so sure, basically its a GPS lead treasure hunt with coordinates found on the internet and little canisters hidden all over the place that you have to find. basically it was a good excuse to get out into the woods, and a bit lost. alison's GPS telling us the spot was within 7 feet of where we once stood, and us searching ever tree but the one directly in front of us. oh well we eventually found it! just as the girls were voting to give up eagle eye tristan made the discovery and we all headed home satisfied. sunday and monday were spent in the city seeing the sights and catching up on old time, and making new ones, (riding the double decker buses, saying high to big ben and racing up escalators), it was kinda strange to be back in an english speaking country for the first time, but we really enjoyed the city wandering the streets and sipping drinks in places winston churchill frequented. there are few cities that just emit history like london, oh and of course the cars on the wrong side! all in all a great weekend, with great friends, thank again alison and tristan!

a night at the opera

last night our long awaited trip to the opera was upon us. not that we are huge opera fans, neither of us has actually ever been but more for the building and the event of it. and it being close to my birthday we thought it a good way to celebrate. so off we went and when your are spending it in a theater over 100 years old who cares if you understand only part of the story. Madame Butterfly was the opera and the language sung was italian with a monitor above the stage with hungarian subtitles. so between the two of us we could put together most of the performance. plus the symphony probably would have been reason enough to go. and no, we didn't talk through the whole time

trying to figure it out, we were afraid of being shunned by all the faithful opera fans. although the seats creaked like crazy so you had to sit perfectly still not to make tons of noise, the acoustic being so good the smallest sounds could be heard from all....... heres some shots we took while at the show, the one below is specially for andrea.

it being her birthday this weekend (happy birthday), we laughed so hard because it was like a scene straight from the muppets.....her favorite show!

and her favorite characters so heres to you andrea! haha.......now you get a view of our box from the front and back........ so as you can see we had a good time, and no the people in front of us weren't real life muppets but actually french, i didn't ever think i would be spending my 25th birthday sharing a box at the hungarian opera, kinda funny. but as you can see from the pictures the place is quite the sight. and tickets to the shows really aren't too bad since you can pay anywhere from $100 to $1.50. we payed about $20 and the seats were super nice. it was totally worth it!

happy birthday kyle!!!

well, today kyle turned the big 25. it was a pretty relaxed day, i made him some pancakes for breakfast, we went to ofalu to teach english...he fixed my broken bike (what a man) then on the way home from ofalu we stopped for some cake and coffee at our favorite place near by. this evening we were invited over to team mates for dinner....i brought a cake (mocha mousse, thanks mom k for the recipe)....but the funny thing that stuck me was that because we are biking everywhere now, we had to find a way to bike and get the cake over on our 25 min ride to dinner. so we put the cake in a box and strapped it onto the back of kyles bike. on the way i asked him if he ever thought he would be spending his 25th birthday riding a bike in hungary with his birthday cake strapped to the back....we had a good laugh. (and the cake made it there in perfect condition if you wondered) tomorrow we will continue the celebration by attending the opera in budapest. this is something we have wanted to do since getting here and i thought that this would be a perfect time....i hope its good...we will see and post some pictures tomorrow maybe. can you take pictures in an opera?? anyways, just wanted to wish my wonderful husband a very happy birthday...love you babe!

every morning you can find these elderly people down the road from us near the centre of town. they set up tables and sell their flowers from their garden, walnuts from their tree, or eggs from their chickens. i always like buying from these old ladies for 2 reasons.... 1. they are just so cute sitting there and 2. its part of their income. the pensions here are really low so the elderly are forced to work here after they are retired too. so today i bought a little
bunch of flowers from the lady on the far left....she gave me a 5 minute run down on what to do with them when i get home....and of course she instructed me to carry them upside down on the way home too.... its a thing they do here.