Let them eat caviar!

What a wonderful week! God is great and God is good. Let us thank Him as we should!



We discovered one of the large grocery stores is open 0-24 (or as you say in America, 24/7) and so we've often found ourselves shopping until late at night. Cile loves to walk down every aisle and peer at each item, trying to learn the vocabulary and hoping to find something she recognizes! (Since it gets dark here so early, this picture could have been taken at 5:15 pm!)

The biggest news of the week is that our crates arrived and were delivered safely to our doorstep on Friday.



We arrived at the customs/tax office at 9:30 am with all our completed paperwork in hand. After paying the taxes and signing the last document, the customs agent finally decided we looked honest and said he didn't need to inspect the inside of our two crates! The crates were then carried to our new home and were there by 12:00 noon! This process was amazingly smooth and we believe God had His hands all over those crates!



Unfortunately, the trucking company was supposed to bring a forklift to offload our crates, but they only sent a pallet lifter. Our crates were toooooo heavy for a pallet lifter, but amazingly, a construction company is across the street from our house and loaned us a forklift and driver, all for the bargain price of $10!!!!



Vincent, a young college student, and a missionary collegue, Darrin, helped us unload our crates, piece by piece, into our house. Vincent had to go on to his classes after 2 hours, but Darrin stayed well into the evening! His wife, Kesha, came after she got off from work at 5 pm and stayed late too.



Later in the afternoon another missionary couple with a different organization, Dan and Janet, also came to help us sort, take things upstairs, put away dishes, etc. They pitched in and worked until late that evening too. We had great help!

We'll show you pictures of the house next week, but this gives you an idea of the piles of "stuff" we unloaded. Nothing broke! The only damage was a small hole the size of a quarter in the back of the china cabinet, up at the top. It's not visible at all, and we will probably stick a night light through the hole and light up the cabinet. Don't people pay extra for things like that? And we got ours for free!

Our friends, Mary and Alvin, couldn't help us unpack but they provided a wonderful dinner for 6 hungry people from Pizza Hut, Cile's favorite!! There were four pizzas, but we were starving and ate every piece! Recognize the dining room table and china cabinet??? Finally, we called it a night at 8 pm and went back to the guest house to go to bed. We were exhausted but excited to be able to begin settling into our new home.

The next morning we headed out with Darrin and Kesha to eat our way across Budapest! We started with breakfast at IKEA, Darrin's favorite breakfast place, then we walked through the store to get some ideas of what furniture we might need to buy to compliment our furnishings. (We did not bring a lot of furniture in our crates, but mainly household items like dishes, linens, decorations, lamps, etc.)

IKEA says, "No peanut butter for your crackers? Let them eat caviar!"

We had packed some food items in our crates such as spices, pancake syrup, salsa, rotel tomatoes, granola bars, and a few jars of peanut butter. Hungarians do not eat peanut butter, but we can buy it at a grocery store that has an international isle for $5 for a medium size jar. Glenn tried the caviar on crackers. Cile didn't. Glenn wishes he hadn't.

We drove a car to IKEA in case we found some bargains that we couldn't pass up (we didn't), but then headed to a parking lot so that we could take public transportation for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, just before we got to the parking lot, we had a little fender bender. Well, it was really a side panel. The driving in Hungary scares Cile terribly because they have this law called "priority to the right" which means if two cars come to an intersection at the same time, the car to the right has the right of way, even if the car on the left was on a more major throughfare! That means you can be driving down a pretty major street, and all of a sudden a car comes flying across in front of you because it was on a side street to the right! I'm sure this will not be the last time you hear from us about priority to the right!

Our next stop was a creperie. Cile and Glenn had ham, mushroom and cheese crepes, but Kesha and Darrin had crepes with jelly inside, shown above. They were delicious and brought back memories of our time in France in 1984-85.

Darrin then took us to another mall, The Arcade, since we had never been there before. We ate lunch at Burger King, which was our first time since arriving in Budapest 6 weeks ago.

Darrin and Kesha shared their Burger King coupons with us. Between us we bought 4 cheeseburgers, 4 small fries and 4 cokes (no ice, of course) all for the bargain price of $9.50.

After this meal, Darrin took us to one of the McDonalds that had a McCafe; it looks kind of like a Starbucks if you close your eyes and try real hard to imagine it. We all got chocolate frappacino's, but to Cile, it just tasted like a chocolate milkshake. By this time, we were all stuffed!

Lest you think all we did was eat, I've included some of the sights we saw along the way during the day.

The countryside out near our house.

The Parliment Building

We promise not to show any more pictures of the Parliment Building, at least until the weather gets sunny. It's just that this building is soooo big, ornate and beautiful that Cile can't help but take pictures of it each time she sees it!

Glenn, Darrin and Kesha

Saint Anne's Church (one of the many Catholic churches in Budapest)

We think this building is beautiful, except for the flashing casino sign on the corner!

We finished the eating tour (uh, I mean sightseeing tour) about 5 pm and headed home, full and tired. We had a great time though and look forward to eating in more of Darrin's favorite restaurants!

We truly thank God for His goodness and call on our life. We thank Him for the wonderful church that we attend on Sundays, and for the warmth we feel from our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We thank Him for providing different people to translate the sermons each week so that we can be fed spiritually. We also thank West Cobb Baptist Church for "pod casting" their sermons so that we can be led into worship in our living room during the week by our American pastor and friend, Ken!

We have much for which we are thankful, but we also have a few needs. Would you pray that we will focus on our language study and make it a priority over setting up our house? Would you also pray for opportunities to practice what we learn in our language classes? Cile is meeting once a week with a female college student just to practice speaking. Pray not only for Cile to increase her comfort with speaking, but also for the relationship with Nora. We do not know where Nora is spiritually.

We also met a man named Steve (American version) who lives near us as we were uncrating. He speaks English pretty well. Pray that we will develop a friendship with him that will open doors for opportunities to share Christ with him too.

We still do not have a land line for our new home phone nor have we been able to get cell phones. (This affects our internet access and our ability to "skype" our family and friends.) Foreigners can get land lines for their homes because ultimately the responsibility to pay unpaid bills falls back to the landlord. Likewise, foreigners can't get cell phones unless a Hungarian is willing to open an account on their behalf, making the Hungarian ultimately responsible in case of the foreigners' non-payment. We think we have found a Hungarian woman who is willing to open an account for us. Pray that all these arrangements happen quickly, as it will be difficult to move into our new house without any ability to communicate with our missionaries, families and friends.

As always, thanks for remembering us in prayer!