Fall is definitely in the air!

Living in a country where we don't speak the language, we miss a lot of things. We can't watch the news (well, we can watch it but we can't understand it), can't read the newspaper, and can't understand conversations on the street, so if anything happens to the country of Hungary, would one of you give us a call and let us know?

We kind of feel like we live in "our own world" walking through downtown Budapest, not understanding a word going on around us, but this past Monday was an exception. As Glenn and I came up out of the metro system on Monday, my ears immediately recognized English being spoken over a loudspeaker, and I was so shocked I stopped in my tracks.



Following the sound of the beautiful language, we came upon a man standing in front of a microphone preaching in English, followed by a young man translating the sermon into Hungarian. It was weird but kind of warming. I don't, however, think there were many Hungarians that were capitivated by the whole scene.



Sometimes I feel really guilty that our life here is so "easy", when there are so many other missionaries living in very rough situations. I know without a doubt that we are where God wants us to be, and I occasionally have to remind myself of that. This past Wednesday Glenn and I went to see a movie, Get Smart, in English at our local mall. This just amazes me because, first, we never saw a movie in a theatre the whole time we were in Ivory Coast, and secondly, it was in ENGLISH and it was a fairly NEW movie too! Wow!

There are several differences though in going to a movie here. First, they really encourage you to purchase your tickets ahead of time on-line in order to guarantee a seat when you arrive. (Our theater complex shows about 10 movies at a time, but each individual theatre is pretty small.) Secondly, out of 10 movies, about half of them are Hungarian. The other half are American. Of the 5 that are American, usually 2 of them will be dubbed into Hungarian (so the mouth doesn't move in proper sequence) and 3 of them will be in English with Hungarian subtitles. These are the ones we go to see! Glenn and I enjoy seeing how they translate some of the English into Hungarian!! The third difference is that when you purchase a ticket (on line or in line), you must choose your seat at the time of purchase! They have a display screen that shows what seats are available, you choose where you want to sit, and your seat number is printed on your ticket. FAR BE IT for you to sit in someone else's reserved seat, even if the rest of the seats around you are empty!



Thursday the Member Care team (Doyles, Stevens and Borders) went on a dinner cruise down the Danube River.



A delicious buffet dinner, a small dance floor with some great music, and the most gorgeous scenery made the 2 hour river cruise an evening to remember.



I hope your week has been as good and full as ours was!

One final note...even though our life is relatively "easy" here, there are some things that make it hard to be here instead of there (in the U.S.), and that is being away from family and friends for special occasions. One of those special occasions is coming up this week: my DAD's birthday! Dad, we wish you a wonderful birthday and sure wish we could be there to celebrate it with you!!!! We love you!

Fortunately, a slow week!

This has been one of those rare weeks. You know, slow and relaxed. If, at any point in this blog I sound like I am complaining, I'm not. It has been so nice to just be able to get caught up on emails (work emails, that is. Still have about 75 personal emails to write, and plan to work on them this week!)

There's really no news to speak of...



Glenn made us 2-3 quarts of salsa from scratch. It is delicious!



We are harvesting our newest fruit-blackberries! We bought and planted in early spring 3 raspberry and 3 blackberry bushes behind our house and they are now in season. Our bushes look nice and healthy, and we'll get about 40 blackberries this first season, but we didn't get any raspberries at all. I don't know if our raspberry bushes ("sprigs" is probably more correct) were too immature to produce this year, so hopefully we'll have some next summer!



Our apple tree that produced 12 apples last year had about 30 apples on it this year. We're going to have to get on the internet and read up on how to make a naturaly pesticide to keep bugs away. Since we can't speak/read in Hungarian, we don't know how to ask for insecticide and directions on how to use it, so we'll have to go the "natural" route and make our own. Someone told me they thought mixing vinegar and water and spraying it over the tree would work. Any ideas, anyone?

OH! OH! OH! In a week that has been slow and uneventful, the BIG news is that we are getting a bus stop about 50 yards from the front of our house! We are very excited and curious. Excited that it is so close and convenient and yet not right in front of our house, and curious as to where the bus line will go and when it will start service. All week we have watched the crews as they came to dig the foundation, build the framework, pour the base concrete, and now they are laying the bricks. We are hoping the bus will go straight down the street to Campona Mall. (The bus line that passes behind our house goes toward the mall and then veers off to the left, going into downtown Budafok, which is where we catch a tram to go into downtown Budapest.) Maybe they will hang the sign with the names of the bus stops by next weekend and I can update you via this blog!

August 20th is Saint Stephen's Day and all of Hungary meets in Budapest for the festivities. This is the biggest holiday of the year, and it commemorates the coronation of the first king of the Hungarian nation back in the year 1000 AD. (He later became a saint, and is attributed with bringing Christianity to Hungary.)

Booths are set up from the top of Castle Hill overlooking the Danube River, all the way down the winding path to the bottom of the hill, stopping at the foot of the Chain Bridge.

The highlight of the festivities is the air show. Brightly colored planes zoom and soar, twirling to the heavens and leaving a cotton candy trail of white smoke behind them. They race in and out between pylons to show their manipulative skill and control, and the most daredeviling act is when they fly UNDER the Chain Bridge. To give you an idea of how dangerous and difficult this is (we've seen them practicing before) but they could not do it as part of the arial show on Thursday because there was too much wind! We didn't get there in time to see the main air show this year, but we did see the helicopter show, which was not nearly as impressive as the regular planes!!!

We're really not sure what this small group was all about. They walked in formation at ONE MILE AN HOUR! It was like watching a group walk in slow motion. Of course, that made it easier to get a clear photo!!

St. Stephens Day celebration is the largest local arts and craft fair I've ever seen, and an opportunity to eat some of the most fattening but delicious local foods and sweets! Artisans from all over Hungary come to display and sell their handiwork, such as traditional indigo prints.

Various musicians and small bands played throughout the day. The evening ends with a phenomenal fireworks display. Glenn and I didn't stay for it because we didn't want to get caught in all the traffic so we watched it on our TV when we got home! Of course, it loses something when you watch it on TV instead of in person. Maybe next year we'll just make plans to stay for the fireworks and get in the right mindset to be there all night! Of course, that might mean we end up walking home due to the buses not running very often out to our neighborhood that late at night.

Well, that ends our week. Glenn is watching a video clip and doing some research for son-in-law Jonathan while I work on this blog update. Tonight we are going to the Eden House for worship in English! We are still going to the Budafok Baptist Church on Sunday mornings, which is all in Hungarian, and recently no one has been available to translate due to summer vacations, so we sit there for 2 hours trying to find words we recognize! Can't say we're getting a lot out of the worship service, but it is an opportunity to sit still, read our Bible and listen for God to speak in our ears (in English, of course).

Have a good week!

In honor of the Olympics...

I thought I would start off with a picture of me competing at the Olympics in Bejing. This will also explain why I am two weeks behind in updating this blog!



No, not really. Glenn and I have been in Ukraine and Russia for our last two weeks of AGM (Annual General Meetings).



We were in Ukraine August 1-8. Our meetings during the day were held at a small retreat center, but at night all the participants were housed in 3 additional locations nearby because the retreat center was not large enough to hold all of us.

Two languages are used in Ukraine: Russian and Ukrainian. Both use the Cyrillic alphabet, and neither Glenn nor I can tell the difference in Russian or Ukrainian words. We had a real difficult time reading directions or instructions, or even the names of places because it didn't look like anything with which we were familiar.

The biggest difference that I noticed between Kiev, Ukraine and Budapest, Hungary (besides the alphabet) was that the roads are much wider and there are more modern buildings in Kiev than in Budapest.

At the end of our week in Ukraine we had the grand finale with a Lottie Moon Christmas auction and a wonderful children's program. The volunteers that come out from America to work with our MK's while parents are in meetings bring coveted food items (Oreos, grits,chocolate chips, cake mixes and such), DVD movies, books, etc. and the missionaries bring souvenirs from their home country. All of it is auctioned off with the proceeds going to the Lottie Moon Christmas offerring. It is a fun way to give our Lottie Moon offerring!

At the end of the week we had one day free before flying to Moscow, Russia for the next meetings. We talked Skipper into being our guide for the day. Skipper and his wife Sue used to live in Kiev but now live in Budapest just 12 walking minutes away. Skipper did a great job of showing us the main attractions and his old stomping grounds.

I won't bore you with the names of everything we saw (and I don't remember the names anyway!) but I do remember that this is St. Andrews Church.

There were LOTS of huge, ornate churches throughout Kiev, but I liked this blue one the best of all I saw. Truly, it was this blue!!

You could recognize churches by their "onion" tops. Notice the one in the distance? Most of the churches are Orthodox.

We saw a lot of interesting sights that day, including this one of a truck watering the countless beautiful flowerbeds that are spread throughout the city!

The Dnieper River flows through the city of Kiev. Kind of reminded me of the blue Danube (which is now really a murky green) that winds its way through Budapest.

McDonald's are everywhere. Fortunately, this one has blended well with the gorgeous local architecture!

The Friendship Arch commemorates the friendship between Ukraine and Russia. Yea, right.

We didn't know what this sign said, but we know it was emphatic about it!

We smiled for the camera at a strategic overlook of the city.

We wandered through many parks spread throughout the city. The day was comfortably hot so we really enjoyed the lush greenery that hung over the sidewalks. We saw families out enjoying the beautiful sunshine and lovers ignoring the scenery as they smooched on the benches that lined the walkways.

One thing we saw that was very UNUSUAL was the large number of wedding photographs of brides and grooms being taken in public places, especially in city parks with fountains or on the grounds of the many churches. (Not that they were being married IN the church, but having pictures made infront of them.)

In this picture, you can easily see 3 brides. While we were sitting here, taking a break, we saw 7 brides at ONE TIME in various locations around this fountain! It became a game to us to see how many brides we could find in each location.

I will definitely remember Kiev as the place with all the brides and grooms!!

There is a bridge where lovers tie a string, ribbon or rope (maybe the thickness determines the amount or strength of their love???) or attach a lock that signifies that they are locked in a love relationship forever. It was really quite touching to see padlocks with couples names written on them (you know, "Cile 'n Glenn") until we saw a lady trying to pick a lock. We wonder if her boyfriend or husband left her.

BIG buildings everywhere; mixture of old and new styles.

Aren't we cute?

Exhausted from sightseeing all day, we slept well that night before flying to Russia for the fifth and final week of AGM.

Russia is our largest field, both in terms of square miles (kilometers) and number of personnel. Russia covers 11 time zones. These folks are real heroes! Life is tough here; maybe even harder than living in Africa!

I don't have a lot of pictures from our time in Russia but this is a picture of the wife of one of the Russian pastors who came to share with us about the "Russian mindset". It was very informative! Glenn and I have been asked to lead a marriage/family weekend retreat for one of our Russian Baptist churches in far east Russia in October so this information was very helpful to us! (More about this as the retreat approaches!)

This is one of our families who live in St. Petersburg. Leslie and Buck know some of our friends from Marietta First Baptist Church. MFBC has sent volunteer teams over to work with our personnel in St. Petersburg! Thanks, MFBC!!!

Mindy and I had to say good-bye in Moscow at the end of the week. Mindy works for a sister organization and came to do achievement testing for all our MK's. Because of my role as the MK Education consultant, she and I worked together on the testing. Well, I did the coordination and she did the testing. Mindy helped us at all 5 AGM's so we got to know each other pretty well by the end of all the meetings!! Mindy lives in Prague so I will see her again, I'm sure.

The meetings ended at the Russia AGM at noon giving us only a few hours to do any sightseeing before flying back to Budapest early the next day. However, even if we'd had a full day, I'm not sure Glenn or I would have had the energy to do anything!! We were exhausted by the last day and greatly looked forward to finally sleeping in our own beds!

We spent the night with the Cherry family who graciously showed us a few things in our limited time. My favorite of all were the local markets of fresh fruits and vegetables, of which we do not have many in Budapest!

During our 5 weeks of AGM's we ate a lot of pasta and rice. Very few green vegetables, and even less fruit. I really missed watermelon, which is in its peak season right now!!

We saw this awesome sunset from the Cherry's apartment window. The photo doesn't do it justice!

Moscow is a huge city with wide streets and thousands and thousands of highrise apartment complexes! Everywhere you look you see highrises; some obviously from the communist era with their plain, dreary, gray block construction, and others with large balconies painted in pretty pastels, overflowing with plants of many varieties. What is so shocking is that in a city with 12 million people, they are still building more apartments!

Another view from the Cherry's kitchen window.

I haven't seen many buildings as big as this one, except maybe Versailles!

As we were walking down the pedestrian mall, we came upon this colorful outfit. I love all the colors, but I don't think they should all be worn together like this!

A better view of the pedestrian mall, only without the colorful outfit!

While in Moscow, I saw this ice cream shop and just about flipped out! Dad and Emogene, they don't have the Tuesday special ($1 a scoop), but whatever we paid, it was worth every ruble!!

And then, we ended the sightseeing tour with a coffee from Starbucks! Any excuse to rest our weary legs! I sure wish I liked coffee!! Don't tell pastor Ken, but we bought him a Moscow Starbucks mug because we were thinking of him. We will give it to him when we go to the U.S. for a Member Care conference at Thanksgiving. He is a big fan of Starbucks. Wonder if he already has one????

Well, I believe this is my longest blog entry to date. Sorry! Hope it wasn't too boring. We are home for the next month (thankfully!) so I probably won't have much to write about in the next few weeks other than my thoughts...