Whistle While You Work!

The first Sunday in September marked the start-up of our worship services on Sunday evenings at the Eden House. Because there are 6-8 families here with our organization that are in support roles (for our missionaries) and therefore don't speak Hungarian, we get together on Sunday evenings to worship in English. Some of us go to local Hungarian Baptist churches in the mornings as an act of perseverance and because it is our only contact with Hungarians, and some of them go to either Danube International Church (non-denominational) or International Baptist Church of Budapest, both of which have their worship services in English.




We lost our "Minister of Music" in the reorganization as Robert's family moved to London and our "Minister of Children", Karen, is on stateside assignment with her family. I put their positions in quotes because we don't really have staff since we aren't a church but these are the roles they wonderfully filled.





Teri has graciously temporarily taken over the children's sermons but with the Pollard's in the States until January and when the Bakers with their 4 children-one of whom is likely to be sick-don't come, there are no young children and no need for a children's sermon. However, the first Sunday in September Teri was psyched and ready to give the children's sermon so she did one for Glenn and Alvin.




Because the Eden House was empty for a week after we got back from Czech Republic, we did some projects up there that couldn't be done with lots of people around. A little painting, repairs on windows and shutters, and lots of yard work.

Surrounding the front parking lot of the Eden House is a thick hedge. Behind the hedge is a tall picket fence. Behind the fence, the ground drops about 15-20 feet to the property next door. Glenn climbed through the hedge and over the picket fence to do some serious hedge trimming.




He made me a little nervous, climbing and holding loppers with the ground 15-20 feet below!




Behind Glenn is the drop-off! When he got cocky, I got really nervous!

But when he quit playing around and got serious, I gave him a bowl to gather apples off the neighbors' tree that they couldn't reach on their side of the fence because the tree was too tall and the ground was way down! Fortunately for us, the concrete wall that Glenn was standing on to trim the hedge on the backside was just the right height to pick apples.

Alvin ordered a container to be delivered to the back of the Eden House for him and Glenn to fill with tree branches and hedge clippings that have accumulated for the past year and then hauled off to a great big chipper.

Glenn enjoyed climbing on top of the container and jumping on the pallet to crush down as much of the branches as possible so they could fill it even fuller! We had tried burning the brush, but the lady next door came fussing at Glenn for the second time so we decided we'd just have it hauled off.

Alvin paid the guy $150 to deliver and haul off the container! What a deal!

We enjoyed doing the work up at the Eden House but we are equally glad the Stevens are back now! They arrived on Saturday afternoon and are back to work.

We're headed to Prague this Friday for 5 days for training and visiting with a couple of families while we're there. We're also going to be meeting for the first time with our new boss under the recent reorganization. We're taking our list of questions that is a mile long. I hope he has a free afternoon!

Hope your weather is as pleasant as ours! One of the things that I love about the Budapest weather is that our spring and fall seasons when the weather is comfortably cool are long! In Georgia it seemed like the weather went straight from hot to cold in September and then cold to hot in May in a matter of a couple of weeks, whereas here, we have 2-3 months in the spring and 2-3 months in the fall in which the weather is ideal.

Take care!