Across the Pond

Glenn and I were supposed to go to Ukraine for 10 days to visit our families there, and while on the trip, we would have spent Thanksgiving with one of our teams up country. Unfortunately, I fell sick shortly before our departure and wasn't well enough to travel so we stayed in Budapest. That meant we had 10 extra days at home with nothing on our calendar so I got lots of rest ... until Glenn fell sick also!

Once I was "back to normal", whatever that is, I was able to spend some time with Judit. She is a great seamstress and here is a wedding dress she was working on, in addition to my bedroom curtains (yes, finally!) and several Christmas outfits for missionaries with other organizations. From the number of fancy dresses she was making, I would guess that the other mission organizations have Christmas banquets in fancier restaurants than Glenn and I usually frequent :-).

For example, we are always on the hunt for a good pizza place. All of the Pizza Huts' have closed down so we tried New York Style Pizza with Dan and Janet. I think we will keep looking :-(

After two weeks back in Budapest, it was time to head to the U.S. for two Member Care meetings, back to back. I wanted to make some Peppermint Bark to take with me to share with our member care folks since it is soooo good.

And to make it look authentic, I put it in my Trader Joe's metal Christmas tin. I think everyone enjoyed it!

We flew into Atlanta on December 3rd and spent two nights with my Dad before driving up to Virginia to the Missionary Learning Center outside of Richmond.

Isn't it cool to see my Dad working at his laptop? He's so techy!

Glenn was putting on the first week of member care meetings for our personnel who work in Eurasia with us. It went really, really well. The sessions were good and the fellowship was great!

One of our members has a sister who lives here in the Richmond area and owns over 100 acres of lakefront property with a gorgeous house and adjoining pool house overlooking the lake that she has turned into a Celebration Center that hosts weddings, receptions and banquets. Kathy's sister offered to open her place up to us for an afternoon of fellowship and rest and to put on a wonderful Christmas banquet for us (at no charge!).

There were 4 tables set up in the "pool house" overlooking the lake for our private group! Because the weather was rainy and cold, we were inside rather than on the huge pool deck where she often hosts receptions. She also gave us a tour of her personal home that she and her husband built themselves. We counted 7 bathrooms, so that gives you an idea of the size of this house. I have never seen such a beautiful home with so many interesting nooks and crannies! Anyway, we spent our first afternoon together as the Eurasia Member Care team out at Paulanne's place and had a great time!

Our meeting began Wednesday morning and continued through Friday evening, but as the week wore on, Glenn knew we needed a special treat so had Mike pick us up some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. What trip to Richmond would be complete without Krispy Kreme???

When the weekend arrived, I finally managed to get over to the Starbucks in Short Pump, the nearest town!!! My sister Karin had left a Starbucks gift card for us at my Dad's house and this was my first opportunity to get a low-fat with whipped cream white chocolate mocha with an extra pump of white chocolate! Yum! I ate a salad for lunch to make sure I could afford the calories! THANKS, KAR!N! We will enjoy using it when we are with our kids too!!!

Over the weekend we had a game night. The men played Farkle, a mindless game of chance ...

... while the women played Bananagrams, an intensive, educationally stimulating game of Scrabble played against others. (The men didn't really bet money ... Harold just threw those dollars into the pot to look like they were betting!)

On Saturday afternoon, I went into Short Pump to meet up with my best friend from high school who drove down from the Washington, D.C. area (close to where we lived eons ago) to sip coffee and reminisce for a couple of hours. I can tell you Linn has not aged a bit! She is beautiful. She was one of my bridesmaids and it is always fun to see her and to get caught up on news!

And now it is Sunday, the day before we start our world-wide Member Care meeting with folks who do member care with our organization all over the globe. We will be here until Friday at noon, at which time we will quickly load our car and "fly" down to Marietta where Kari, Jonathan and Alec will be waiting on us! They arrive from Senegal December 13th, while we are still here in Virginia until the 16th. Chris and Kate and Jazmine arrive in Marietta on the 19th. :-)

This is Alec, our grandson. :-)

And this is Jazmine, our granddaughter! :-)

We're looking forward to this week, learning new things and seeing old friends, but we are also very excited about seeing our families, making Christmas cookies together, and spending Christmas with them!

I'm thankful for ...

... so many things that it is impossible to list them here but let me give you a few. I am most grateful for the love that God has for me and am awed by how He gives and gives while I take and take, and yet He never stops loving me. My favorite word in the Bible is lavished, found in 1 John 3: How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! It is such an exuberant word, over the top, rich and exquisite! God truly has lavished His blessings on us and we are very, very thankful for each and every one of them!

We are thankful for friends with whom we can fellowship around the table-not only on holidays but every day!

On Thanksgiving day we joined in the festivities at the Eden House with our personnel who serve throughout Hungary. We had turkey and all the trimmings, plus some! Macy's Thanksgiving parade was playing on the TV in the background. Several of us were watching the winter storm warnings with concern as they rolled across the bottom of the screen to make sure it wasn't going to hit where our families were living, not realizing it was a DVD of last year's parade that someone had brought to add ambiance to the festivities! The only thing missing was that there were no football games for the men to watch and not enough couches for everyone to lay on after having eaten too much.

I'm thankful for a husband who takes such good care of me, who is good with his hands (ahem-this blog is rated G) and spoils me rotten. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Glenn put new curtain rods up for me in the guest room so that I could finally finish redoing the room!!

On Friday, we went into downtown to browse through the Christmas Market (and I can't believe I didn't take a single picture of it!) to start officially the Christmas season. It was a dismally gray and cold day as we headed into town.

And it stayed that way alllllllllll day and throughout the whole weekend. It was so cold that we didn't stay long (and I didn't buy a thing!)

We had to step inside a few stores occasionally to thaw out! Sleds are for sale everywhere in anticipation of the snow that, according to our taxi driver/friend Zoli, should arrive this week!

I am always surprised to see that the sleds found here in Hungary are the old-fashion style that we find only on Currier & Ives cards in America. I'm just surprised that the style has not changed here in the past 50 years! I am thankful though for the walk down memory lane that I get to take each winter when I see these sleds for sale.

And I was VERY thankful for a warm house to come home to, a couple of Swiss Miss cocoa packets, a fleece blanket and a couch 6-8 feet from a TV! I was sooooo cold!

I read an article last night that said beginning December 1, landlord's in Hungary cannot evict tenants during the winter months for non-payment of rent fees. The article said that landlords are in high gear calling on the bailiffs to evict their tenants BEFORE the December 1 deadline and that in the past 7 weeks 3 people have committed suicide because of being evicted with no where to go. As the authorities were at her front door to evict her, one lady sent her daughter an SMS to say good-bye and then jumped off of her 9th floor apartment balcony to her death.

Hungary has an extremely high rate of unemployment, alcoholism, homelessness and suicide. It breaks my heart to see men, women and children wandering the streets, particularly when it is sooooo cold here. I am thankful for a warm house, warm bed, warm clothes and warm food.

And we are thankful for unexpected blessings that God brings our way! We were sitting in front of this couple in church this morning when they introduced themselves as Wally and Jeannette, here in Budapest for 2 weeks on vacation. We invited them to go out for lunch with us and found out that Wally and Jeannette are one of ours! That is, he pastors a Southern Baptist church in Texas, and it is because of many churches like his that we are able to minister as we do. Thank you Wally and Jeannette for such an enjoyable afternoon! It was a really nice ending to a great week in which we were reminded of so many blessings that we have received!

Hope you had a great week too!

What a weak, I mean week!

I have always had a secret desire to take a week off and just hang around the house, watch a lot of movies, read as many books as I can, piddle on a few projects (I heard you laugh, Kari!), and basically see if I could ever come to a point of boredom. Of course, we'd rather spend our vacations with our families so I've never taken THAT week off, but when we got back from Turkey, I fell sick and had to take THIS week off!

While I was on the couch all week I couldn't take care of company we had from America. Erin was a former Journeyman with us here in Europe who, after she finished her two year term, went home and married her college sweetheart, Brad. They work for a university in America and were here in Budapest for the college fair at our local Christian school so stayed with us for 4 days.

But unfortunately, I didn't feel up to watching a bunch of movies, read or work on any projects. I'll have to save that for another week I guess.

After being housebound for 5 days, I was about to go crazy so Glenn took me to a movie. I didn't have a lot of energy so it was a perfect outing. When we got there, we found that the movie theatre has been sold to another company who had UPSIZED everything, including the price! The drinks and popcorn used to be reasonable sizes and reasonable prices but now they are as outrageous as in America!

By the way, this was the first movie we've seen in a theatre since we returned from our stateside assignment.

On the way home we stopped by Tesco to pick up some milk and I found a new product! English muffins! It seems that more and more "American" products are finding their way to Hungary! Wonder how many more years until Pop-tarts show up on our shelves???

We were supposed to leave for 10 days in Ukraine this past Friday but obviously we had to cancel. Hmmmm, what will I do with those 10 extra days???? Check here next week to find out!

Turkey Time

Before we left for a cluster meeting in Turkey, I took a walk through our yard which was really suffering from lack of neglect and cold weather. The only thing in bloom were these humongous, gorgeous Chrysanthemums.

The flowers are so colorful and I have enjoyed them so much each time we pass by them on our way out the gate.

We arrived in Antalya, Turkey last Friday, 10 days ago. Above are our visas for entering the country, for which we paid $20 each. This was our 4th trip to Antalya, our 6th to Turkey.

Again, because we go to Turkey during the off season, we can stay in nice hotels for a pittance. Some of the hotels close for the off-season, some try to stay open. Those that stay open want to keep their staff year-round so that they don't have to keep hiring and training new folks every year so therefore they drop the prices extremely low in order to keep the hotel semi-full. And that is how we get to stay in these nice hotels :-)

And that is how we get to see some of the most fantastic views!

At these cluster meetings, there isn't a lot of free time, but I managed to get out and peruse the tourist shops which lined the main street that passed in front of the hotel.

We peeked over one of the walled yards and saw these young children playing in their school uniforms. It was sweet and reminded me of when our children were little and attending the local French school; they had cute little uniforms too!

And one last picture to give you a good laugh! We found this one store that advertises tattoos, only they spelled it wrnog.

On another note, we have company with us for this week that we are back in town. Erin used to be one of our Journeymen, having served for 2 years in Ukraine but our connection with her goes back to when our daughter Kari was a Journeyman in Senegal. Erin worked with Kari for two summers so when Erin came to Europe, we already felt we had a special relationship with her. She and her husband are here in town for a few days representing a university in Tennessee at the college fair at the local Christian school.

Next trip? Ukraine! More on that trip next week!

Here, there and everywhere!

Having returned from the Serbia Team Retreat, we ran a few loads of laundry through our tiny European washing machine that takes 1 hour and 15 minutes PER (tiny) LOAD to wash, watered our plants, paid bills, made a few Skype calls, and then repacked our bags only to leave again two days later for Prague, Czech Republic.



Charles Bridge with hot air balloon in distance

Our trip actually had two purposes: to make member care visits with the families living in Prague and to attend the business portion of the European Affinity Global Leadership Team (AGLT). Don't feel too badly though that we were only home two nights between trips because I chose to go to Prague 2 days early in order to go with the AGLT ladies on a "Polish Pottery Run" to Boleslawic, Poland where they manufacture the beautiful, distinctive Polish pottery that I'm so fond of. While I was in Poland with the ladies, Glenn met with several of the families by himself, and then when I returned, we met with the rest of the families together.

It's a 3 hour drive from Prague so we left early in the morning to be able to shop all day until the stores closed at 5 pm. I counted 12 stores we visited, so by dinnertime we were hungry, weary and broke but happy! We found the cutest little log cabin restaurant that looked like it was plucked straight from the north Georgia mountains near Ellijay, complete with yard art and country artifacts!!

I had one of the best Polish dishes I've ever tasted at this little place!

And this is what I bought with my birthday and Christmas money that I've been saving for the past year. Well, it's not all for me ... the casserole dish on the far left was bought for a friend of mine. :-)

From Prague, we went back to BP for another two nights before heading to Malaga, Spain for a cluster meeting where we provided member care visits with all our personnel.

During the meeting time, I sat next to one of the ladies with a 32 ounce QuikTrip cup! It was a real shocker to see that! Made me feel like I was back in Georgia. Sure made me wish I could have one of their Coke Zero fountain drinks with crushed ice. Ahhhh! The things we miss!

First on the list, a bottle of fountain water!

At the start of the meeting to get everyone relaxed and familiar with one another, we began with a scavenger hunt. The purpose was to get us working as a team, to help us learn our way around the little town, and to learn about the Spanish culture by needing to ask questions of locals in order to locate the specific scavenged items.

Hmmm, where is the statue?

Another thing we had to find and photograph was a statue that was made depicting one of Picasso's paintings which meant that we had to stop locals to ask them what it was of and where it might be. Turns out there were a lot of British tourists in town who didn't know it and where it was and not a lot of Spaniards who spoke enough English to direct us, but we finally found it!

Picasso's Women Running on the Beach

We found out that Pablo Picasso is from Malaga and the town honored their citizen by having a statue made from his picture of Women Running on the Beach. Actually, we learned a lot about Spain through the scavenger hunt!

We also found that our little group is not very competitive and decided we'd rather stop and have a couple of drinks (Coke, of course) than win.

And this is the view out the back of the cafe' where we stopped for some refreshment. The weather and temperature was ideal for walking about town but a little cool for swimming.

The best part of the meeting though was getting to know our personnel better through the member care visits. Always a favorite with us!

Our return flight left Malaga at 6:45 AM so we had to wake up at the early hour of 4:30 AM. We had a 4-hour lay-over in Paris which meant we were there over the lunch hour, hence, how we came to find these funny signs! I've heard of French fries, the skinny little strips of deep fat fried potatoes, but I never knew that those deep fried fat wedges of potatoes are called American potatoes. Maybe this is France's way of retaliating?

And I loved this sign!!! On the menu board the chocolate chip cookie had a little sign taped to it that read (in French), "This recipe is a victim of it's own success", which is a cute way of saying that there are no chocolate chip cookies available.

Next trip? Antolya, Turkey. :-)

P.S. All photos used with permission

The First Time I Ever...

I get so excited over some of the most insignificant things. Living in a foreign country gives us many opportunities to rejoice over so many things that in America were no big deal. For example, this week for the first time EVER I saw American-style whole wheat bread in Hungary!

Of course, it only had 16 slices and it cost $2 for the little loaf but it was soft and sliced and soooo good. May be the best $2 I spend each week! It is not easy to find soft sliced bread of any color but it's especially difficult to find a good, healthy, dark bread. I was told that the reason you don't find many dark breads in Hungary is because back in the communists' days, dark bread was all you could get, and now that the days of communism are over, they don't want anything that reminds them of those days. That's what I was told, anyway. Don't know if it is true or not....

Back to the whole wheat bread... I got the last loaf on the shelf at Tesco the other day and I'm hoping that it will continue to be available from now on, but I'm not getting my hopes up! Too many of our personnel across Europe have found a product that they really liked, and when there were no more on the shelves, would talk to the manager about reordering the such-and-such only to be told that they weren't going to stock it any more because they couldn't keep it on the shelves! Too many people kept buying it that they had to keep ordering it and restocking the shelves. Evidently, they didn't own the store; they were just working in it.

Glenn and I now have our own personal driver. Not really, but we like to think we do! Zoli is a taxi driver that we now call any time we need to travel to the airport or train station. He lived in New York for a few years so he speaks English well. We enjoy our conversations with him and hope to get to know him and his wife better. They attend the local Catholic church so we have that in common, except we attend a Baptist church. :-)

On Tuesday, Zoli took us to the train station and we headed south for the Serbia Team Retreat.

We spent one day in Novi Sad (population 400,000) with the team leaders Mike and Pam before heading to Brzece, a small town in the mountains for the retreat. (Yes, I spelled the town name correctly. Alex, I'd like to buy a vowel to put between the r and z, please.) Here we are standing in front of OUR Danube River as it passes through their town. I think Novi Sad, overlooking the Danube River, looks a lot like Budapest, only not quite as pretty. But then again, I might be just a wee bit prejudiced. :-)

Their town square was quite beautiful and quaint, and not nearly as crowded as ours are in Budapest.

We visited the fortress of Petrovaradin on the hillside overlooking the Danube River that reportedly has 16 miles of tunnels underground from which the Serbs were able to deter the Turks from advancing northward. It is a fortress that no enemy has ever taken throughout the ages. In the fort you could see holes in the walls barely off the ground from which guns would shoot the Turks (and all other enemies) as they tried to take the city. If you look carefully, you can see a door underneath the bridge where you could enter one of the many tunnels.

What time is it on this clock? 1:30? WRONG. Years ago when sailors would come around the bend of the river in their boats (maybe a little tipsy), they couldn't see the small hand of the clock to know what hour it was. The story goes that someone switched the hands and so that the long hand actually tells the hour now instead of the minutes. It evidently didn't matter the EXACT time to the sailors, it just mattered what hour of the day it was. So I took this photo at 6 o'clock-ish.

You can see pylons in the Danube River left-over from the bridge that was bombed and destroyed by the Germans in WWII.

On Thursday we headed to the mountains (to an out-of-season ski resort) for the Serbia Team Retreat. We loved the rolling countryside, the many grape vineyards that climbed the sides of the hills, and the bags and bags of red peppers and apples for sale, stacked up on the side of the narrow winding roads leading to the hotel.

Part of the retreat was spent going over everyone's Grip Birkman results so that they could learn what strengths each person brings to the team, which would give them a greater appreciation for the differences in their co-workers. Here, Pam, Mike and Carl are working "together" to build the tallest structure they can out of uncooked spaghetti noodles and marshmallows.

This team came in third place. :-(

The captain of the team that came in second place is very competitive and didn't like being in second place. He said that second place is just another word for losing. Ah, but it was fun watching the 3 teams work out their strategies, or not use a strategy at all!

This man led the Grip Birkman part of the retreat and did a good job. He won everyone's heart when he gave everyone Oreo cookies that he used for one of his examples and then let us eat them!

The retreat ended this afternoon and we head back to Novi Sad tomorrow and then on to Budapest on the night train. Glenn reserved a sleeper car for us so we will at least be able to stretch out and get a little sleep. (emphasis on little) We leave Novi Sad at 10 pm and arrive back in Budapest on Tuesday morning at 5 am. After running a few loads of laundry and repacking our suitcases, we leave for Prague on Wednesday morning. Do you know the song On the Road Again by Willie Nelson? That's my new song.

Catch you next week!