Brrrr! It's cold here!

The first couple of days of the week were very quiet. Glenn left on Monday (the same day Barbara returned to the U.S.) for a 3 day/2 night bike ride around Lake Balaton with his friend, Istvan. I love Glenn and I missed him, but I admit the 3 days by myself were nice. I still had to hold down the fort and respond to calls and emails, but just being able to eat when (and what!) I wanted was nice. I didn't get any projects done and I didn't get as many emails written as I'd hoped, but I did allow myself to watch a couple of movies in the evenings. I walked and read a good book. It was fun and relaxing.



Glenn enjoyed his bike ride and his body handled it pretty well, but his hands have been giving him some problems. The last two fingers on each hand have been numb and he is having trouble gripping things, but they are getting better. His bike held up pretty well too, except at the very end! He biked all the way around the lake without any problems, rode the train back to Budapest with his bike stashed to the side, but when he got off the train in BP, the gear mechanism just dropped off his bike! He had to call me to come pick him up! I'm glad it was on the very end of his trip!



I always get amused at Glenn as he carries on conversations with our neighbors, the elderly couple who are the parents of our landlord. He amazes me! Somehow, he is able to communicate what he wants to say! This week Glenn noticed our neighbor had someone over who was working with sheets of steel so Glenn asked him to come over and look at our grill. Glenn hired the friend of the neighbor to make us a cover for the grill! Amazing!



We have a guest staying with us this week because the Eden House is full and overflowing. One afternoon we took her into town to do a little sightseeing, and it was so cold I had to wear a long sleeve shirt and a light jacket! And this is mid-July! I remember 2 summers ago when Budapest hit record highs of 111 degrees. It was 20 degrees celcius (72 degrees fahrenheit). It was beautiful weather and perfect for walking through town.



The above picture was in last week's blog update, but I wanted to show you the difference a week can make in the flood level here! See the photo below, taken this week.

Just the week before, this road was under water!

While we were in town with our guest, we saw all the tourists and locals enjoying the beautiful sunshine and soft breeze in the cafe' lined streets. Perfect day.

Every weekend in July and August the Szabadsag Hid (Liberty Bridge) is closed to cars and opened for pedestrians. Booths are set up across the bridge where folks sell local arts and crafts and traditional Hungarian foods. This weekend the French living in Hungary celebrated one of their national holidays by setting up booths and selling French products, such as cheeses, wine, breads and pastries.

They also had places where kids, teens, and young adults could play various sports (thanks to sporting goods store Decathalon). These children are enjoying playing Boules.

Teens and young adults enjoyed Ping-pong. We didn't play anything, but we enjoyed hearing all the beautiful French! It is so weird to be able to hear a foreign language and understand it! Beautiful but weird.

And one more photo of Parliment. :) I can't wait until all the scaffolding is off the building and I can get a perfect photo!!

In other news, our son Chris and wife Kate closed on their house this past week and will be moving to New Jersey on July 17th where Chris will start studying to become a physician's assistant. Our son-in-law Jonathan finished his fifth year of osteopathy school and will start the final year this fall. Kari stays busy as editor of a French magazine and doing voice recordings for television and radio. Glenn and I are definitely blessed by our children and their spouses!

Happy 4th of July!

We wish you a happy 4th of July! Today, a few of our families gathered at our house to celebrate the freedoms we have as Americans and to enjoy burgers and homemade ice cream together. We also wished our Hungarian friend Istvan (center, kneeling) happy birthday as he turned 50 today.



Believe it or not, the flag belongs to Istvan!!! He used to live in the U.S. and brought it back to Hungary when he returned 3 years ago. It was a nice addition to our decorations!


Danube River overflows

While we were in Greece, Budapest was deluged with much needed rain but it was heavier than we've ever seen here before. Gravel from our yard was washed out into the street and there was standing water everywhere in town.



In addition to the rain, the Danube River also received water from countries to the north causing the water to overflow its' banks, covering the road that runs along the river. The cruise ships that line the river bank one after another have been closed for business for over a week because the water is covering their walkways!

We've had a busy week entertaining Barbara and walking off all the homemade ice cream we've been making. On Wednesday, we went into town to do some sightseeing and Barbara wore her pedometer to see how far we walked. The grand total was 11.66 miles!



One day this week while Glenn was bike riding with Istvan (in training for a longer bike ride this coming week-more about that later), Barbara and I went into town to Margaret Island to get some fun exercise. We decided to exercise some other muscles and ride across the island. It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to get off our feet for a change!

Goofin' off in the guard's room

On Thursday we took the train to Vienna for the day. Vienna is only 2 1/2 hours away so we decided it would be a shame for Barbara to be so close to Vienna and not get to see it. We caught the 8 pm train back to Budapest, and we were so exhausted that it was all we could do to crawl into our beds that night!

We went to Schonbrunn Palace early in the day and spent a large portion of our time there because it is soooooo HUGE! This is only part of the palace as you walk into the front gated area.

As you walk around to the back of the Palace, this is the view you see of the "backyard". The concrete you see in the middle of the picture is a large water fountain. If you are a faithful follower of our blog, you may recall a picture of me standing in front of the fountain where I was spouting water.

This is the view looking back at the Palace from on top of the hill in the backyard. It was quite a hike up the hill and it was pretty hot, but the view was well worth it! What an awesome flower garden too!

Glenn gets hot and takes off his pants (legs)

Dried fruits and candies in the market

We strolled through the open-air market and Glenn bought some wasabi peanuts to snack on. We ate lunch in the market at a little cafe. Glenn and I had wiener schnitzel (fried veal patty) and french fries with a side salad, and Barbara had sausage and sour kraut. Both meals were typically Austrian and very delicious.

The fruit looked so succulent but we didn't want to have to carry it around all day in our backpacks.

The tourists were out en masse

I enjoy the street artists

Some are goofier than others

Barbara enjoys talking with the men selling tickets to concerts

Happy Birthday, Karen!

On Friday we celebrated Karen's birthday, which was actually 2 weeks ago, but with AGM and all that is required to be ready to go, we postponed the celebration until this week. A couple of the ladies on this side of town met for lunch at a Hungarian restaurant in the suburb of Diosd, not far from our house. Barbara and I had cold fruit soup and a salad, and we enjoyed both of them very much!

Barbara leaves on Monday to return to the States and Glenn leaves the same day to go on a biking/camping trip with Istvan for 2-3 days. They are going to ride bikes around Lake Balaton which is 210 miles. Glenn has been training for the past couple of days by riding with Istvan 2-3 hours at a time. Lake Balaton is the largest lake in Europe and is a major resort area for Hungarians and Europeans alike. Glenn recently bought a bike from Istvan's sister for $20, but it needed a spare inner tube, a better seat, new handle bars, grips for the handle bars, a water bottle, streamers, flappers for the spokes, and saddle bags for carrying his camping equipment which included buying a new tent, an inflatable pillow, and a new sleeping bag. I think he will have a good time and I know I will too! I have a thousand emails that need to be written, including our newsletter so I will be busy myself.

In other news, our son Chris and his wife Kate are closing on their house this Thursday so we would appreciate your prayers for them, that all will go smoothly and without mishap. They are busy tieing up loose ends and saying good-bye to friends and family, and will be arriving in New Jersey on Saturday, July 18th. They will be living with Kate's grandmother while he goes to school to become a physician's assistant.

Hope your summer is going well!

Gone to Greece!

Welcome to Athens, Greece

Glenn and I flew to Athens last Saturday for our Annual General Meeting which was for all our personnel in central and eastern Europe. It is a time of fellowship, worship and training. In all, we had about 900 men, women and children, and this includes our personnel and all the volunteers that came to help. (We had volunteers leading in worship, working with our children, assisting with educational testing and giving haircuts and massages!)


What is this????

WOW! I haven't seen one of these in a long time! Every once in a while we see something that looks out of place, like this water fountain. I'm not sure I've seen one of these since arriving in Budapest 2 1/2 years ago!


Evia Resort on Eritrea Island

We left Budapest at 1 pm, and after a 3 hour lay-over in Germany, we finally arrived in Greece about 9 pm, and had to wait for others to arrive from points across Europe. About 2:00 am, after filling our bottles from the icy cold water fountain, we boarded a bus and headed to Evia Resort on an island off the coast of Athens. It was a 1 1/2 hour trip, so we arrived at the hotel at 3:30 am! We were exhausted but were able to sleep until noon on Sunday.



Even though Glenn and I never had a minute free to enjoy the pool, we could enjoy the beauty of it as we walked past it several times each day. This picture only shows you about 1/4th of it! We had so many member care appointments and meetings, not to mention leading a session and having folks ask if they could talk with us about various things that we only made it to two of the sessions the whole week! (By the way, the session we led on developing interpersonal skills called Why Can't We Be Friends? went well. Thank you for praying for us!)

With our group being so large and our schedule so packed, we didn't have much time to visit with friends and meet new folks unless we had them for one of the member care appointments. This young lady though made sure to introduce herself to us and we were really glad she did! She had worked with our daughter for two summers in Senegal when Kari was a Journeyman, and now this young lady is working in Ukraine for 2 years.

Lottie Moon Christmas auction

Each year we have an auction as a fun way to give money to the Lottie Moon offering for foreign missions. Everyone of us save our money during the course of the year to be able to participate in the offering/auction and look forward to an evening of bidding against one another for coveted items. Each family brings a nice souvenir from their country and the volunteers that come out from America bring food items and the latest books or DVD movies to be auctioned. For the most part, the missionaries bid for the food, books and DVD's while the volunteers love to bid for the souvenirs from across central and eastern Europe. Our goal this year was to raise $100,000 through the auction and offering. The auction raised $80,000 but we don't have the total yet on how much was given via the offering.

Scoring tests

Most of the week, in addition to the member care appointments, I oversaw the educational testing we provided for our children. I had two ladies administering The Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Early Reading Diagnostic Test, and the Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement to 50 of our children. I also had enlisted the help of a school psychologist to come test for learning disabilties for 7 children, and I had two volunteers from America who came as special education consultants to meet with our parents about their child's particular needs. Tuesday night we had a scoring party for the ITBS. One of the ladies, Barbara Guidetti, brought Oreos and Hostess Ding Dongs to keep our sugar level high as we worked way into the night. I think we finished scoring the tests about 11 pm!

Barbara meets with one of our moms

Barbara is actually our son's mother in law. Chris is married to Kate, and Kate's mother Barbara is a special education consultant in the public school system in New Jersey, so she came to be a resource for our parents. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough to keep her busy and that she would feel like she'd spent all this money to come but wasn't used; fortunately, the parents sought her out, but unfortunately, she was dead tired by time the week was over!

Our AGM officially ended on Friday evening and everyone was returning home on Saturday. Glenn and I had a horrible schedule for returning to Budapest! We were on the 2:30 AM (!) bus from the hotel to the airport, which takes 1 1/2 hours, to catch a 6:45 am flight to Germany. We then had a 7 hour lay-over in Munich, arriving in Budapest at 4:30 pm. We were to meet up with 2 people coming from the AGM in Greece to Budapest for medical care at 5 pm to help them get to the Eden House, but their flight was delayed 2 hours so we just had to wait in the coffee shop for them. It would take us almost 2 hours to go home and then turn right around to come back!

They arrived at 7 pm. We took them to the Eden House and got them settled in.

At 10:30 pm we headed BACK to the airport to pick up Barbara Guidetti who is here to visit with us for a week and to see our fine city. (We are looking forward to showing her our favorite places and introducing her to Hungary.) Her plane was slightly delayed. Good thing we'd both brought books!

Going through customs was a breeze

Her plane arrived at 12:20 am so we got home about 1:3o am (traffic isn't bad at that time of the morning) and went straight to bed! We were exhausted. We'd slept less than 5 hours in the past 48 hours.

Goodies from America!

We were soooo tired that we waited until the next morning for Barbara to show us all the goodies she and the ladies from her SALT group (Single Adults Learning Together) had brought for us. Books, DVD movies, CD's, food coloring, pen refills, brownie and cookie mixes, frosting tubs, Good 'n Plenty candy and pancake syrup! Oh, and The Maker's Diet book, which I will need after eating all the brownies and cookies and candy! I doubt if any of the SALT ladies read this blog, but if they do, we want them to know how much we appreciate their kindness and generosity, and how humbled we are that they wanted to share in this with Barbara-and they don't even know us! Thank you, ladies!

Apricots in abundance!

While we were in Greece for the week, our apricots ripened to readiness! This is our first year to really get any apricots from the tree. Our first year the street paving crew stripped the tree bare, leaving us only 3 apricots. The second year in the late spring we had a heavy frost that killed all the blossoms so we didn't get any apricots at all, but this year the weather was cooperative (and our street didn't need to be re-paved). Our tree is loaded!

We picked up all the rotten apricots from the ground and then gently shook the limbs to get the ripe apricots to fall off.

Glenn took 3-4 pounds of apricots to our neighbors and Barbara and I prepared the rest for freezing. There are still lots of apricots on the tree so we'll go pick more in a few days. Glenn is going to buy a dehydrator so that we can dry some for snacking through out the year. That will be a project for later this week!

We made apricot coulis for pouring over pound cake. (Kari, have you done this on your recipe blog?) We also froze some in large slices with a light syrup (2 bags) and some in smaller slices in heavy syrup (2 bags). Does anyone out there know how to freeze them (not in a syrup) for later use for making apricot bread and muffins?

Well, we're back in town for a few weeks and things should be pretty normal around here. I think our next trip is to Germany the first week in August, which will be to assist with member care appointments at the Annual General Meeting for our folks in western Europe.

Officially, as of July 1, our organization is under the new structure. Glenn and I will no longer be working only in the region of central and eastern Europe, but in all of Europe. Our land mass for which we are responsible has enlarged greatly, but we've also gained more personnel on the member care team. Other than that, we will just have to wait to see how much the changes really will affect us. Time will tell.

By the way, I want to wish my Dad (and Glenn's Dad) a belated Happy Father's Day! Living on another continent, it is really hard to keep up with the American holidays since we don't have reminders in stores, on tv and in the newspaper sales circulars. I have been blessed with a Dad who is very understanding and forgiving, even when his daughter totally forgets something as important as honoring her father on his special day. Thank you Dad for being so wonderful! You deserve much more! I love you.

Back to the real world

The neatest thing happened last Tuesday.


The Borders and the Marshalls

We met up with John and Luanne downtown as they were on their way back to Wyoming from a mission trip to Romania. John used to be the Youth Minister at our church in Marietta when I served on staff as the interim Children's Minister. John, Luanne and 12 others from their church had finished a long week in Romania and had a one-night layover in Budapest. It was really nice to see them again.

We showed them the Grand Market Hall where they bought some souvenirs and then we walked down the pedestrian street called Vaci Street where they bought a few more.




We then walked across the Chain Bridge to get a better view of the Parliment building, my favorite sight in all of Budapest. After John and Luanne boarded the bus to go to their hotel, Glenn and I walked around a little and then enjoyed a pizza at Pizza Hut!



John and Luanne were a nice break in a busy week of preparing for a session we will be leading during our Annual General Meeting. I am out of my comfort zone and don't exactly love public speaking, so I would appreciate your prayers for me! Pray that our delivery will go smoothly and the folks learn something new, but most of all, pray that they don't see Glenn and me but instead, that God is the one they see and hear.



As summer continues, our plants are doing great and it is a joy every morning to go through the yard and harvest whatever is ripe!



The tomatoes are not ready yet...


... but one of our raspberry bushes is just beginning to produce.



The cherry tree has produced in abundance this year and I have more cherries in the freezer than Glenn and I will be able to eat before we go for furlough in September 2010. I need Kari and Jonathan to come help us eat them!



While Glenn was out picking the last of the cherries, our neighbor brought over another quart of raspberries from their yards. Earlier this week they brought over a quart so I made 5 small jars of jam with it. Since we don't we don't need any more jam for a while, I guess Glenn and I will have to eat either raspberry cobbler, raspberry tarts or just plain raspberries!

Glenn and I arrived in Greece yesterday for our annual general meeting and will be here until next Saturday. I'll tell you all about it next week! Come back!