A taste of our week!

Most of this week Glenn and I have been at our dining room table working on our computers. He's been working on the financial report and I've been responding to emails about TCK education. I was so ready for the weekend when I could justifiably step away from the computer.

Saturday morning and early afternoon we ran a couple of errands. A light on our dashboard started blinking so my handy hubby lifted the hood, wiggled a few wires and the light disappeared. Saved the board about $25!

The local government hauled away the recycling bins from in front of our house about 6 months ago so we now have to take them to the one two blocks away. We recycle paper, plastic, aluminum, clear glass and colored glass. Glenn is really good at keeping our small bins from overflowing in our mudroom.

I did something I haven't done in months, and that is to write a letter with paper and pen. In this age of computers, it is so rare to get letters! You know, REAL letters! It's nice to have the speed of emails but there is something special about receiving a letter. It is definitely much easier to hit the send button than to mail a letter, especially here in Hungary where every letter has to go to the post office to be weighed. You can't just have a book of stamps at home, stick one on the letter, and put the letter in the mailbox. Oh, no!

Our snow has melted except for where the piles were 4 feet tall, leaving behind a small pile of dirt! Fortunately, the street cleaners will be coming along soon to clean the streets and sidewalks and Budapest will be back to being bright and beautiful.

When I went to my English class with Judit and her daughter Nicki, they gave me some cookies that they had made in honor of Buso, the celebration of winter leaving. The cookies were huge, decorated with seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, and poppy), and had no sugar. Maybe they weren't really cookies since they didn't have any sugar???? The thought was really nice.

This is a close-up view of them. They are scary masks to scare away the winter blues.

Glenn donned a couple of layers of clothing earlier this week to go on a bike ride. Isn't he cute?

He has really enjoyed this hobby.

Well, back to those emails! Have a good week.

Turkey is terrific!

We left for a cluster meeting in Turkey a week and a half ago and even though Turkey is modern and has all the conveniences of the western world, the internet connection at our hotel was so bad that we couldn't update our blog. We had a great trip and would love to go back again for another vacation!

We started off in Istanbul, visiting with one of our member care team leaders and his wife. They picked us up at 9 am and took us around town to show us their world, and we talked about work off and on all day while we saw the sights.

The traffic was horrendous, just like in Budapest and any other city that was designed for about half as many cars as there are today. The airport is about 25 miles from the guesthouse where we stayed, but it took us about an hour and a half to get across town!

I just about flipped when I saw Little Caesar's Pizza! They also have Domino's Pizza! Even though we had a delicious Turkish dinner out with two couples who live there, I kind of had in my mind that if we ate early enough, I could order a small pizza to be delivered late that evening to the guesthouse, just for the experience of having a Little Caesar's pizza, but the dinner was too good, too filling, and we didn't get home until 11 pm and we were so exhausted that we went straight to bed!

We took a 20 minute boat ride across the Sea of Marmara to the other side of Istanbul. We traveled from the Asian side to the European side, and then back again. The clouds were low and heavy, and definitely overcast all day, but at least it wasn't cold or raining.

The view from the ferry was incredible as we looked back. I did not know that Istanbul was hilly; it sure made for some beautiful pictures!

"To save water, flush twice" Huh?

Loved this sign! I'm sure that there is a reason that flushing twice saves water, but it alludes me!

The Blue Mosque

The men are washing up before going up to the area under the arches for their prayer time. We saw lots of mosques in Istanbul.

"Reading a menu"

How do you read a menu in a language you don't understand? It's easy when there are pictures! We loved the Turkish food!

Chocolate covered peanut butter balls for sale? Unfortunately, not! Roasted chestnuts were for sale everywhere in these little rolling kiosks.

Remember the Spirograph?

We saw several guys selling the clear, pastel colored circles on TV trays, and they would stand there all day long making samples on the sheets of paper so that you could see how beautiful your designs can be. What a way to "work".

As Glenn and I travel, we see some pretty strange things and I was making a photo file of them (before the robbery and my old computer was stolen), and now I have one to start my new collection.

The cluster meeting was held Sunday through Tuesday on the southern coastal town of Antalya, which was formerly called Pamphylia in the Bible times. It is the top vacation destination in Turkey, and is a favorite of Germans and Russians all year long. In our hotel and every where we went, people thought we were German (since we smile, they knew we weren't Russian) and greeted us with "Wie gehts?" (How are you?)

After the cluster meeting ended, Glenn and I took two vacation days. We spent one day in Antalya on our own and one day on a tour with a couple of our families who also stayed a few extra days.

During our day in Antalya, we took a one hour boat ride and got some gorgeous photos of the coastline! Part of the coastline is sheer cliffs and the other part is pebbled beaches.

Tons of colorful spices

We spent a couple of hours in the Old Market, wandering up and down winding alleys not much wider than a car. I loved the colors! Spices of all kinds were found in interesting displays.

The pottery always caught my eye, and if I didn't already have a Polish pottery collection started, I would have bought a couple of plates and bowls from Turkey.

I took this picture from the top of a cliff, and just a few feet to my right began the flat, pebbly Lara beach.

This waterfall, called the Lower Duden Waterfall, begins as a river that flows through town, goes under the road, and comes up again right at the edge of a cliff where it overflows into the Mediterranean Sea. This was an awesome sight!

Gorgeous, isn't it?

Glenn and I enjoyed the kebabs. Our "waiter" was engaging and told us that the spindly thing is called a doner, and hence the name of these kinds of food stands are called "doner". There are even some "McDoners" around, taking their name from McDonald's.

We also went to the Upper Duden Waterfall (which is where the first photo on this blog was taken) and found this sign. We have NO IDEA what it is supposed to mean. Do you?

One day we went to nearby Perge to visit the ruins. Eleven miles outside of Antalya, Perge is known as one of the cities where Paul visited on his missionary journey in 46 AD. This town that is now only ruins was an important city to Christians during the Byzantine period and is believed to be where Paul preached his first sermon.

Who knows? Maybe Paul stood under this archway too?!?

I took 329 pictures in Perge, mostly of the ruins from the Greeks and Romans (mostly Romans). I never could get a picture that I felt adequately showed how massive the ruins were! This lady "set up shop" inside one of the Roman baths, hoping to sell a few beaded necklaces and earrings.

I would love to return to Antalya for a week in the winter! We stayed in a beautiful hotel on the Mediterranean Sea for $44 a night, per person, all inclusive! Three meals a day, all the drinks we wanted, Turkish baths, swimming pool, fitness center, etc. The rate is so reasonable because it is the off-season; ordinarily the rate is 6 times higher during the spring, summer and fall!

When we got back to Bp on Friday night, Mick, Dalese and Dalese's friend from America, Lisa, were snuggled nicely into our house, arriving the day before us to watch the basketball tournament between Christian schools in Europe.

While Glenn took care of a medical emergency of one of the basketball players, I was out with Lisa and Dalese at the Szecheny thermal spa and a few other fun spots. On Sunday, before their train departed for Prague (from whence they came) we took a quick trip back into town to show Lisa a few more sites. We took a brief respite in this McCafe.

Have you ever seen a McDonald's in America that is as beautifully decorated like this one? It looks like a train station.

After enjoying a couple of latte machiattos and white hot chocolates, we went for a quick lunch at Arriba's, our favorite Mexican restaurant, before they boarded the train for Prague.

We are home for several weeks but they will be very, very busy! Our new MK education guidelines came out this past Wednesday and my work load automatically increased. Should be an interesting couple of weeks as I learn the new policies that will govern our educational options available to our personnel. Please pray for wisdom, compassion and consistency as I help families deal with some necessary changes.

Have a great week! It's good to be home!

I'm a Turkey!

Just kidding. Mom's not a turkey. She's just IN Turkey.

And apparently in Turkey she's having problems updating the blog so emailed me, faithful ghostwriter and daughter, to ask me to post a note to let her blog readers know she'll post as soon as she can.

Y'all take care and come back soon.

- Kari

Guess who's coming for dinner?

This week has been one of those weeks where I spent most of the time in the kitchen preparing meals. I was able to get caught up on my emails that came in last week while in Germany and there were several families at the Eden House we wanted to visit with so everything fell perfectly! Lucky for you, I didn't take pictures of each family! The family that came for dinner on Tuesday night has been in town for two months having a baby. The baby slept the whole time!!!!

Wednesday night the Banks came. Their boys were wonderfully polite, enjoyed foosball downstairs, drawing with color pencils and eating the chocolate cake we had for dessert. Due to the financial constraints within our company, the Banks will not be able to extend and so will be returning to the States in May. I will really miss Tamara. She's so likable! It's probably a good thing she never lived here in BP or I would have wanted to spend all my time with her!

The company for Thursday night ended up canceling in the afternoon so I stuck dinner in the freezer for another meal another day. Friday morning one of the men from Prague with our company came for breakfast. We did the whole spread: breakfast casserole, GRITS, and fresh fruit. Yum! Good thing I don't fix breakfasts like that very often! We were supposed to have another man spend the night with us tonight (Sunday) but he ended up canceling earlier in the week too. So, it's been a busy week in the kitchen, but not as busy as it would have been if everyone had come as originally planned!

When our guests had to cancel for Thursday, we decided to go to a movie at the mall. (We usually go on Wednesdays because that is cheap night.) As we were coming up the escalator, I saw that a new store had opened in our mall!!!! I was stunned! Darting inside to check things out, I saw that it looked like they had taken the Party City from out by Towne Center Mall and transported it to Campona Mall in Budafok! Everything in the store was in English except for the signs made locally.

A friend and I are going to be putting on a baby shower in March for one of our local moms who is due in April and you can bet I will be shopping for the baby decorations here! Just in time!

This next event was incredible! My description will never do it justice because there is no way to explain how out-of-the-box the idea was and how many hours it took to make and how many pictures it required, but I'll try!

One of our MK's has an interest in making movies, and using Playmobil figures and Lego's as the characters and scenery, he built an entire set and wrote a play that lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes long, and the plot was really good! He wrote a play about an orphanage that was going under financially, and how everyone banded together to keep it going. He literally took thousands and thousands and thousands of digital pictures, moving the Playmobil figures one small motion at a time, much like the old silent movies of the 20's and 30's. It was incredible! I can't imagine how long it took him. This film has been in the making for at least 3 years. Months ago Robert came over to our house so that he could record Glenn's voice as the police officer, and each of the voices in the characters you see above was done by one of the Brown's or other personnel living here in Budapest. The Brown's invited everyone to the "showing" on Saturday and the crowd was so big that the event was held at the local Christian school. They served popcorn and drinks to go along with it. It was great, and if I can get them to put it on Youtube, I'll be sure to post the link here! It's one of those, "You have to see it to believe it!" kind of things!

Last week you were patient enough to scroll through all my pictures of the snow, and even though we got 4 more inches of it last night, I won't show any more of the snow today. However, I wanted to show you some pictures of the houses here, and they just happen to have snow on them. These pictures were taken earlier this week when the snow was actually melting.

Not very big yards! One house next to another. Ugh.

And this is the most beautiful house of all. (Ours is on the left side.) We are fortunate that our house is on the corner so there is a little space between us an our neighbor on that side. Our landlord's wife's sister owns the other side, but we don't know if she is still living there or not. We rarely see anyone come or go out of that side of the house so we're never sure if it is occupied.

Please pray for Kari and Jonathan as they fly to Senegal on Friday, the 12th! They are going to check out things in view of their moving there to work after Jonathan finishes his studies and becomes an osteopath. They will also visit with their old friends. Senegal is where the story of Kari and Jonathan began (and an amazing story it is! I wish Kari would write a book or screen play about it!), back in 2002 when Kari was a Journeyman and Jonathan was an ISC'er. Oh, to be a mosquito on the wall while they are there and to watch them relive so many wonderful memories. Please pray for God to open doors, for smooth flights (for Kari, particularly), and renewed friendships.

We leave on Thursday for the Roma retreat in Turkey and we are taking a few days of vacation in conjunction with this trip. We are hoping to take a tour to see several of the churches that Paul visited (in the Bible)! Hopefully the internet will be working better than it was in Germany and I can do an update while there. If not, it will be when we get home.

Have a great week!

187 pictures of snow!

Okay, I won't show you all 187 pictures of the snow that I've taken in the past week, but how do you feel about 15?

Glenn and I went to Germany on Sunday, Jan. 24th for a conference for first-termers who have been on the field about a year. When we arrived in Germany, it was snowing and it snowed off and on the whole week we were there. We loved the beautiful countryside covered with soft snow about 8-10 inches deep! We hated to leave Germany because of not wanting to leave the snow, but when we arrived in Budapest at 1:00 am a week later, there was a little snow (3-4 inches) on the ground. We had a surprise gift from God the next morning when we woke up to huge snowflakes falling and about 8 inches on the ground! It snowed all day, and we now have a little over a foot of snow!

We've gone on long walks through the woods near our house for two days in a row and even though the temperature was below freezing, we worked up a sweat!

We saw families out enjoying the park nearby and even a few kids out with sleds on the hill in the woods.

Glenn was truly in his element! Notice that big smile?

I could enjoy the snow up to my knees, thanks to my niece Sarah who gave me a pair of snow pants (ski pants?) 3 years ago and snow boots she'd outgrown.

Glenn has enjoyed walking with his trekking poles. They allow him to measure the snow in various places and burn some extra calories as he lifts them up out of the snow.

Our house is beautiful with the snow on the trees and bushes!

This is the view from our balcony, overlooking our yard. My poor fruit trees!

The next pictures are from our trip in Germany. (Sorry, I uploaded the pictures in the wrong order. By the way, I got my new computer, thanks to some volunteers who hand carried it out for us. (Glenn ordered it and had it sent to Texas for the volunteers who were working at Emigrate to bring to us.) I went over to the other side this time and bought a Mac. (I know so little about computers that when someone asks me what kind I have, I tell them, "a white one".) I got the same one Kari has so that she could help me learn how to work it. She spent about 1 1/2 hours today via Skype helping me figure out how to download my pictures and store them!

Our last day in Germany before we flew out, we spent with some friends going to a small town that is known for their village houses, the town of Wornitz. The houses are pretty expensive (about $50 each, on average), but they are all hand-made and hand-painted, and therefore, "one of a kind", supposedly. Collectors items, you know.

We left the conference center at 5:30 am and stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast in Frankfurt. They had these machines where you could pre-order your meal and pay for it by credit card, and then step up to the counter to pick it up. It wasn't crowded enough to need to try it, but I thought it was interesting! In McDonald's, of all places! Do they exist there in America?

The trees were so beautiful! It looked like it had snowed and then started to melt and then froze, and snowed again. All the branches were an inch thick with the white crystals!

During the conference, we had two hours one afternoon that was free time so Glenn and I chose to walk in the snow. We saw several other families out, enjoying the fresh air so we asked one of them to snap this picture of us for you.

This was the view from our window.

Like a fairyland!

At the conference, we met one of our ladies who is from Cedartown, Georgia, which is about an hour from Marietta. Glenn's dad comes from Cedartown. Leslie recognized Glenn's great-grandmothers' maiden name, Hightower, as the owner of the Peak-Hightower lumber mill.

Glenn and I got caught in a snow storm during our short walk in the area and it was snowing so hard that we could barely see 50 feet in front of us!

We have really enjoyed the snow for the past week and will hate to see it melt away. Of course, after you've looked at all these pictures, you probably hope it disappears soon and that we will have something else to talk about next week!

On another note, Glenn and I are following the 6 week series, Rooted, that our home church in Marietta is doing. We have our own quiet time each morning, and then right after lunch we are doing the daily devotionals together. On Sundays, we listen to the sermon that goes with the series, and we are memorizing the weekly Bible verse. It has been good for us to do this together.

We're here for the next week. I'll be trying to figure out how to use my new computer and get caught up on the emails that came in last week while we were out of town. Ugh, that has got to be the worst thing about traveling so much. I feel like I am always behind in my correspondence. Oh well, job security. Have a good week!