The glutton shall lose all (Proverbs 23:20-21)

Temptation comes in many different forms and ways. You may be fooled and you shall never know that the enemy has tricked you, for Satan uses the loveliest of tools and you just cannot resist the temptation.
If you know who Marie Barone is from Everybody Loves Raymond, you know how Satan will use even the loveliest of mothers to turn you into a gluttonous pig, especially if it is Christmastime.
My (Arpi) mother’s reaction to every situation is a call to eat. No matter if you have just arrived from a party, or if you have just finished a meal your lovely wife has fixed for you. She will, in a subtle way, woo you into eating her delicacies, much like the evil White Witch has wooed Edmund into eating Turkish Delight and making him want more and more. We do love our mothers, but we hate feeling like stuffed turkeys after each holiday.
Surprisingly enough, it has been great to be home. So far we have been able to relax more than usual, and more than expected. This has been great. I think that the Lord found tricky ways to refresh us, and for this, we are so grateful to Him.
Tomorrow is another day which will be spent visiting friends, family, and the church we both got saved at. We look forward to attending the mid-week service at Calvary Chapel Subotica, and seeing some old friends, brothers and sisters. I (Andi) got really emotional tonight when we took a quick walk on the walking street with the good old, gorgeous city hall towering over us. The whole area is decorated with Christmas lights, and it was just so beautiful. It reminded me of so many memories, and made me realize once again that I grew up in a beautiful town.
Anyway, as you probably figured out from the first two paragraphs written by Arpi, we saw The Chronicles of Narnia tonight. We thought we would take advantage of the fact that nothing is dubbed in Serbia (unlike in Hungary), and see the movie in beautiful British English (Mark Walsh, hope you’re reading this), instead of listening to all the characters speak Hungarian. Well, the cinema we went to was having some major sound problems the result of which was that throughout the whole movie, all the characters whispered, and sometimes it sounded like we heard background music! Yeah! Thankfully, we just read the Cyrillic subtitles in Serbian, and could thus still follow what was happening. Oh, well. We will have to see it in Hungarian after all.

warfare (noun) – a state of disharmony or conflict

After no precipitation for a whole week it had to rain yesterday. It had to, for I washed the car (I actually had to, for Andi strongly suggested that I needed to) and it was actually impeccable for about four hours. Now, after driving for almost two hours, the car looks like it did yesterday before I washed it.
Last night was one of the worst nights of the recent years of my life. Late in the afternoon I felt like there was no strength in my muscles. My arms and legs were shaking and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. Needless to say I wanted to stay home and not go to the homeless shelter with the church. I went anyway, as weak as I was. It was snowing as we were leaving and when I found out that someone had changed the plans and I had to taxi people around the city while it was snowing, I turned into a raging monster, I became a ticking time-bomb in front of several witnesses. This did not help my weakness and even though I went with team to the homeless shelter, I was not able to teach the Bible study I wanted to share. Andi suggested that it was Satan attacking us, but I yelled at her for even suggesting that Satan had to do anything with it. He actually did.

Friday Brain Jogs

As this afternoon Arpi decided that we should officially, and really, really start writing a blog, I decided that I should add a little bit of my perspective on everything.
Because this week is not a full week of work, I kept feeling like it was Thursday, and oddly enough my brain was acting that way too. (I usually finish teaching my last class on Thursday night, and my brain gets to what is for others the Friday afternoon mode by then) Anyway, strange, but I couldn't convince my brain that it is still only Tuesday.
So now I am home, relaxing, checking out what's new on some of my favorite websites, and hanging out. Arpi is watching some documentary about building some stairs from concrete. Quite fascinating - for him! :)
He did buy a really cool scuba-diving magazine today, and reading through it when I got home and seeing all the pictures made me remember how fun it was when we were diving this past summer. I hope we'll get to do it again sometime soon. Everyone should try scuba-diving at least once in their life.
Oh, and another important thing happened today! We started running together! I know it's strange that we are starting now, in December, but, oh, well. At least we are starting! We went up to the Mecsek hills above Pecs early in the morning, and it was so peaceful. They have these running tracks there, and there is nothing except you and nature. It is hard to believe that the city is so close below us. As for the running part: well, of course I wanted to give up after about 3 minutes claiming I was going to lose my breath and suffocate, but that didn't happen. So then I started feeling like my legs were going to fall off. For some reason, Arpi wasn't touched at all, and being the seasoned runner that he is, he kept spurring me on. In the end, I made it through the 20-minute ordeal, and I am thankful that my sweet husband didn't listen to my whining. I felt really good afterwards, and I can't wait to go again on Thursday. Of course, I am very sore already, but that's the price you pay for being fit! And all this, from the brand-new fitness specialist Queen (self-elected) :)

Christmas

We have been listening to Diana Krall's Christmas Songs for a month now to get into the Christ-like Christmas spirit, but we are still not sure this was a good enough preparation before spending a whole week with our family. Christmas can be ruined when so many different people (like the people in our families) are confined to such a small space. God help us!
We are sure you have had nightmares and you woke-up in the middle of it, because you were so terrified in your dream. When this happens some people like to go right back to sleep, so they can rest before they have to get up in the morning. At times like these it is horrid to realize that you have no time left, but you have to face the day with such a nightmarish introduction. We fear that our Christmas is going to be such a nightmarish prologue to 2006. Why? Here is a short itinerary of our following week.
We will go to a homeless shelter here in Pecs on Thursday night with the church. Like last year we will serve food, sing carols, and give gifts to the homeless. Strangely, this is the part of this Christmas that causes no fear in our hearts. We will spend the next two days in Vukovar (Croatia) with Andi's brother and his family with the grandparents there as well. On Saturday we will go to Serbia to see the rest of our family in and around Subotica. Rest? What is that?

The One Where It All Began

We are starting this blog to keep our friends updated on what is going on in our lives. Keep checking this page and you will be able to discover something new and interesting every time we get to post.