Cactus

I have recently discovered that I have been uniquely gifted in a specific area of life. The discovery itself is actually quite disappointing, as all the women in my family who have gone before me (my mom, and both my grandmas) have NOT been this way.

Here's the thing: I can kill cacti! You are probably aware of the fact that cacti are plants which are considered to be virtually impossible to kill - which is why they survive so well in the desert. Well, I managed to do the impossible!

As I have mentioned, this is made further dreadful by the fact that people have often asked my mom what she does with her plants to make them look as beautiful and lush as they are ... and she has got A LOT of them!

The garden of my paternal grandmother was for years somewhat of a local place of interest. People would stop in front of her house and discuss the beauties of each and every unique and rare flower and plant that decorated her front yard ... (My grandma is too old now to still be able to work as much as she used to in her garden, but I must admit that her garden is still much more beautiful than my balcony with my three little plants ...)

Anyway, here's the proof of my unique talent:


Notice the cool looking beautiful green wreath around the dead cactus. You know why it looks so nice and green? Because it's FAKE!

So, the mistery remains. Nobody knows how I ended up an offspring of such a horticulturally gifted family ...

Lessons from the trail

St. Paul the Apostle had it right when he wrote:

"... let us lay aside every weight,and the sin which so easily ensnares us,and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us ..." (Hebrews 12:1)

I have often wondered about his comparison of the christian life to running. I have heard people teach about it, and talk about endurance and such things, and it all sounded so cool and nice, but it didn't sink in until I found myself on such a trail ...

We have been jogging for a while now, and I have discovered so many parallels between the christian life and running ... other than it being good physical exercise, it has also been an invaluable spiritual lesson.

1. Keeping your eyes on the end

We usually go jogging eary in the morning. Sometimes it can be very difficult to get up and out of bed,and to put on my running gear. But I have learnt that if I give in to the laziness and stay at home - without fail - I always regret it later.

It is the same in my spiritual walk: if I allow myself to get lazy, it shows, and I regret it.

If you have ever done some form of regular exercise, you know how great you feel when you have finished. I have learnt that this is precisely what I need to focus on in those moments when I don't exatly feel like going. If I remind myself of the end result, it is so much easier to begin the fight against my tired, lazy flesh.

It is the same spiritually: sometimes we get tired of the spiritual warfare, of the daily battles against the flesh, against the world, against ourselves.

But: if we make it a point to remind ourselves of the glorious end we know the Lord promised us, it is much easier to face the daily battles we face.

2. The ups and downs

The trail we have been running on is in the Mecsek hills above Pecs. Thus, the elevation of the trail changes quite often. Sometimes it is sooooo hard to make myself keep running when we get to an uphill slope.
My favorite part on the whole trail though is the really cool, LONG downhill slope. Running down on it ALWAYS feels soooo easy, and even if I was super tired shortly before getting there - this is where I recharge. Here, I feel like I am the coolest runner ever :) and I feel like I could run for 10 more kilometres ... shortly: READY FOR THE OLYMPICS!

Just like in the case of the physical trail, so it is in our spiritual lives: when there's a trying uphill period, YOU CAN KNOW that it will for sure be followed by a long, easy, downhill "flight".

This is always a great reminder.

3. Growing stamina

When we first started running, we were sooo weak. We could barely complete the trail (and sometimes we did fail).
But the longer we train, the more we run - the more we can endure - and the easier it gets. Of course, then we always need to go further and run a bit more than last time.

There are always new challenges to face, new areas to conquer. However, the old ones that have already been conqered rarely present a challenge after a while. Yes, sometimes I still have to stop for a break at the uphill part where I used to always have to stop at the beginning, because it seemed too difficult. BUT: now, I only have to stop SOMETIMES, and NOT ALWAYS like I used to. That is certainly reason for rejoicing!

"OUR" TRAIL - ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL?

Croatian Day in Pecs

We had such a fun afternoon yesterday. Pecs was hosting a “Croatian Day” all day. This happens every year, and they always invite Croatian dancing ensembles from all over (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Hungary usually). As part of this, in the afternoon all the dance troops perform first in the main square and later in front of the theatre, and in the evening they do a full dance show on stage. Since the first two performances are free, we went to those and boy, it was so great, and beautiful. The first group was from the Croatian island of Korcula and it was all guys and they did this whole dancing with the flag thing, it was so cool, I hope this little picture helps you get a taste of it....

...and the last ones to come out were of course the dancers from SUBOTICA! I might be a little biased, but everyone seemed to like them best. At the end, the audience could join in, and we all formed a big circle around the main square to dance the KOLO – a traditional dance. Whadduyaknow? I joined in! Doesn’t it look like fun? It was!

Conversion of a vegetable-hater

On the first Sunday of each month we have a church pot-luck of sorts. It is always tricky to cook for this (even though we call it a pot-luck, I usually do the cooking), as tastes differ from person to person. One person who I am always working hard to please is our friend, Géza. Géza doesn't eat anything that is even remotely green, ie vegetables are out of the question. His favorite foods are potatoes, cream of wheat,bread and coke (unlimitied amounts of it). A character? Yes, he is, and we (still) :) love him.
Anyways, one of the things I made for the last pot-luck was a "Serbian Salad". To everyone's amazement, he ate it, AND LOVED it! So much so, that he had his wife get the recipe from me.

Here's a picture of a rare moment in Géza's life, as he is eating vegetables:

SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... must be what God had on His mind when He planned my day for yesterday. Here's why:

A few weeks ago, Arpi was invited to teach at one of the days of the CC Budapest conference in Vajta. I decided to go with him, partly to support him, and partly to see some friends from Budapest that I haven't seen in a long time.

Well, the Lord had a much, much better plan! We had barely arrived when I bumped into three precious people from Miskolc. (sidenote: I lived in Miskolc for a year between 1999-2000, I was helping in a church-planting effort) I hadn't seen Alex, Nagyfej and Evi in about 5 years, and this was completely unexpected!

Here's a picture of the girls:

Nagyfej and Évi

We had a LONG chat of about two hours, and it was such an incredible blessing to see and hear that they are doing well, walking with the Lord. Oh, I can't even begin to describe how the Lord blessed me through them!

And if that wasn't enough...my former roommate (cca 1997-1998 from Budapest), Theresa Howard and her family "happened to be" visiting from England - where they have been serving as missionaries in Harrogate. What a blessing it was to catch up and share all that the Lord has done in both of our lives, and to share about the things He is doing in the places where He has us now.

The Howards

Whoever thinks that Christian life is boring, they are so wrong. It's anything but boring.

Thank you, Lord for a wonderful surprise of a day!

The boatride

One day we took a boatride from Vodice to Sibenik and back. As you can see from the pictures, it was A LOT OF fun, and really beautiful. Seeing some of the cute, old Dalmatian houses by the sea, Lili and I agreed that it is absolutely outrageous that some people get to live in places like this. Scandalous! How come THOSE people get to live there, and WE don't?! We still haven't figured out the answer, but if anyone has an input, we'd love to hear it.

Arpi and Andi, happy on the boat.

An artist's (Geza) view of Sibenik's famous cathedral from the fortress above the old city.

The loggia at the main square of Sibenik's old town.

In Split

Our first two days of our vacation were spent in the city of Split, visiting our friends, the Warholics. Tim and Grace (along with baby Thomas) are missionaries there. It was an encouragement to see them, as they are faithfully serving the Lord.

It was also good to see Andi Djirki, who is from Subotica (our hometown), and who has been helping them by interpreting the Bible studies. What an amazing God we serve!
Do pray for them, and pray that God would save many people in the city of Split and in Croatia!


Here's a picture of Tim and Grace, aren't they cute?

We went back to Split a week later, this time with our friends Geza and Lili (with baby Nori in tow). They have never been to Croatia before, so we took them on a tour of the old town of Split. They are every tour-guide's dream. Both of them are totally enthusiastic about everything, amazed at how beautiful everything is - which it really is -, but this made it so much more fun to show them around.


Here are a few pics of the tour.

Vacation!!!!!

Actually, the title might also include an exclamation of „Dalmatia!”. For the sake of those who might not know, Dalmatia is the coastal area of Croatia, and it is absolutely and totally beautiful.
This is where we are going to travel in two days for our vacation. We both love it so much there, that we often wonder if maybe some long-lost predecessors of both of us were maybe from there and our families just don’t know about it somehow. Could be....
For now, we are excited to pack and plan our visit there. We look forward to visiting our friends Tim and Grace who are missionaries there, and then heading to the little town of Vodice to enjoy the beaches and the crystal clear water there.
On our way home we will also stop for a day to see Laci, Keri and Lea in Vukovar. Looking forward to it all, will be back to tell you all about it!

The kids around us

Although we haven’t got kids of our own yet, there are plenty around us. God is definitely using them to prepare us for “the deep waters” of parenthood sometime in the future. Just wanted to share with you pics of some of them....

Mark is our nephew. He is 4 years old, and a real boy. He helps his grandpa in the toolshed (one of his favorite things in the whole world!), and he loves fixing anything that’s broken, even bikes and tractors!

Lea is our niece. Although only 20 months old, she has enough character for a 5-year old. She loves to draw, she loves dogs and enjoys entertaining people around her. Really. Scary to think about it, but she is a total one-woman show already.

Nori is the daughter of our friends Géza and Lili. She is a year old now, and at this point, her favorite activities include: screaming at a high-pitched voice (checking to see how long the adults can handle it), smiling at everyone who looks at her, and shuving her pacifier in adults’ mouths.

What is man?

So what’s been up with us? Well, I finished an extremely busy and draining semester with my students at the language school. This is probably the busiest I have been since I’ve been teaching there. Thankfully, starting in September I should only have half of the load that I had this past semester. That should help me to actually have a life.

We attended two really good conferences these last few weeks, and the Lord showed me a bunch of stuff, and did a huge amount of work in my heart, but there was one theme that stuck out to me, that touched me in a major way. It’s nothing new and revolutionary, but it was fresh for me. The Psalmist wrote it down a long time ago in

Psalms 8:4
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

The last night of the Southern Hungary Calvary Chapels’ conference, we had an extended time of worship and prayer. I was sitting in the back, and watched virtually every single person (around 150 attended) in the auditorium go out to ask for prayer regarding something in their lives. All of a sudden it occurred to me that what has become somewhat “normal” and “everyday-ish” to me is in fact an amazing thing. That those people were standing up and going out there because Almighty God, the Creator of everything had spoken to them. He had touched their hearts and they were responding.
What a miracle that is! The fact that He, YHWH would care enough about us to touch our hearts, to change our hearts, and then He even made it possible for us to respond, to answer, to communicate with Him…this should never stop amazing us.