Thank You!

Where do I begin? Thank you first for your prayers. We've been blessed and surprised already and we've just completed two days of the conference. We arrived here Friday night during daylight, which was huge because some people did the drive in immense fog. We had one glitch after unloading some things from the van when the interior lights wouldn't go out. We of course were concerned about the battery, but they eventually went out. We were pleasantly surprised to find that they combined the children's class from age 3-5, which meant Miriam and Zach were in the same class. Prayer answered. Another huge prayer that has been answered is that Zach is consistently going to childcare and is enjoying it. Miriam continued to tell us the first night that this was a great vacation, and did she get to go back to her fun class again. They have just been going non-stop, so much so that Zach fell asleep at the dinner table tonight after eating his meal. It was good though because we still had another session after dinner to attend. It's 10:30 right now and I'm still waiting on him to fall asleep:)

We have had excellent sessions during the day and are being stretched and "impassionated" as one Albanian MC said. The title for our conference is Passioniate Pursuit: Renewing our Passion, Pursuing our Mission. Our main speaker so far has been a professor from Biola University names Eric Thoennes. Two of the main things I have remembered from him was: Every day remember the gospel and what it means for us, secondly, Peter and John couldn't stop talking about Jesus even when the religious leaders told them to, Acts 4:13 said the leaders knew that Peter and John were uneducated men, but they began to recognize they had been with Jesus. He spoke of what a compliment that would be, Jesus has changed you and others can tell you have been with Jesus. It made me look at myself and ask if people could tell I had been with Jesus. What a good challenge for all of us as believers.

Zach is finally asleep and I'm feeling close behind him. Aaron is off watching the Chargers-Patriots game on the big screen in the auditorium. Hopefully the feed is good and you can actually see the game.

Again, thank you for your prayers and we will try to update one more time at least. We are on a wireless connection in our room and the speed is not high so it is not allowing me to upload anymore pictures. The one above is from our time in the pool yesterday...more to follow later.

All-Staff Conference

I know it's been a while since I've posted, especially since I have a good friend who has reminded me a couple times:) We've had a busy time since school started back from break. Aaron has been in full swing with basketball practice and games (they are still undefeated, woohoo) and trying to prepare for our week-long All-Staff Conference at Lake Balaton (see below link to hotel). He has had to find subs for 4 classes, prepare the lessons and have everything ready for the subs to come in and easily take over his class. We leave tomorrow afternoon and the conference starts with dinner tomorrow night. Please be in prayer with us about many facets of this conference. We are praying for safe travel for all the staff coming from all of Eastern Europe and Russia, restful and encouraging time, good lessons, children's conference goes well, and that all would stay healthy. When we attended the conference last time both our children were sick after the first day and couldn't attend the childcare, so that meant one of us was missing sessions. We are praying they stay healthy and can attend the children's conference, otherwise it will be a strange rerun of last time. Also, that Zach will not have problems going to his class. We initially thought Miriam and Zach would be in the same classroom and that has changed, so he will be in a different room which usually makes things harder for him. Thank you for your prayers!

http://www.clubtihany.hu/english/index.htm

Finding Nemo

Someone gave us passes to a local aquarium, so we invited some friends to join us and we had lots of fun. One of the highlights for the kids was riding the bus to and from the aquarium. They just think that is great. We saw all kinds of animals during our time there: snakes, alligators, marmosets, sharks, and rays - which both the kids loved to pet.

Here are some shots of our very scary animals outside of the Tropicarium

We were trying hard to find all the fish from Finding Nemo, here is the case where the clownfish were. Both the kids were very happy, and loved to see all the wonderful colors that God put on all the animals.

One of the very cool things this aquarium has is a shark tunnel where you walk through the and can see all the sharks and fish swimming above and around you. This is one of the moms' favorite parts also.

Here is a picture of all the moms that went yesterday.

These gals are some of my closest friends in Budapest.

Check out their website!

http://www.tropicarium.hu/_lang/eng/flash_eng.htm

Winter Fun!

Today is Sunday, and as I type Aaron is outside shoveling ice from our sidewalks and driveway. We didn't go to church because it was cancelled due to ice and we were supposed to have a friend over for lunch, but he is also iced-in. It makes for a relaxing last day of break, but if it keeps up we might have a day off tomorrow. Not a bad thought.

We got a lot of snow for New Year's so we spent the first day of 2008 sledding on some hills across our street. We had such a mild winter last year we never got to enjoy snowsuits, but we all got bundled up and headed out. Miriam was our brave snow-queen. She went down the big hill with Aaron and loved it. After she would go down a hill she was on her way back up pulling her sled behind her. Zach just wanted to run and play in the snow, not so interested in conquering as many hills, but we stayed out for at least 2 hours and had a blast. This break has been a lot of fun for us to spend time together as a family.

What have you been up to? We'd love to hear from you...