on the road again...

Tomorrow we leave for Moldova!! Today we have said goodbye and prayed for one another and shared the Lord's Supper together and given gifts and shared a special meal. And of course we took the group picture:
As I write, a group are having a bonfire out back but since Oliver is sleeping, I am staying in the house for now.
It's been a good day. It's been an excellent month.
I just realized I have not yet introduced you to the couple that have hosted and led our missionary training school: Heather and Pranesh. Their children, Reuben and Elona, have been a constant source of delight and fun for all of us. It is them, along with Oliver, that Victoria has been here to care for during the school. Heather and Pranesh are quite a combination. They met in Albania and now live in Hungary. Heather is originally from northern Ireland and Pranesh is originally from South Africa, of east Indian descent. As you can see, their children are beautiful!

More teamwork

OK - before I begin telling about Friday evening, I have to introduce you to Matthew and Melinda Edwards and their VERY cute son, Oliver. Matthew is an American who came to Hungary quite a few years ago and he met his wife Melinda at the church they were both attending. She is Hungarian and now they have been away in the States and are coming back to serve the Lord here in Hungary. Matthew does a fantastic job leading our worship services. And Melinda does an amazing job translating for us when she isn't trying to keep up with Oliver. Matt and Melinda plan to be participating in church planting in the town of Tatabanya.
On Friday evening we drove into town again to help serve at the YWAM Christian cafe. That was a bit less intimidating than the street evangelism we did on Thursday. Su'En and Dana both gave their testimonies and these young women were just so excited and clear about their faith, it was a real blessing.On the right is a photo of Su'En telling her story while Adam translates for her. Matt, Eun Chull and I each did a couple 'sets' of songs for background music for the cafe. Everyone else did something to help: some acted as greeters at the entrance, some helped serve coffee, cappuccino, etc. at the coffee bar, and some took turns praying in the 'Upper Room'. There were about 20-30 people, aside from us and staff, who came in and out in the course of the evening. Adam told us some interesting stories about the ongoing grace of God in the lives of some individuals. I was reminded of the time that Gerry and I spent in inner-city ministry in the core of Saint John, NB many years ago.
YWAM has quite an amazing building that they use for office space, and for ministry purposes. It is right in downtown Budapest and they are doing some major renovations so that they can have the coffeehouse more accessible and visible. Pray for them to be able to raise the funds they need for this outreach.

on the streets of Budapest

On Thursday afternoon, we went along with a team of people from 'Youth with a Mission' to do street evangelism in Budapest. Now you have to understand, this is not in my comfort zone - it is not particularly my gift or my calling. However, since this week's focus was on evangelism, the assignment to participate in street evangelism as a group, was embraced and carried out with a real good involvement on the part of the team and much, much prayer. For several days prior, we spent extra time each day preparing dramas and music. And I prepared a very short gospel message based on Matthew 11.28 - "Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest". When the time actually came for me to get behind the microphone - after some songs and a testimony and a drama - it was becoming easier to relate the verse to the weary people on their way home from work in this busy square, Muscva Ter (Moscow Square). I didn't talk long but I simply talked about how God created us with the intent that we should have a relationship with Him. But we have given our hearts away too many times to too many things - whether it be the pursuit of knowledge, adventure, financial success, fame, or a relationship - and our hearts have been broken. But God is our heart's true home. By sending Jesus, He made a way for us to know the rest He promises. Forgiveness and peace have been made possible by Jesus' death on the cross. And because Jesus had never sinned, death could not hold him and he rose from the grave to make a way for us to come back to the Father.
Of course all the time I was talking people were just walking by, rushing to catch a trolley or a train, or waiting to meet someone, or a few did stand a safe distance away to listen. Melinda translated for me. At the end of the message, Adam, a Hungarian YWAMer just spoke briefly in Hungarian to tell people to come and ask for a book we had about Jesus if they were interested in knowing more. I was really surprised at how many people did come to ask for a book. We had some conversations with people but we were pretty limited by language and glad that some of the local missionaries were there to speak with people. It was a good team effort in that regard. They also had made the arrangements about having a permit and such, and the police did carefully scrutinize their documents when we first arrived and started setting up.
As we were finishing up, I saw a very familiar sight: literally hundreds of homeless men and women gathered and lining up to receive soup from the Salvation Army truck that arrived on its weekly rounds. I thought of the Out of the Cold program at Yorkminster Park and said a prayer of thanks that all over the world Jesus' followers are doing their best to feed the hungry - both spiritually and physically.

That evening I stayed in Budapest to visit relatives of Jane and Doug Johnson. Sue and Peter invited me to their beautiful home overlooking the Danube river and we had a wonderful meal together with a young couple who were also passing through Budapest and stopping in for a visit.

Farewell to Sally

Our northern Irish granny - Sally - went home today. It wasn't easy to say goodbye as she has really brightened up our lives with her cheerful words of encouragement and songs of praise and her fervent prayers 'in the lovely name of Jesus'. Sally came to help Jill - who manages the building and cooks our main meal each day and does our laundry plus numerous other responsibilities with OM Hungary. With Sally here, instead of a free-for-all in the evenings and on weekends for meals, we had everything laid out for us and special things prepared that we might not have otherwise had. With Sally here, I woke up in the morning to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and went into the kitchen to the pleasant greeting 'Good mornin', Babs' in her Irish accent. She won a place in each of our hearts and now has returned to her own family and grandchildren to continue blessing their lives. Thank you, Sally - for everything. Sally and Victoria and I had a great time last Saturday in Budapest at the market and drinking tea in Hungarian cafes. Wasn't I blessed?

This has been a fairly intense week of lessons and assignments, especially as we prepare to do an open-air presentation in Budapest tomorrow. We will be working together with Youth With a Mission and presenting a drama, songs and a testimony as well as a brief gospel message in one of the main squares of Budapest. Guess who gets to do the gospel message? Right - me! Imagine! Me - a street preacher! Not exactly what I expected to be doing but I am always open to new experiences - ask me tomorrow whether I ever expect to do such a thing again. But when I look at the New Testament, the greatest saints (e.g. Paul, Peter) did open air street evangelism, preaching to whatever crowd happened to gather. So I'm in good company - just not anywhere near the same calibre of preaching. Please, please pray for me!!
Other than preparing for that and enjoying our daily classes, we have been working on this week's assignment - a religious background paper on the country to which we are going. Since Moldova is primarily an Orthodox country, I was especially interested in this afternoon's class when we learned about the history and beliefs of the Eastern Orthodox church. It was an excellent lesson and a real eye opener for me. Up till now I really knew nothing about Orthodoxy. Now I know about the first seven councils of the church and about the Great Schism of 1054 when the eastern and western churches excommunicated each other, and about the difference between Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox. It's all very interesting! Orthodox have another calendar, too (the Julian calendar) which means that I will be celebrating Christmas on January 7!
So, in case you think I'm doing nothing but play the tourist and socialize with all my new friends, remember that I am learning stuff and doing assignments too!

Saturday adventures & misadventures

Well, actually, to hear about the misadventure, check out James' website at www.jamesinczechrepublic.blogspot.com. ... oh my goodness - as I was making that entry Alma ran down and said we almost had a fire... and sure enough one of our number had fallen asleep and the book that person was reading fell against the lamp and was half-burned when it was discovered, thankfully before the sheet, the book or anything else actually burst into flame. We are feeling somewhat shaken, recognizing that God has been protecting us this day from serious injury or danger but these have been extremely close calls. And so, dear praying friends, please pray with us for God's protection constantly.
Now, one of the people I haven't introduced to you yet is our dear brother James. James is the only single guy in this group of two married couples, eight single women and himself. He does very well contending with some of the joys and challenges that face him simply being among us. He helps us with computer woes, takes care of details others miss, and truly loves children. Parnesh and Heather's son Reuben is a great fan of James. James is from Australia/NewZealand/England (see his blog for more details about that!) and is on his way to the Czech Republic. Not only is he very helpful in practical ways but is also quick to turn us all to the One who promises to be a Helper to those who cry out to Him. Tomorrow, James, Kim, Su'En and myself will be preparing our special Sunday evening dinner which is hosted by a different national group each week. So we will be the Dutch-Canadian-British contingent, preparing not only the evening meal but also the evening entertainment.
In spite of the challenges of this day, it was a tremendous sense of community as we all returned from our various outings and expeditions of the day. I had gone with our northern Irish friends, Victoria and Sally to spend the day in Budapest visiting the market and enjoying a more leisurely experience of the city than last week. (Also, last night most of us went on a wee boat cruise on the Danube to see Budapest by night - och, that was lovely!) Erika went to visit her Hungarian family members, Claudia spent the day with her uncle, and Micah took the train to Vienna to visit friends there. Some of us had some challenges finding our way on public transport but in each case, God graciously sent help in one form or another. In our case, it was an elderly gentleman who spoke enough English to help us find the bus we needed to transfer to because the trolley we were on was detoured due to road construction. As each of us arrived home this evening and shared the day's events, there was a real sense of family and gratitude to be back together again. And after the near-fire incident a few moments ago the five of us that were still awake all sat down and prayed together immediately.
Tomorrow morning in church our group will be singing a song and sharing a testimony. Probably the testimony we will share will be different than what we originally expected! But we will share that God is good and God is loving and we have experienced His faithfulness and His protection today.

Hemmed in prayer

Hello, my dear friends. Today is Thursday and at OM, Thursday is usually prayer meeting night. That is our practice at MTS, where each Thursday evening prayer requests are shared and a short presentation is made by one of the groups going to a particular country. This evening the five people who are going to Albania shared some information and prayer requests about that country.
(Su'en and Micah are two of the five people who will be going to Albania.) It was very interesting, as Albania was a completely closed country until about 15 years ago and since that time, many new churches have been established, and there are many new believers. Parnesh & son Reuben The couple who are directing our training - Heather and Parnesh - were part of the first OM
team that went into Albania those years ago and so they have had some interesting stories to share about those first days in Albania. For example, as they were driving into the city,
Heather on right, baby Elona in carriage
Parnesh became very annoyed that all the silly
people were walking in the middle of the road. He said they were likely to get hit by a car, but then the host informed him that there were only
8 cars in the whole city, so people weren't too worried about getting hit!!

Anyway, as well as prayer meeting tonight, we have been learning about language acquisition all this week. I now know that the first Heather on right, baby Elona in carriage three months of my time in Moldova will be spent with a host family in Chisenau and my main responsibility will be to learn the language. I will have a language helper with whom I will meet most days and spend other parts of the day getting out in the community and practising what I am learning. Then at the end of the three months I will stay for a week in a Moldovan village before then being assigned to my specific area of responsibility.
One of the assignments we have each week is to work on memorizing a portion - and eventually all- of Psalm 139. Last week one of the verses said, "You hem me in - behind and before". Micah said it reminded her of being zipped up cozily in a sleeping bag. I was thinking about my prayer supporters - those at home praying for me and those ahead, in Moldova, praying for me. I am so grateful for your prayers and I do have two requests to share:

1. Please pray for me in the process of language learning. It will be hard work but I know I can do it if I maintain the discipline I need. We are being given lots of guidelines this week, but once I get to Moldova I will be largely responsible for directing what form the learning takes.
http://www.eliznik.org.uk/RomaniaHistory/language.htm

2. Please pray for Airton, a member of the Moldovan team, who was sent out of the country the other day and will not be able to get back into Moldova. He is staying here at the OM Centre and trying to figure out what comes next in his life. This is a huge disappointment to him and a loss for the team.

3. Praise God that He is sovereign over all things and that we can trust Him day by day if we put our hope in His word, and in the living Word, Jesus Christ.

The Beauty of Budapest

Some of the sights

So...on Saturday we piled into the vans and headed off for Budapest. Joska (OM Hungary staff person/crazy guy) was driving our van and kept us all in stitches the whole time. But we arrived safely and took lots of pictures at the various places we stopped. We spent a fair bit of time near Heroes' Square and I found a quiet place in the park behind it to sit and drink a cappuccino and write some postcards.





One of the American girls, Erika,is from a Hungarian family and she was able to go and visit her grandmother during this time.








Later we went up the hill to the castle district and Sally and I did a bit of shopping. We watched a woman completing a tablecloth she had been working on in the traditional Hungarian style - it was quite a piece of handiwork. I also bought a mug to add to my collection (I know my kids won't be surprised to hear that).





How to get around in Moldova...?

As many of you know I recently obtained my motorcycle license - but I have never had the opportunity to own a bike of my own. So in Budapest I did some shopping around to consider what form of transportation I might use in Moldova ...










...and after much consideration,this is what I decided on:More friends to meet

There are some people you haven't met yet, such as Eun Ha and her husband Eun Chuul, a really sweet couple from South Korea. Eun Chuul has been serving as a youth pastor and now they are heading to Albania to serve the Lord there.








You also haven't met Victoria,
who - as well as Granny Sally - is from northern Ireland. Victoria has come to help take care of the children during the training school. Sally helps with the cooking and kitchen work and she is an absolute delight and full of life and humour. They attend the home church of Heather,
who leads the training course along with her husband Parnesh.
I'll have to put in a photo of them next time.

Blessings to you all from Budapest!

Worship with Hungarian Baptists

This morning we all piled in the vans again to go to church at the little local Hungarian Baptist church. We went there last week and already yesterday when we drove by it group members pointed and said, "There's our church!" It doesn't take long to grab hold of something familiar. The service itself is not unfamiliar - quite similar to many Baptist churches in Canada (well, not similar to Yorkminster Park, but it is unique).
One of the differences is that people don't stand to sing. They have a worship team that leads the music, which this morning included a flute and a piano as well as singers. Aside from them, nobody else stands. Lyrics were projected on the wall but unlike last week, none of the songs today were familiar tunes that we could at least sing along to with our English words. Hungarian is not too hard to follow phonetically, if you remember that J sounds like Y, so some did try to follow along. One of our group members is Hungarian so she translated for us and some American visitors who were also there. So we all sat in the back rows with headsets for the translations. Each week time is given for prayer and the focus this morning was on praying for the Americans who are commemorating the 4th anniversary of 9/11. One of the members just came back from New York City and she encouraged people to pray for America to know comfort and hope, and not to be living in fear. Time was given for various members of the congregation to pray out loud and many people did so. Later there was a time given for testimony, with a young man prepared to share his testimony (related to the message) and then an opening for anyone else who wanted to share. After each testimony the pastor would ask someone to pray for that person. The pastor is a fairly young man and preached an encouraging sermon this morning based on 1 Corinthians 15:58 -
Be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as you know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
It was a good message about the importance of persevering, even when it seems there is no fruit to your labours. God calls us to be faithful and in our faithfulness we will experience the fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. At this point I don't feel overburdened with a great deal of work at all - in fact I am feeling very relaxed and thankful for a stress-free September - but I know that the time will soon come when I will need to be reminded of the need to keep on keeping on and to be steadfast in whatever God calls me to do as I begin in Moldova. I suppose the first thing will be my language learning - I will need to be steadfast and diligent in that.
Meanwhile, I am conscious that many of my Canadian friends and family are well into the harriedness of the fall season: beginning classes, starting fall programs, preparing for various events that are upcoming. Please know that I am thinking of you often and holding you in prayer as I bring your name and your needs to the Heavenly Father who loves us so much.
Tomorrow morning - Monday- I will be sharing the story of God's grace in my life in our morning devotion time. Please keep me in your prayers for this.
And - thank you to everyone who responded to my request to know if you are out there! Karen, I've taken care of the junkmail problem with help from James, our local techno guru and the only single male in this household of females. Erin, not to worry, I am keeping an eye on my dear Dana and look forward to being in Moldova with her. She is truly a gem. Thanks for writing! Kevin, I don't remember if I ever met you or not, but glad to know that you are following my blog and I took a look at yours too. Ron, thank you so much for copying my blog for Kate and Winnie. It's great to know that you are all there and I value your prayers so much. I suppose the choir is back in full swing for the fall and I can just picture you there on Thursdays getting the chairs all set up for them. I believe I have one of the choir CD's copied on my MP3 so I will have to get that out when I am homesick for the church. God bless you all! Barb

PS - Watch for my next post when I will report - with photos- on our visit to Budapest yesterday.

One week completed at MTS

Hello, loyal readers!
Actually, I'm not so sure if I have loyal readers or not as I have no Comments!!! Please, dear friends, when you come to visit stop and say hello or send me an e-mail. I need to know if this blog is serving any purpose in terms of informing you of my adventures. I am going to attempt to put a few prayer requests on from time to time, and will continue to add photos when I have appropriate ones. This photo is just a pretty one I took on my train trip from Holland to Belgium last week. I can hardly believe we have now been at Missionary Training School for a whole week! It has been a great week and I think gradually all of us are feeling more comfortable with one another and adjusting to the challenges of community living. We have had some really good teaching this week on Calling, the Biblical Basis of Missions, Law and Grace, Apects of the Cross, and Living a Life of Service, and Cooking in a Foreign Context. As well as good teachers, we have had some interesting discussions about some of the issues that may face us as we go to our various countries. Last night we watched a video called 'A Candle in the Dark', about the life of William Carey, father of modern missions. We had a good discussion about it this morning, especially from the perspective of a missionary's responsibility to their family. We have two couples in the group, whose photos I will have to take so I can introduce them properly to you.

Tomorrow we finally get to go to Budapest! I am so excited and I will take some great photos and hopefully find some souvenirs to send to my sons. I already mailed a parcel to Marah, but finding things for the boys is always more difficult. We're all going to be going in two vans, and now that we know each other better, it should be a really fun time.
I'll check out now but hope to get some comments from a few of you! Blessings, Barb

More introductions!

Last night we went for a walk and this neighbourhood certainly is interesting. The people who went on the walk together were me and Claudia (who you met yesterday) and Micah and Kim and Su En. But before I introduce them individually, I have a picture of the whole group, except for Matt and Melinda. This photo was taken on Sunday morning when we arrived home from church:Left to right: (standing) Kim, Micah, Erika, Dana, Su En, Un Ha, Alma; (in front) Claudia, James, Un Chau

So, here is Micah, a Quaker from the state of Idaho. Micah is a very enthusiastic and interesting woman. She taught at a school in Austria for 3 years and is eager to go to Albania with OM. She is a hard worker and an enthusiastic encourager, as well as a good listener. Also, to her benefit, she is a sound sleeper and never complains about my snoring at all!

So here is Su En. Born in Singapore, but she lives in Holland. She and Kim love to speak dutch together. Su En is a little bit off-the-wall and you never quite know what she will say next. But she's a lot of fun and very funny. She is trained in early childhood education and is really looking forward to working with children in Albania when she gets there. Speaking of children, today was Oliver's second
birthday and we had a 'wee bit' of a party for him, sure! We even had cake!



Kim also came on our walk with us. Kim is a lovely young woman from the Netherlands as well. She is also going to Albania. Unlike Micah, Kim is a light sleeper adn she quickly switched out of our room to sleep - but she left her suitcase and stuff so she has an excuse to visit us during the day!

Speaking of walks one of the characteristics of any walk in this area of Hungary is that you get to deal with the various personalities of every dog from here to wherever you are going. ALL the dogs bark (day and night) and ALL the dogs love to run out and bark at you very loudly when you walk by. Some of the dogs are pretty big and some of them are ferocious - take a look a this:

The people with whom I live...

Well, first of all there are the 2 women with whom I will be going to Moldova: Claudia and Dana.
Dana is originally from Romania and she is about 21 years old - a young woman with a heart for mission. She was in Moldova earlier this year for the Challenge into Missions program - a 3-month training program. She loved it there so much that she signed on with OM to return on a 2-year Global Action program. That's where I fit in as I am also on Global Action. Dana is teaching me Romanian during this time of preparation at OM Hungary Missionary Training School. Tonight we conjugated the verb 'to be' and I learned to count to zece (ten, 10) in Romanian. Thanks, Dana!

Claudia is also going to Moldova with us. She is older than Dana but not as old as I am. She is from Switzerland and speaks Swiss German, so when she and Alma speak German I try to follow the conversation. Claudia is one of my roommates and she may also become my walking buddy.




Alma is the OM staff person from Germany who has come to live with us and help us out with any of the details of living, phoning, mailing and generally getting along in an unfamiliar place. This morning she shared her story of God's grace in her life and it was interesting to hear of the 10 years she spent working in Albania right after it opened up. She currently works in the OM home office in Germany and occasionally helps with other events such as this. Alma plays the saxophone and in the evenings it is nice to hear familiar songs and hymns played on the smooth tones of the sax.

Such smooth tones are a welcome relief from some of the more strident sounds around here. Specifically, the sound of dogs barking is a continual annoyance, night and day. It seems everyone in the neighbourhood has at least one dog and the Hungarian dogs have set up some sort of communication system in this hilly neighbourhood. If one dog barks, his voice invites all the other dogs to respond and at any given time you can hear endless barking - sometimes harmonized (not) by the wailing of a cat or the crowing of a rooster. This goes on into the night every single night. That and the mosquitoes makes it difficult to leave our window open when we sleep. The weather has been so beautiful that it is nice to enjoy the fresh air, barking dogs or not. The photo is a view from the balcony of our bedroom.

Today we had a couple of very good teaching sessions from a guy named Terry who has been working with OM Hungary for many years. He was teaching about Law and Grace, and about legalism in the church. It was very a very good teaching and I really enjoyed it. God is teaching me things on a very personal level as well and I am glad they chose the focus of the first week to be spiritual formation.

I'll introduce the rest of the group as I go along. We are all looking forward to our group trip into Budapest on Saturday to see the sights.

Contact info in Hungary

Greetings all!
By tomorrow we may have photos. Stay tuned and hold your breath...
wrong! Tonight we have photos!! Hurrah! YEah for teams! Thank you to James for helping me get photos onto my laptop. Here is a picture of the group that left DeBron yesterday, headed for eastern Europe.
We were commissioned in the morning service and then in the afternoon loaded into the vans headed for the airport in Amsterdam. By 11pm we had arrived in Budapest and now there are 11 of us about to spend a month living and learning together in the OM Training Centre in Erd, just outside Budapest.
For now, I will give you my address here in Hungary in case you decide to write me.

OM Hungary Training Centre
Bajuszfu u.15
2030 Erd
Hungary

I will be here until October 1.

Joy and peace in Christ,
Barb

Brussels today, Budapest tomorrow

Hello everyone!
Today I had a great adventure and was successful in my endeavour. I got up early (5 a.m.!!!) to catch a train to Brussels, Belgium. It was a 4 hour trip and I had to change trains three times - and did so without getting totally muddled. Arrived in Bruxelles, took a cab to the Moldovan Embassy and within 3 hours I had applied for, paid for, and received my visa. Truly the Lord was with me and blessed me. We hoped I would be able to get a one-year visa but coming away, I wasn't sure from the form whether I had a 90-day one or a one-year. But now I know that it is, indeed, a one-year visa - Praise God! And it cost less than was expected.
So I took a sightseeing tour of Brussels (who knows when/if I'll ever be there again?!) and then jumped on a train back to Holland. Arrived back here at the conference at 9 pm. Tomorrow we leave here at 2 pm to fly to Budapest. Keep praying! I'll write more when there's nobody waiting in line for computers. Blessings to you all. Barb