Summer

Well, so far I've had a pretty busy summer. We started by going to Ireland for 10 days and then we came back to Hungary to help out with the Summer camp here. My main job during the camp it to take pictures, but I was also an English teacher for 2 week.

Here are some of the pictures from camp :)

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

And this....

Brother & Sister - taking a break from school :)

Fun

Sunday School & Cotton Candy

For the past few Sundays, I've gone into Budapest with some of the BI students to help teach Sunday school at a church there. For the first 3 weeks I was helping out with the 2 & 3 year olds, but last week I went and helped Amanda and Andrea with the 4 & 5's. They were so sweet.

Our story had to do with fish/fishing, so we made them fishing poles and some fish.

They loved them!

Amanda and I also made this fish for them to hold when they were answering questions.

It was so cute to watch them make the fish "swim" from person to person.

- All of their fishing poles -

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Cotton Candy :)

After Sunday school Stephen, Salo, Jared, Amanda and I decided to get subs and go for a picnic.

After we ate, we got some cotton candy... It was so much fun.

Deciding which flavors we wanted

Stephen and Salo waiting for our Pineapple cotton candy.

Our crazy huge cotton candy :)

Does this look like school to you?

Yeah, I didn't think so either... but it sure is cute.

He's been bouncing this little yellow ball almost all morning trying to see how many times he can do it in a row. I really don't get it, but he seems to enjoy it.

He finally got it up to 104 times, gave some kind of joyous scream and then announced that he was tired. 

Yup. Definitely cute.

Okay, enough. Back to school! Right now!

Addictive?

Yes, VERY!

So, how could this one little blue candy effect you if you were to pop it into your mouth? Well, it would automatically make you crave more. That's all you need, just one. And you're hooked.

I've heard people compare them to Peanut M&M's, however, I strongly disagree. I truly despise Peanut M&M's (weird I know), but I LOVE these. They don't really have a name. But the brand name is Big Ben, so we just call them Big Bens. And they're great. You really can't eat just one, or 2, or 15. If you eat one you're bound to end up eating a handful. The sad thing is though, they don't have them in the States... I don't know what I'm gonna do when we leave Hungary. :P

- I've never eaten a whole bag, not all at once anyway. The most I've eaten at one time was half a bag, well, actually I've done that more than once... Becky and I like eating them while we're watching movies. So yeah, needless to say, I've eaten a lot of them.

Rainy Day

Yesterday was a lovely rainy day. - I love it when it rains. It's my favorite type of weather (and yeah, I think thunderstorms are awesome.) 

So, it's cold outside, the wind is blowing, and it's raining. Perfect weather for taking pictures right? Well, I thought so... 

And I really enjoyed it. On my way home from Hungarian class I walked down a few of the back roads, that I've never been on before. It was a nice walk, it took a little longer than my normal walk home, but it was nice. 

And this would be?

This would be the rice sock I made for myself a few weeks ago.

Usually you sew a bag , fill it with rice, and then all you have to do is pop it in the microwave for a few minutes, and it stays warm for up to an hour. 

 I decided to crochet a little pocket for mine. I know, I just had to find some way to be different didn't I? :)

Before Christmas break we went to the Christmas Market in Budapest and I picked up some very nice wool yarn for an equally nice price. The first thing I did with it was start to make a bag, I almost have it finished... actually it would be finished... but I hit a little bump when I realized that I don't have any fabric (that matches the yarn) to line the inside of the bag with. So, I decided that while I wait for the next trip to someplace where I can buy fabric, I'd make myself a new rice sock. And this was the result. It is a bit smaller than a normal one, but I still like it.  

They are very easy to make, and they stay warm for a pretty good amount of time.

If you want to know how to make one for yourself you can find the instructions here or here.

After I finished this, I started making another bag. So now I really need to find myself some fabric. Anybody want to take a trip into Budapest with me?

Look who it is...

It's me, I'm back!

So much has happened since the last time I wrote something on here. I can't believe I let 2 months go by without posting anything (*scolds herself*.) But I am working on that, I've made a goal to post at least twice a month, if not more, and to write long[er] posts. Which shouldn't be too hard since a lot of my, um, "recent" posts have only been a paragraph or two.

Over Christmas break my family and I went to Romania with some friends of ours. We came home the first week of January and still had some "free time" before we all had to start school again. Danny and I started school a week after we got home, which I didn't mind because then I had something to take up some more time in my day and I didn't feel like I was laying around the house all day, but I don't think Danny really wanted to go back to doing school. He likes having all that free time.

It was nice to have mom and dad home with us for a little while, but with them at home it didn't really seem like we were doing school, and we would sometimes get distracted by them being there because we're not used to it anymore. Soon though they had to go back to school too.

Their first week back to school was, for me, their best week yet. Their guest teacher was Pastor Ed Hart, he and his wife Faith are very good friends of our family, and he is a wonderful teacher. So, Danny and I went up there every morning with them and sat in on his classes. I loved it, it was fun to be up at the school with everyone for a little while and I love listening to P. Ed.

We went through Philippians while he was here, and I got 16 pages of notes from all of his teachings. I'm not going to share all 16 pages of notes and what I thought about them, but I do want to share some of the things that I really enjoyed.

- In Philippians 1:3-4, Paul says "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy."

P. Ed talked about how, every time we think of people, do we always thank God for them and pray for them with joy? And what about the people who we don't really get along with? We should be praying for one another, and thanking God for one another. He talked about how, if we pray for someone, even if it's someone who bugs us, we will start to love them. He encouraged us all to pray Phil. 1:9-11 for each-other.

I think one of my favorite things that he talked about was praying scripture. I guess I always knew that you could do it, but never really gave much thought to it before. He said that when we pray scripture, we're really just praying God's words back to him. He had us all take 2 minutes to pray Psalm 23, I don't think any of us really got past the first verse or two. It's amazing what you can pray with just a few verses, and praying scripture also helps you stay focused ;)

In verses 27 and 28 of chapter 1 it talks about living lives worthy of the gospel, and not being frightened by those who oppose you. P. Ed talked about how living a life worthy of the gospel was simply living according to the truth that we profess to believe. And how, if we are truly living a Christ-like life the world will hate us. Then he said that we all know that we should hate the things that God hates right? So why then are so many christians involved in the things that God hates?

Ephesian 5:11 says; "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, rather expose them."

I think the world has set this standard of "normal", and christians are accepting it and we're even letting it seep into our lives. We start becoming dull to certain sins, and even out right ignore them because they become "normal." We don't want to stand out and be different because it's uncomfortable. But we're supposed to expose the darkness to the light, not blend in with it, only showing our light when it's convenient for us. God never said that being a christian would be easy, even Jesus was persecuted - and he was God. I really doubt that people thought of Jesus as normal. He even came into the world, to the people he loved, knowing that they were going to kill him. He knew that he was not going to be accepted by everyone, he knew that they would try to trip him up whenever they could, and he knew that in the end they were going to hang him on the cross. And yet he still came. If the God of the universe was willing to humble himself for our sake, then shouldn't we be willing to sacrifice our selfish desire of normalcy for Him?

All the little things that we compromise in order for us to feel a little less different so that the world doesn't hate us as much.

We should be willing to lay them all down, in a heartbeat, we should be willing to lay down everything that our flesh wants. And be willing to be fearless for the One who saved us. If the world hates you, so what? We're not trying to please them or be like them. Our main goal should be to live like Christ, to live a life worthy of the gospel.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose" - Jim Elliot.

Rain

Today some of us went to the beach, or rather we tried to go to the beach.

When we got there it started raining so we had to come back home.

But I love the rain, especially a good thunderstorm. It does rain here but when it

does it's usually only a short shower.

Today's rain was wonderful, it's been raining

for about 2 hours so far and there was even a little bit of thunder!

I think the rain is really beautiful, I love the sound of the rain and the thunder.

Those are some of my favorite sounds. Sometimes when the wind going though

the palm trees it'll sound like rain, it can be very interesting because sometimes

it really sounds like it's raining .

Night Life

Every night starting at about dusk is when the oh so beautiful "Bahamian Symphony"

starts up. It is made up of the following:

• Potcakes - It'll start out as just one or two of them, but after a few minuets all the dogs in the neighborhood are barking. They'll go on an on almost all night long, it's what I fall asleep listing to and if I wake up in the middle of the night they're still going.

• Churches - There is a church on every corner here, and 2 or 3 time a week they love to get together during the evening, turn up the sound and sing their hearts' out so everyone can hear them.

• Cars - They drive up and down the street ridiculously fast. Often I'll be nearly asleep and someone will drive by and it wakes me up part way again, thankfully this only happens about 5 times a week.

• Parties - Bahamians go all out when they have a party, they get a DJ, enough food to feed an army, huge speakers to go with the DJ, and they almost always go into all hours of the night.

And...........

• My Brother - Who seems to talk a lot more after the sun goes down. He comes up with all sorts or ramdom questions that he must have the answer to before tomorrow, because he'll forget his question if I make him wait till the morning.

All these sounds even though they are a slight annoyance, I love, because they are the sounds of the place where God has me and my family right now, and I love this place.