Day Trip to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison

 

Golgota Coming to America

Check this out - Golgota Budapest is coming to America.

It was a joy and a pleasure for us to be involved in the work of God through Calvary Chapel in Eastern Europe for over 10 years. It's a story that deserves to be shared and heard all over the world.

Here's the promo video:

The End

Guess who got his Social Security number today!

This means that now he can get a driver's license, get a job, etc.

We thought the process of getting the SSNumber would be easy- just a formality- but like everything else in this process, it wasn't as easy as we had expected.

Anyway, it's good to be done, and we're glad Balázs can start his life.

5 Years: Joining Day

During the time we lived in Hungary, Thanksgiving didn't have quite as much pomp as it does here in the US. We usually gathered with a handful of American friends. There was certainly no Black Friday over there.

This Thanksgiving we got together with family and some friends from church, but this Thanksgiving marks an interesting anniversary. 5 years ago, we celebrated Thanksgiving with our friends Ryan and Anita and Shane and Marianna - but there one was extra person there that Thanksgiving who has been with us ever since.

This Thanksgiving marked 5 years of Balázs coming to live with us.

It was in December of 2008 that we were given guardianship, and in December of 2011 that our adoption was finalized in Hungary.

Yesterday, to celebrate 5 years of Balázs in our family, we went up to Estes Park - saw some deer and elk and ate some ice cream.

We're glad you're with us, Balázs!

Americana

Just another Black Friday in the U.S. of A.

The Longmont Pastor

I recently started another blog, which is titled: The Longmont Pastor and can be found here: http://longmontpastor.wordpress.com/

I will continue to update this blog, so please do keep checking in. This has always been more of a personal blog, detailing the lives of our family and ministry for those who know us personally and want to keep up on our lives. The Longmont Pastor is going to be very focused on issues relating directly to the Longmont from a pastor's perspective. I have written articles on there about marijuana legalization and other local issues.

If you have a Wordpress account, make sure to follow me on there, and if you don't, be sure to click the "Subscribe by Email" button at the bottom of the page.

 

 

The End of a Long Road

Balázs got his green card last week!

It has been a long road... We began the adoption process in June 2011, which means that we have been jumping through legal hoops for 2 years and 5 months. But now we're done!

There were times along the way when it looked like it would be impossible for Balázs to stay with us here in US; like every door closed in front of us. God blessed us with some good lawyers and the means to pay them, and with favor in the eyes of officials who made the final decisions. We are also glad that the laws existed to support people in our situation.

Balázs got a green card for 10 years, after which he will be eligible for citizenship. Now he can work, get a driver's license and go to state college if he wants. God is good and we are glad.

 

Autumn Hike

Colorado is a beautiful place in every season, but autumn is maybe the most picturesque as aspen leaves change from green to yellow, then orange to red, and while the peaks are getting their first dustings of new snow.

Here in Longmont we are cut off from the nearby mountains because of the floods. We can't get to Lyons, Estes Park or Nederland, all places that were quick trips into the mountains previously. This past Monday we went down to Golden Gate Canyon, the closest access to the mountains to where we live - about a 50 min drive south of us. Here are some pictures:

Grays and Torreys Peaks - both about 14,000 ft.

Longs Peak and Mount Meeker

 

Camping on the Middle St Vrain River

As part of our marathon of male-bonding, Balázs and I went camping last week Monday-Tuesday.

Balázs would have been perfectly happy going somewhere like a pay campsite, but I wasn't going to let that happen. I asked around and heard that there was good dispersed camping along the Middle St Vrain river, up above Allenspark.

In my reading, I also found out that there is a Middle St Vrain 4x4 road, which is for "high clearance Four-Wheel-Drive vehicles only, which - I figured - is exactly what my Toyota Sequoia is, right? ...Wrong...

So my plan was to drive the Sequoia up the 4x4 road and then camp in the wilderness. When we got to the trailhead on Monday and the beginning of the 4x4 road, we realized that our Sequoia was going to have a hard time. The test pile is at the beginning of the road, which basically is there to say: 'if you can drive over this, then you can handle this road'. We were pretty sure we would hurt the car if we tried to take it over the pile, but the road on the other side looked totally do-able.

While we were considering our options, some guys pulled up in Rubikon Jeeps. One of the guys said he thought we could handle the test pile and the road if he spotted us. He did, and while I was on top of the pile with me truck, he asked me: "You don't mind if your car gets scratched up on the bottom do you?" Um...

So, we got over the pile, but not without bending the stairs on the side of the car a bit. I was able to drive up the road about 300 yards/meters before the engine began to overheat and we got to the next big obstacle. Realizing I had made a bad decision bringing the truck up that road, we decided to park it, leave a note that we were coming back for it the next day, and hike in to hike, carrying our gear.

We had to leave behind a lot of things we had brought for camping since we knew we would be hiking in over a mile, and couldn't afford to make more than one trip. We finally made it in far enough, found a good spot off the trails and near the river, pitched our tent, and went out to fish for food.

The river was running really high, so we were not able to catch anything, so we ended up going hiking - and found an awesome place with a 40-50 foot cliff overlooking a waterfall. It was breathtaking, and we could see the peaks in the Indian Peaks Wildernesness just beyond us.

After going back to camp we spent a lot of time shooting Balázs' air rifle, doing target practice with a tin can, and we ended up going to bed early after eating a meager dinner.

During the middle of the night, I woke up and went outside with a head-lamp on, only to see two shining eyes reflecting rig back at me. I knew we were in bear territory, so I was a bit concerned, but the animal moved away from me slowly and didn't make a sound. I'm still not sure what it was, but I think it may have been a mountain lion, since its eyes faced forward and it was so silent.

In the morning, we packed up, hiked back out to the car and, with Balázs' help, after about 20 min of work, we were able to get the Sequoia over the test pile with minimal impact to the car. It was a huge relief! I had lost sleep the night before, worrying about how we were going to get the Sequoia out of there.

Anyway, it was a good trip. I'd recommend the Middle St Vrain for people who want a hike-in camping experience. Go up to Camp Dick off the Peak to Peak Highway, and keep going until the parking lot, which is the trailhead for Buchanan Pass.

Tubing the Poudre

I'm in Frankfurt, Germany right now, in transit to Hungary, and so I have the chance to write. Rosemary and the kids went to Hungary 10 days or so before me, so Balázs and I had the house to ourselves for that time. As much as I love my wife and kids, and hated being separated from them, Balázs and I got in some much needed bonding time, and it was good.

At the end of May I tore my rotator cuff in a mountain biking accident. I've been doing physical therapy for it, and making progress, so the first thing that Balázs and I did was go mountain biking. He's not as into it as I am, which wasn't bad in this case, because it helped me keep a slower pace. I've been going up to the north slope of Heil Valley Ranch outside of Lyons, one of the best, well-rounded, enjoyable, yet still challenging trails I've found. The bottom part is a lot of fast single-track, which goes up a small canyon, and as you get higher you come to an old homestead with two abandoned cars, which look to be from the 1940's, and above that is a lot of rock climbing through a forest. I only fell once, and thankfully didn't hurt my shoulder again, but all the bouncing on the way down did make it tired.

The day after that was the Fourth of July, so we called Isaac and asked if he wanted to do something fun. My idea was to climb Mount Toll in the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, but it seems I was alone in wanting to climb a mountain. Balázs and Isaac wanted something a bit more relaxed, so we went up to Cheyenne, Wyoming to buy fireworks that you can't get in Colorado. One of the hardest things about being in Cheyenne was finding anything downtown that was open! We finally found a coffee shop and got some local advice on where to buy fireworks, so we went. Talk about a true American experience... For about $30 we bought fireworks that were grand enough to put on a better show than most small towns in Colorado.

We headed back to Colorado and started talking about what to do next, when the idea of tubing came up. We knew that people often tube on the St Vrain river in Lyons, so we called around to see if anyone we knew would lend us some tubes. Then, as we drove past Fort Collins we got an idea - why don't we tube the Cache la Poudre river in Fort Collins?! It is after all, Colorado's only designated "wild scenic river". I had been to Fort Collins a number of times before, but only downtown, I had never been up in Poudre canyon...

We drove down College Blvd until we saw some people with tubes, asked them where they bought them - Walgreens on College, so we bought some as well for $12 each. Not bad, except the guy filled them up with so much air that Balázs' tube blew up when we took it outside into the heat!

Here's a tip: don't fill your tube up too full of air!

So, after talking to a few people we heard about a place called Picnic Rock. So we got an idea: since we only had one car, we would park our car, and hitch hike to Picnic Rock, and tube back to our car. We parked our car at Legacy Park, just north of Old Town in downtown FC, walked out to Jax on College, and eventually succeeded in getting someone with a truck to let us sit in the back and give us a ride up into the canyon.

Since none of us had ever been in Poudre Canyon before, we didn't realize how far it was from the city of Fort Collins and where we had parked our car. As we sat in the back of the truck, we noticed that we kept going further and further, and we still weren't there, and we understood that the farther away we go, is how far we have to tube. Turns out Picnic Rock is about 15 miles from where we parked...

How long does it take to tube 15 miles? Well, that depends. Most of the time I would say we were traveling 3-4 miles per hour, but there were many obstacles, namely dams, that slowed us down. About 7 later, we got to the city of Fort Collins. The river was fun and fast until we got through the town of Laporte, but after that it got painfully slow because of all the dams before FC. When the sun went down and the river was so slow, we ended up walking the last mile back to our car.

The rapids in the river were fun, we each flipped over a few times, took hits from branches to the face, Balázs hurt his foot, and in the slow sections, all the pushing for speed did a number on my aching shoulder.

But here are my recommendations for anyone going tubing on the Poudre:

• Don't overfill your tube with air. It doesn't need to be firm to hold you and float. The last thing you want is to have a tube pop on you when that's your only means of transportation. Isaac's tube also burst when we got to the river. If not for the kindness of a fellow tuber, who gave us her tube since she was nearly done for the day, we would have been stranded!
• Park your car in Laporte, at Lions Park. That's a good 4-5 hr float from Picnic Rock, and the water moves pretty fast until then. After Laporte the water slows down a lot and it's no longer fun. From Laporte you can either hitchhike up, or if you have another car you can drop one in Laporte and drive the other one up to Picnic Rock.

It was a trek, but I would totally do it again. However, I think before I do another marathon tubing, I'm going to check out the St Vrain in Lyons. Hopefully they don't have any dams there!

 

On the Road Again

We spent the past 2 weeks in California. I went to the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastors conference, and got to take Jeff, the administrative pastor from White Fields with me. We had a great time; it was Jeff's first time in a Calvary setting like that, and it made me glad to be associated with such a movement, that, despite the shortcomings of men, desires to remain focused on the work of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Word and evangelism.

Jeff drove out with us, but then flew back after the conference. Rosemary and the kids and I spent a few days in Vista and then went up to Los Angeles to visit family. The kids love our family friends up in LA and were so sad to leave. They always make us feel welcome and loved.

On the way back we stopped in Vegas and visited my friend Chris and also got to meet up with Tim and Grace who we know from Europe. They planted a church in Croatia and moved back to the States a year ago. Our kids played together while we got caught up, the we went down to the strip to watch a few of the outdoor shows before hitting the road again.

We drive through the night, only stopping at a rest stop to sleep for an hour, and rolled into Moab, UT at 8:30am. I've always wanted to visit Moab, and wold still like to spend a week or so there rafting and biking and off-roading.

We noticed on the map that we drive right by Arches National Park on I-70, so we stopped by this time. It was an amazing place, but very similar to the other national parks we've seen in Utah: Zion and Bryce Canyon, although we felt that Arches was the least dramatic of the ones we've seen. The arches were cool, but they are hard to see - many of them are remote and have to be hiked to. I was excited to see the Delicate Arch, even though we didn't hike all the way out to it.

Here are some pictures and a video of parts of the park:

 

 

In Transit

I was sitting on the plane from Amsterdam to Minneapolis, and I decided to play Angry Birds to pass the time. The only reason I have Angry Birds Star Wars on my iPad is because Nate begged me to buy it for him.

So here I am playing this game, and I realize that all the levels I am playing, Nate has already beaten on his own - not to mention that I have to try multiple times to pass his high scores!

Lets just say, I'm feeling humbled that my 5 year old is way more clever, or at least way more persistent than I am....

I'm in Minneapolis right now waiting to get on my last flight back to Denver. On this trip I've passed through 5 airports, and here's what I think:

• I like Denver's airport. It's easy and quick to navigate.
• At JFK I had to do something I've only done once before: I had to leave the airport entirely and walk down the street to another terminal building. The only other time I've had to do that before was in Paris, when Charles du Gaulle was under construction a few years back. JFK was not a great experience this time around, especially since it was snowing outside while I had to walk from one terminal to the next.
• Charles du Gaulle was ok, but it took so long to get to my connection that I missed my flight. It was pretty boring to spend 5 hours there and the Internet connection wasn't good.
• Budapest is nice, especially since they've renovated it. Easy to navigate, free wifi, very comfortable.
• Although I like KLM a lot, Amsterdam's airport was a mixed bag: on one hand they had a good system of getting people through passport control, with people standing around and allowing those who were close to missing flights to cut ahead in line. It was very efficient, and I wish I had that before at times when I've missed flights because no one would let me ahead in line. After that though, they had a terrible bottleneck at the gate, because they do security at each individual gate for the transcontinental flights.
• Minneapolis is simple and easy to navigate, comfortable and has free wifi. All things I love to have in an airport, especially if you have to spend a few hours there.

Almost home...

 

Snowshoeing in RMNP

The good thing about having things is that it creates an itch to use them.

Last year I got a pair of snowshoes as a gift, and earlier this year we bought a national parks pass that's good for a year. There are few things I like more than the feeling that I've gotten my money's worth out of something, so after a big dump of snow I got up in Rocky Mountain National Park with some friends and snowshoed up to Emerald Lake.

It was about a 3.5 mile hike round trip with an elevation gain of about 1000 ft. The views were stunning - I highly recommend it, but make sure you don't go alone. We found that it was really easy to get lost, because in the snow it can be very hard to find the trail, and very easy to get lost. In fact, while we were up there search and rescue teams were looking for a Texas man who went hiking alone and got lost. Bad idea. Nature can be both beautiful and brutal.

Dream Lake with Hallet Peak on the left

The view of Longs Peak on our way back

 

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Longs Peak from Bear Lake

This past weekend we did a marriage retreat up in Estes Park with Rob and Denise Salvato from Calvary Vista. The retreat was a great time of fellowship and refreshment and investing in our marriages.

After the retreat ended Saturday afternoon, we took Rob and Denise up into Rocky Mountain National Park. We made it up to Bear Lake by sunset. The lake was frozen, so we walked out onto the lake and got this view of the backside of Longs Peak - which also happens to be the same view that is the image on the Colorado's 25-cent coin.

 

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The View

This is the view I have taking Nate to and from school everyday. The first one is of the Indian Peaks, and the second is on Longmont's namesake: Longs Peak. I got to climb Longs Peak (14,259 ft / 4346 m) this past summer and I hope to do it again this year. The view of the Rockies from Longmont is one of the best on the Front Range.

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Recycling and Theology

We live in Boulder county, which means that most people here don't go to church, but everyone recycles!

We love recycling, especially since we watched a documentary about the huge island of trash swirling around in the Pacific, with plastics decomposing and being eaten by fish which then go into our food supply...

Many Christians make the case for not being concerned about stewardship of the planet because if Jesus is coming back soon, and the Earth will be destroyed, then what are we protecting it for?

However, I really like having clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, and not having garbage strewn all over the Rocky Mountains, and I'm happy to do my part. I certainly appreciate the fruits of the conservation movement in Colorado with large parts of God's majestic creation being preserved for people to enjoy, and repopulating wild animal populations. I believe that as we see in the beginning of Genesis, God created the world as a garden for man, for his use and enjoyment, and for his stewardship for as long as it was entrusted to his care.

Here's what Mark Driscoll has to say about recycling - kinda sums it up:

"We believe in recycling. We’re all for it. But you’ll die and go to hell with a green garbage can filled with newspapers if you don’t love Jesus."

 

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What a Year...

2012 was a big year for the Cady family...

About this time last year we were getting ready to make the big announcement that after 10+ years serving in Hungary, we had been called to serve The Lord somewhere else.

It was in January that we handed over the churches in Eger and Heves, and by March we loaded up everything we owned into a container to be shipped across the sea. By April I was leading White Fields and by May we had bought a house and moved to Longmont.

After a year characterized by transition into this new place of ministry, I'm ready to be settled in and focus on forward progress and Gospel impact here in No. Colorado. We have some ideas...

Please pray for a great harvest of souls here in Longmont and a deep work of God in 2013.

 

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Road Trip

We spent last week in Southern California. I attended a pastors conference in Murietta and Rosemary and the kids spent time with family and friends in Carlsbad.

We had a really nice time. On our way home we decided to take a detour through Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. They look really close to I-15 on the map, but they are a bit of a jog off the highway...especially Bryce Canyon.
Usually the trip through Utah is hard because it is so desolate and monotonous. I admit that I've never thought of southern Utah as a beautiful place - BUT I really did enjoy Zion and Bryce Canyon - especially when we got off the road and hiked down into the canyon. Our kids were troopers and had a great time hiking around and getting to see some wildlife up close.

Road trippin':








Kids at Bryce Canyon:




Here are some photos from Zion and Bryce Canyon:

Made It to Colorado

Balázs and I made it to Colorado. We left California on Wednesday after lunch and drove to Las Vegas, where we stayed with my friends Chris and Jeremy. We went down to the strip to show Balázs around...needless to say, he was amazed. We went on the roller coaster at New York New York twice - it was the first time Balázs had ever been on one, and my first time on a roller coaster in over 10 years! We had a blast.

Thursday morning we left Vegas after breakfast and drove straight through to Denver. Everything was really great - no problems with the car, no tickets, no problems. The Lord was gracious to us!

Rosemary and the kids fly in to Denver in a few hours. Our first few weeks here are going to be busy. We need to find a place to live, schools for the kids, immigration stuff for Balázs. Please pray for us!

Disneyland

A few months ago we promised our kids we would take them to Disneyland when we were in California. Thanks to the generosity of some friends and Christian brothers and sisters we were able to make it happen, and we all had a great day.

Here is a video of some pictures from our day there: