Walking (Updated)

Nate started walking on Tuesday (Oct 28)!
Its kind of hard to say when he really started walking, as he had been taking steps between pieces of furniture for about a month - but we're going to say that it was Tuesday that he started walking on his own.
Here's a picture of Nate standing in the living room - he had walked in there from the kitchen to watch his favorite TV show - Kisvakond.
Here's a video of Nate walking:

Trabant News

The Trabant is a true masterpiece of communist-era, East German engineering - rivaled only by the other automotive wonder from the GDR, the Wartburg.
The Trabant is an icon. It was produced for almost 30 years without any significant change in deisgn. The body of the car was "Duroplast" - a plastic material made from recycled cotton waste and resin.
I'm glad that there are still a lot of these cars around in Hungary, although there are less and less since they are out of production. If I had the money, I wouldn't mind getting an "eastern car" - but not a Trabant, preferably a Lada Niva.
I ran across a few news stories recently about these cars, so here goes:

1. New Trabants
   A company in the eastern German state of Saxony (where the original Trabant was also produced) is developing a "grown-up version" of the famous Trabi, which will be introduced at the International Auto Show in Frankfurt in 2009.
   The car - called newTrabi will look very much like the original Trabant, but will comply with modern security and environmental standards. The newTrabi will also have a new 4-cylinder engine, and not the same two-stroke engine as the original.
   Click here to read the whole article.
2. Trabant Boat
   This report was on CNN Video today:
   
3. Original Trabant Commercial
   I found this on Youtube:
   

Long live the Trabant!

Food Coloring

One of Nate's favorite things to do is unpack the kitchen cabinets.
I've had it on my to-do list for a while now to put child locks on those doors, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet.
Last night Nate found a bottle of food coloring in the cabinet, which happened to be leaky. And it got EVERYWHERE. We tried to get him in the bath to wash it off, but that was no easy task - he was running around naked and everything he touched turned red - his clothes, our clothes, the entire bathroom. And the whole time he was laughing and having a great time.
It was cute, but I've really got to put those locks on the cabinet doors...

Revolutionary

Yesterday was a holiday in Hungary - or more like a day of remembrance.
On October 23, 1956 a revolution started in Budapest against the Stalinist government of Hungary and the Soviet occupation.
The revolution started with rallies and protests, but things got violent when the ÁVH (Hungarian secret police) fired on the protesters in front of the parliament building. Militias were formed and people started fighting against the ÁVH and the Soviet forces, first in Budapest, and then in other places throughout Hungary, using Molotov cocktails and whatever they could find as weapons.
On Oct 28, a ceasefire was made, and Soviet troops withdrew from Budapest. The Hungarians thought at this time that the Soviet army was actually going to leave their country, but on Nov 4, the Soviet army rolled into Budapest and crushed the revolution completely and finally.

It was during this time that Rosemary's dad, Frank (Ferenc), along with about 200,000 others, left Hungary as a refugee. He and a friend he had worked with at a mine in Szászvár walked across the border; they slept in haystacks at night along the way, and walked through a minefield at the border. They came to a refugee camp in Austria, and eventually made their way to America, first going to Chicago, where the other man, Ambrus (Rosemary's godfather), still lives to this day.
Frank joined the Army, became a US citizen, and was stationed in Bad Kissingen, West Germany, ironically now defending the western side of the Iron Curtain.
After returning to America, he got a job offer in California, and decided to go west and leave the cold winters behind, so he packed up his car and drove to Los Angeles.
In Los Angeles, Frank met a woman from Lima, Peru, named Hilda, who had also immigrated to America, and they got married and had two kids - Anthony and Rosemary.

So, for obvious reasons, this revolution is close to our hearts.

Frank left behind some family here in Hungary, who we were able to track down about a year and a half ago, and now we try to keep in touch with them. We found Frank's half-brother, and after searching for Rosemary's family in Hungary for a long time, it was very cool when we showed them Frank's old family pictures, and they had the exact same pictures in their albums too! Now they always invite us over and feed us lots of pacal pörkölt (tripe stew). In case you're wondering - tripe stew is kind of like eating gummy worms which are fuzzy on one side and are covered in grease and paprika...

This is how the dictionary defines the word "revolutionary":

1. of, pertaining to, characterized by, or a sudden, complete, or marked change
2. radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.

When I think about revolution or revolutionaries, to me, Jesus Christ is the greatest revolutionary who ever lived. He brought about sudden, complete change. He taught things that were beyond established procedure, and even today, 2000 yrs later, the things that He taught are so contrary to the way that most people behave, that when a person starts following Jesus, it revolutionizes their life! And we know from history that when more and more individuals start following Jesus and his teachings, it revolutionizes whole communities!
Practicing the things that Jesus taught like forgiveness and unconditional love, revolutionize peoples' lives.
We are still studying through the book of Acts on Sundays in our church. Last week we studied the 19th chapter, where Paul is in Ephesus. And it says that he taught about Jesus every day in a school building, and in just 2 yrs time, it changed both the city of Ephesus and the whole region of Asia (western Turkey), so that people turned away from sin, and started living according to God's intentions.
My prayer is that the lives of people here in Eger would be revolutionized by Jesus Christ, and that as a result it would change our community - that as people turn away from sin not only would their lives change, but the community we live in would change too.

Krtek - A Kisvakond

From my experience - and maybe it is just this way in our church and nowhere else - there is almost nothing that Hungarians like to talk about more than "mesék" (tales or cartoons).
Every now and then at church someone will bring up some mese that they used to watch when they were a kid, and then everyone else gets really excited, and they all start talking at the same time about which mese is the best, and which part of it was the funniest, and then they talk about how the mesék these days are super bad, and how much better things were when they were kids.
And it seems that all their favorite mese are from the socialist period, which makes sense, since that's when they were all kids.
Tonight I was driving some people home from church, and they rattled off a whole list of mesék which I "must" watch. I don't remember all of what they said, except something about a Vízipok (water spider) and some other one from Poland.

But recently someone gave us a DVD of one of these mesék, called Krtek, or in Hungarian: Kisvakond (Mole). Its a Czech cartoon from the 50's and 60's.
We had the disc for about 3 weeks before we even tried it out, because we honestly didn't have very high expectations that it would be any good. But one day we decided to give it a try, and now we LOVE the Kisvakond!
Nathaniel loves the Kisvakond too! He has a few other movies, like Baby Einstein, that he gets excited about - but none as much as this one!
For some reason, Nate prefers to stand up while he watches Kisvakond - sometimes on the floor, usually on the couch - and he sometimes just cracks up laughing as he watches it! There is something magical about the Kisvakond that Nate loves.
I guess I understand now a bit better why the Hungarians in our church get so excited every time anyone starts talking about some socialist mese. At least this one is really good. I'll have to look into that Polish one...
Here's my personal favorite Kisvakond video - The Mole in the City:

Répášska Huta

Eger sits right in between two of Hungary's few mountain ranges - the Bükk and the Mátra.
If you are heading north through the town, if you turn left off the main road you will be in the Mátra, and if you turn right you will be in the Bükk.
Even though neither of them are very high, they are both very nice, especially after having suffered through years of living in the "alföld" (the plains) in Debrecen - which for a mountain boy was like a slow painful death on the inside.

This past weekend we went for a drive with Shane and Marianna, through the Bükk to enjoy the fall and the changing of the leaves.
On the way, we visited one of my favorite villages - Répáshuta, also known by its Slovak name: Répášska Huta, as this is one of only a few villages in Hungary with a significant ethnic Slovak population.

In Hungarian, the word "kisebbség" (minority) is usually used as an offhand way of referring to Gypsies, since they are the largest minority group in Hungary. There are however other national minority groups in Hungary, but their populations are quite small.

At one time, it would not have been anything special to find villages in Hungary with ethnic minorities in them. Hungary used to be a bigger place, with many different nationalities.
If you talk to any Hungarian for more than 10 minutes, there is a pretty good chance that you are going to hear about the Treaty of Trianon - a peace treaty made at the end of World War I, in which the Great Powers divided up the teritory of the Kingdom of Hungary (on the losing side of the war). As a result, Hungary lost about two-thirds of its territory, and new borders were drawn according to ethnic lines.
Here's a map of the "distribution of races" in Austria-Hungary in 1911:You can see from the map, that the nations which were formed after WWI, were formed for the most part along ethnic lines - with a few exceptions.
One of these exceptions was the Germans living in what became Czechoslovakia, and the other is the Hungarians who ended up outside of the borders of Hungary, in almost all of the newly formed countries - leaving Hungarians as the largest national minority population in Europe, but leaving almost no ethnic minorities in the new Hungarian state, as you can see in this post-WWI map:
Even now, almost a hundred years after Trinanon, you can go across the borders of Hungary and find significant Hungarian populations in all the surrounding countries. Which, from our point of view is kind of nice, that we can travel for quite a ways outside of Hungary and still get by many times using Hungarian.
These exceptions - the Germans in the Sudetenland and the Hungarians outside of Hungary led to problems in WWII.

And getting back to Slovaks - Hungary and Czechoslovakia were on opposite sides during WWII - Hungary was Axis and Czechoslovakia was Allied. As a result, Czechoslovakia issued the Beneš decrees, which declared the Hungarians (and Germans) living in their country to be traitors and enemies of the state, which led to much of their land being confiscated. This led to a "population exchange", in which about 70,000 Slovaks from Hungary were "relocated" to Slovakia and 70,000 Hungarians from Slovakia were transplanted in Hungary. Thus, a country which was already very homogeneous, became even more so, as most of the Slovak population left.

Today, the estimated population of Slovaks in Hungary is around 50,000.
That's why Répášska Huta is such an interesting place in Hungary - a village where half the population is Slovak and 38% speak the Slovak language as their mother tongue.
Besides all this stuff, its also just a cute little village tucked away in the mountains, and a great place to visit.

"Blue Like Jazz" in Hungarian

Donald Miller's bestselling book "Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality" was released recently in Hungarian, so I borrowed a copy of the book in English to reread it, to figure out whether or not I want to recommend it to our church.

I read this book when it first came out, and now after reading it again, I remember why I liked it so much the first time. The author is so honest, and it is so enjoyable to read, that I always find myself staying up late or stealing a few minutes throughout the day to read it. When I finish a chapter, I look ahead to see how many pages the next chapter is, and think about if I have enough time to read it - and even if I don't have time, I usually end up reading on anyways.

In case you're not familiar with the book, its the author's story of his own frustrations with American Christianity and the sincere questions he had about God and faith - and how God answered those questions, and led him to a real, living faith in Jesus.
He tells about how he came to realize that being a Christian isn't about accepting and following a set of political beliefs and cultural practices, but about truly encountering and knowing the person of Jesus Christ.
He explains how he was turned off by those who misrepresented God, but came to see that their actions don't discount the reality or greatness of God Himself.
He points out that one of the mistakes Christians often make is using love as a commodity that we lavish on those who agree with us and withhold from those who don't, when Jesus simply told us to love our neighbor.

I found his section on loneliness very insightful, his part about social action challenging, and most of all what he says about actually knowing and experiencing God to be refreshing.
I personally know people who have walked away from the church - some even from the Lord - because they have been disappointed by people who misrepresented God, and I think this book has a great message that these people need to hear.

So, I'm probably going to recommend the book to our church. My only hesitation is that, while I know some people will get what he's saying and be totally blessed by it, others might have a hard time getting it, and be confused.

Have you read Blue Like Jazz?
What do you think?

Alternative Holidays

Today we tried to call some of our friends in the States, and were frustrated to find that no one was answering their phones. Then we realized - oh yea, today is a holiday!
Today is Columbus Day in the United States. But, after reading up a little bit on Columbus Day, I came to find that the States are not so united in the celebration of this holiday.
For example, Nevada does not even celebrate the holiday. Other states celebrate different holidays in place of Columbus Day - such as "Native American Day" in South Dakota, "Indigenous Peoples' Day" in the People's Republic of Berkeley, California, and "Discoverers' Day" in Hawaii - rather than celebrate a man who mistreated Native Americans, and whose arrival led to the demise of their culture and society.
Denver (whoot, whoot!) has the longest-running Columbus Day parade in the United States, and it has been protested for the last 20 years by Native American groups, who aren't a big fan of Christopher Columbus.
Also non-fans of Columbus are the Venezuelans, who celebrate "Día de la Resistencia Indígena" (Day of Indigenous Resistance) on this day, to celebrate the resistance to European settlement in the Americas. On the 2004 Day of Indigenous Resistance, activists toppled a statue of Columbus in Caracas. One Venezuelan writer wrote: "Just like the statue of Saddam in Baghdad, that of Columbus the tyrant also fell this October 12, 2004 in Caracas."
Interestingly, in the US Virgin Islands the day is celebrated as "Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands Friendship Day," while in Puerto Rico they choose to celebrate Columbus Day. LOL! That seems like a one-sided friendship - like when Person A says they're good friends with Person B, but Person B says they don't even know who Person A is! Good luck US Virgin Islands - don't give up! Maybe in time, you will win Puerto Rico's affection.

In other holiday news - today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.
In case you think that the Canadians stole the whole Thanksgiving holiday from the United States - think again.
Although the first recorded Thanksgiving celebration in North America was held in Florida by Spanish explorers in 1565, the first Thanksgiving celebration in Canada took place in 1578, in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador province, and was organized by explorer Martin Frobisher to give thanks to God for having survived his journey. The first of the famous Thanksgiving celebrations by the English settlers in Virginia was in 1619, some 38 years later!

So, Happy Thanksgiving to our dear Canadian friends, happy Columbus Day or whatever it is called where you live to those of you in the USA, and to those of you who live in Nevada or most other places in the world - have a nice Monday!

10 Things About Rosemary You Probably Didn't Know

1. Although she grew up in San Diego, she was born in "The OC"
2. For 2 months out of the year, she is the same age as her brother Tony - he's only 10 months older
3. Rosemary has traveled across all of North America by car - including Canada and Mexico.
4. She has been to every US state, except for Hawaii
5. She has run 5 half-marathons
   
6. Her father was a refugee
7. Both her parents were immigrants to the United States
   
8. She LOVES Spider Solitaire
   
9. She has worked as a merchant bank teller, handling very large amounts of cold, hard cash
   
10. As of the end of September, Rosemary has been living in Hungary for 10 years!
    

Whomever

Rosemary and I have been watching The Office lately.
At first Rosemary couldn't stand it because Michael is such an idiot, but now she's hooked, and always asks me when the next episode is coming out.
Oh, and we're also very happy for Pam and Jim - even though they're only fictional characters...
Here's one of our favorite clips:

Sarajevo in Black and White

Back a few years ago, Rosemary and I and two of our friends, Naveen and Sunil, took a trip to Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia.
At the time I was still using a 35mm Pentax SLR camera - from 1983.
Its a great camera - no auto-focus or other automatic settings on it at all, just a simple light meter. I stopped using it a while back, because it jams up a lot, and using film just isn't practical - its a lot more work and a lot more expensive.
Recently I started getting some of our most memorable 35mm pictures digitized, and the first batch we did was the set from our ex-Yugo trip.
Here are some of the pictures from Sarajevo, which despite its sad recent history, is one of the most beautiful and interesting cities we've ever been to.
RIP old Pentax!

Bulgaria: On the Road

On our trip to Bulgaria, we flew into Burgas, on the southern Black Sea coast, stayed at the beach for a few days, and then rented a car and drove up through Varna to Veliko Tarnovo, the medieval capital of the Bulgarian Kingdom - a very cool place with lots of history, a big castle, and a bunch of monasteries nearby.
We spent a few days in Veliko Tarnovo, before heading back to Bugas to fly back to Hungary. On our way back we took a different route, going over the Balkan mountains which run through the center of Bulgaria.
I have to say that the roads in Bulgaria were much better than I had expected. A few weeks before we went, I was in Romania, and was on some of the worst roads in my life. Bulgaria's roads were light-years ahead of even the "good roads" in Romania.
Nevertheless, the road trip took a lot longer than we were expecting - almost 2 hrs longer each way.
But the thing that kept us going was that there were plenty of interesting things to see along the way. Here are some highlights:

Nathaniel did a great job in the car!

 

He slept most of the way, and the rest of the time he kept himself busy with some light reading.

 

Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which means that most signs were in only Cyrillic

 

Even the McDonald's sign!

 

This can obviously cause some confusion, especially for Japanese tour groups:

 

We saw lots of interesting stuff along the way, including beautiful old stone bridges

 

Some MiG fighter jets

 

And an old lady beating some goats

 

We saw this Trabant, which had a Texas Tech sticker on it, which goes to prove that the Trabant is not only the car of the common worker, but of the Texas Tech University grad too!

 

Nessebar police drive the same car that we do - Peugeot 306 Break!

 

Quite frankly, I'm not surprised, as this is the greatest car ever made (sarcasm). I like to tell people that in the word Peugeot, the letter P stands for power, the letter S stands for speed, and the letter R stands for reliability...if you get what I'm saying.

Speaking of police, along the main roads there were these cardboard cutouts of police cars - obviously to make people slow down. They worked actually, except usually you could tell the difference, because the cardboard ones were covered in graffiti.

 

But my absolute favorite thing on the road in Bulgaria were these signs everywhere, saying "You are now entering the danger zone!"

 

Wait...so, in other words, they are telling people that they are on "the highway to the danger zone?" Its almost as if I've heard that somewhere before...

Vintage

The word "vintage" has more than one meaning.
Here is how the Oxford dictionary defines it:

1. adj. Referring to something from the past of high quality (i.e. vintage cars, vintage clothes, Vintage Jesus, etc...)
   
2. n. The harvesting of grapes for winemaking

There are two times of the year which I really love in Eger. One of them is spring time, when after winter's greyness the hills turn bright green and people are working in the vineyards, trimming and tying the vines to prepare them. One of the things I love most is mountain biking through the vineyards in the spring.
The other time of the year which I love in Eger is the "szüret" or vintage. The vines turn the hills red and gold, and around town there are containers full of the grapes that have been picked.

Here in Eger, the szüret is a big deal. Its been going on for about 3 weeks now. One of the interesting things about pastoring a church in a wine region, is that during the grape harvest our attendance goes down because people go to work in the vineyards on the weekend to make a little extra cash.

We were out in the Szépasszonyvölgy this weekend - the "Valley of Beautiful Women" (or as our friend Geof calls it: "The Valley of 10,000 Virgins"), and took some pictures of the vintage.

Speaking of vineyards, Jesus said this: "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples." (John 15:1-3)
Just like how in the spring, the workers in the fields trim and clean the vines so they will be maximally fruitful, we are told that God prunes us and cleans us, so that we will be maximally fruitful. He removes the dead parts out of our lives, which do nothing but burden us. Its not always enjoyable to be "pruned," but the result is worth it - fruitfulness.
If you've ever tried to figure out what exactly "fruitfulness" means, you've probably found that the Bible defines it as many different things: Agapé love (the fruit of the Spirit), good works, leading others to salvation in Jesus, and I'm sure there are others.

Jesus also said this about the vine and the branches:
"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. (John 15:4-6)
The thing I find interesting about this, is that here in Eger, you see this happen this time of year. At vintage time, they bring the grapes in these big containers, and then pitchfork them into this machine which sucks out the juice from the grapes, and spits out the seeds and the branches. And after the harvest, there are big piles of these dead branches in front of the wine cellars, and they usually stink! And of course, the way they get rid of them is to make a pile, and set the pile on fire - just like Jesus said - because they are no longer attached to the vine, and they have no fruit on them.

I don't know about you, but I want to abide in the true vine and be fruitful, because as Jesus says at the end of that section on the vine: "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples." (John 15:8)

Colorful

Its been pretty dark and rainy outside for the last 2 weeks, so Nate hasn't had much of a chance to get out of the house.
But the other day we went to a baby store that had an indoor play area, and he had a great time!

Gyöngyhalász

Sziasztok magyarok (illetve nem-magyar magyarul beszélők, mint én magam)!
Figyelmetekbe ajánlom a Gyöngyhalász című blogot - ami tulajdonképpen az egri gyülekezetünk online újságja.
Kissné Ági a szerkesztője. Eredetileg volt már egy gyülis újságunk papír formában, de mivel egyre kevesebb ember van aki tényleg olvas papírra leírt szöveget - gondoltuk hogy internetes formája is legyen az újságnak.
Ez azért is jó, mert így nem csak azok olvashatják a cikkeket akik járnak a gyülibe, hanem bárki a világon, aki csak a weblapra oda talál. És így reméljük hogy több ember számára is áldás lesz.
Ági úgy akarja, hogy minél többen a gyüliből írjanak az újságban, hogy színesebb legyen.
Ma, azokat a cíkkeket rakta fel, amik már szerepeltek a papír újságban. De rendszeresen lesznek újak is.
Itt a link: http://gyongyhalasz.wordpress.com/
Isten áldjon!

Bulgaria

We went to Bulgaria earlier this month to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, Nathaniel's first birthday, and just to take it easy after a summer full of conferences, camps, and other activities.
I've been wanting to go to Bulgaria for quite some time now. I even wrote a blog about it way back in 2006.
We had a really great time, and we'd recommend it to anyone who is considering traveling there. The beaches were nice and the accommodations were affordable. We'll probably go back someday.

Here are some of our impressions of Bulgaria:

• Its really hot.
  
Hungary is hot too, but in a different way. The part of BG we were in, near the Black Sea, has a Mediterranean climate, and its very hot and very dry. On one hot day I asked a shop owner if the weather was normal, or especially hot - he said that they have blazing hot weather from June to September. But, I have to say, that everywhere we went in Bulgaria there was air-conditioning. Even in small little shops and restaurants. That was nice, because we needed it!
• It reminded us a lot of Mexico.
And I mean that in a good way. We like Mexico; we went on our honeymoon in Veracruz, Mexico. There were many things in Bulgaria that reminded us of Mexico, from the dry climate to the sandy beaches and warm sea, from the attitudes of the taxi drivers to the food.
There were even a lot of Mexican restaurants in Nessebar. There was one next to our hotel, even with a guy in a sombrero trying to talk people into coming inside. We were thinking pretty seriously about it, until the guy told us that they only serve pizza and spaghetti! But there were other restaurants there that served real Mexican food.

• Great food.
We really enjoyed the food in Bulgaria. Rosemary ate a lot of shopska salad, I ate a lot of grilled meat.
I especially ate a lot of kavarma - a stew kind of thing with tons of spices. I like spicy food, and Bulgarian food made me sweat - which in my book is a good thing.
They also, like Hungary, are a wine-growing nation, and they had grape vines everywhere. Living in Eger, we don't drink wine very often, but we have gotten to know a bit about wine, and what constitutes good wine - and I was really impressed with Bulgarian red wine, especially one called Thracian Gold.
• They shake their heads for yes, and nod for no. That's super confusing.
At least once a day we got confused by this. Like in a restaurant - you ask for bread and the waitress just shakes her head and walks away. You think for a second, "Man, that waitress is rude!", and by that time she puts the bread on the table. Or at one point I ended up in this small village, almost out of gas, and with no cash - and I was asking if there was a gas station, an ATM, and if I could pay with a card at the gas station. The girl just kept nodding and shaking her head, and I was just terribly confused for a few minutes until I got it straight!

These are just a few general impressions. I'll write a bit more later.
If you'd like to see our pictures from BG, then click here.

And here's a map of our route:

View Larger Map

Nate Dogg

Nathaniel has a lot of nicknames, and it would be quite embarrassing to reveal all of them to you, as you can imagine.
Lately we've been making a point of it to call him by his actual name, because for a while he only responded when we called him "Bunny" or other nicknames.
So, we've been making a concerted effort to call him "Nate" or "Nathaniel," but we still also like to call him "Nate Dogg" - which, in case you didn't know, is the name of a gangsta' rapper from the 90's.
And, even though its not true, I like to tell people that we named our baby after Rosemary's favorite hip-hop star.
By the way, Nate Dogg (the rapper) is the cousin of another famous hip-hop star: Snoop Dogg. Perhaps that information will help you guess what the name of our next child will be...

Different

There is a young guy in our church named Dani. He's a great guy - even recently he began teaching every now and then for our Wednesday night Bible study, and he's begun leading worship as well.
Dani repented on New Year's Eve, 2006, and started coming to our church in January 2007. When he first started coming to the church, he had short hair and I couldn't help but notice his army boots and bomber jacket - as these are the typical outfit of skinheads in Hungary, of which there are more than a few. But we were just happy to have him in the church.

In the beginning, Dani didn't talk very much; he just showed up for church and left afterwards. But one day before church, I had been talking with some of the church members about the Hungarian rock band Kárpátia - a group that plays "Nemzeti Rock" or Nationalistic Rock music - and Dani came in, and we started talking about it, and I found out that before giving his life to the Lord, he had in fact been a skinhead.

This picture on the right is a picture of Dani in 2006, in full-on skinhead style.

Anyways, after committing himself to the Lord, I guess he reacted a bit against the whole skinhead thing, by growing his hair out. So for almost 2 yrs, Dani didn't cut his hair - and it got long - and sometimes he couldn't hang out, because he had to stay home to wash his hair, or brush it, or whatever you do to long hair.
Well, in the last week of August, the time came when Dani decided that enough was enough, so another guy and I took him to the hairdresser in the mall here, and they cut it off.

Now Dani looks fairly "normal," although I think he really enjoyed not looking "normal" for a time, which I can totally respect, since part of being a Christian is being willing to not be "normal" in the eyes of some people. A willingness to be "different" is a major asset in the life of a person who wants to follow Jesus, and take the road less traveled - the straight and narrow path of walking in the Lord's ways rather than simply conforming to whatever the culture around us deems "normal." Often times what the world calls "normal" isn't what God has deemed normal and healthy.

God has done a good work in Dani's life. He has a great family, most of whom are also believers. He will also be among those who get baptized next weekend.

Here's a slideshow of the pictures of the haircut:

Disturbing

Right after we got back home from Bulgaria, I got a phone call that disturbed me.
It was the mom of one of the girls who had come to know the Lord at English Camp, and who had asked to be baptized at the baptism will we have in 2 weeks at a lake outside of Eger. She was calling to tell me that she had forbidden her 18 yr old daughter from coming to our church.
I asked her why, and she said it was because we are a sect (actually she thought we were Methodists - and that Methodists are a sect). Then I explained to her that we belong to the Hungarian Evangelical Alliance, a group which validates that we hold orthodox protestant Christian beliefs. Then she told me it was because I wasn't Hungarian. I explained that I speak Hungarian and even teach the Bible in Hungarian (we were talking in Hungarian). Then she said it was because my wife wasn't Hungarian...
She went on to give me many other reasons, none of which held much weight. In other words, these weren't the real reason she was forbidding her daughter from attending our church.
She eventually told me that she simply doesn't think that becoming a Christian is a good choice for her daughter to make, because it will drive her away from her family and make her a social outcast.

Needless to say, this call was disturbing. And whats more disturbing to me is that this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened.
Here in Hungary - especially more in Eger than in Debrecen, this kind of attitude is something we have had to deal with.
Perhaps its hard in this area because there isn't really any other church like us - a young, modern, protestant church - but I also know that the other churches in town struggle with the same thing. I think another possible reason is that the older generation of Hungarians who were raised under Communism view religion in all forms as a negative thing - as detrimental and unenlightened.
Another issue here is that many Hungarian families are very tightly knit, and the parents are somewhat controlling. They often view the church as something which takes away their influence and control over their kids, in spite of the fact that we would never encourage kids to disobey or rebel against their parents.
People say that Europe is a "post-Christian" place, and I think there is much truth to that. We have had people in the church before, whose parents encouraged them to practice Eastern Religion or the New Age - but were not happy at all that their child (although already legally an adult) wanted to be a Christian. In America, even if a family does not consider themselves Christians or go to church, they still often view church as a good thing.
* Hungarians - what do you think about this? Am I getting this right, or am I way off?

I find it disturbing that in this part of "Christendom" being a follower of Jesus and studying the Bible is viewed by many as a bad thing.
One friend of mine in another town in Hungary leads a youth group, and they had the problem that their kids had stopped partying and their parents were upset by it, and started telling their kids - You need to leave that church! What they are teaching you is unhealthy! You are teenagers; you need to be going out and partying and having sex! That's the normal, healthy thing to do!
I have a catch-phrase that I always tell our church: Jesus makes you normal. And I really believe that to be true. The view of many people in the world of what is normal and healthy has been skewed so badly, that they call good what is evil and evil what is good.
When studying the Bible and being a follower of Jesus is called a bad thing, but premarital/extramarital sex is considered a good thing - something is wrong.

On Sundays right now we are studying through the Acts of the Apostles, and one of my favorite verses in the book is when it says in Ch 17:8, that in Thessalonica they people dragged some Christians before the city counsel and said: These who have turned the whole world upside down have come here too. My prayer is that God would use us here in Eger to turn this city "upside down" with the Gospel. If things are already upside down - where right is called wrong and wrong is called right - then turning it upside down again would be like turning it right-side up. Again, "Jesus makes you normal."
One thing I love about the book of Acts is that you see that through very small groups of people, God changed the history of Europe - and really the history of the whole world. I love that, because I know that God can use us to change our city - and I pray that He will.

Happy Birthday Nate!

Last Monday, September 1, was Nathaniel's first birthday!
One year ago we first saw Nate-dogg's little face and held him in our hands for the first time.
His name means "Gift of God," and thats truly what he is!
Over the last year we've been blessed to watch this little gift grow from a tiny baby into a little boy, who is now trying to walk and talk and do other big boy stuff.
We celebrated Nate's first birthday in Slanchev Bryag (Sunny Beach), Bulgaria.
We had a lot of "firsts" last week in Bulgaria - Nate's first birthday, his first piece of cake, his first time at the beach, and his first time swimming in the sea.
Indecently, it wasn't Nate's first time abroad or even on an airplane. He's already been to the USA, Germany, Slovakia - and now Bulgaria. He's already traveled more than most people I know!
He had a great time at the beach, digging in the sand, and got super excited by the waves, when we took him in the water.
Here are some pictures of Nate's first birthday: