Putting It to the Test

I have had my Samsung Galaxy tablet for a few months now, and have really been able to put it to the test.

Using a tablet for school
Aside from everyday productivity, one of the main things I use my tablet for is my theology studies. It is really great for this, because I can carry all my course material on it, all my books and keep all my notes on it with Evernote. It is much nicer to read off of than a laptop - much more like a real book in shape and size.
The only problem I have run into so far is that my course material gives me page numbers from my text books, and the Kindle app only gives "location". You can navigate by page number if you use Kindle on a laptop, but not on a mobile device. So I'm not totally lost, but sometimes I have to open up my laptop - like people used to do in the old days :) - to find out what location relates to a given page number. I hope that Kindle will add page number navigation to their tablet and mobile apps soon. I think more people would be interested in using Kindle books for reference and school if they did.

Traveling with a tablet
The trip we took to Colorado a few weeks ago was the first time I have traveled without a laptop in about 10 years, and I must say that it was a great feeling. The battery life on the tablet is great. I was able to use the internet, study, read books to my kids, watch movies on the airplane, all from a single charged battery, which was still going strong for a whole day after we arrived. The key to saving the battery on the tablet is to turn off the wifi when you are not using it.

Preaching and teaching from a tablet
This is probably the thing I use my tablet for most. I have been teaching Bible studies 2-3 times per week for years now. It is great to have all my teachings stored on my tablet, so I can access them any time I'd like, and I never have to print my notes any more.
A few weeks ago we visited another church. We walked in late: the service had already begun, and the pastor walked up to me and told me that he had scheduled me to preach! I didn't know that when we arrived, but I was ready to go nonetheless, and I asked the Lord what message he wanted me to share with the church.
Having a tablet adds a new dimension to 2.Timothy 4:2 -"Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season".

This week I am going to Ternopil, Ukraine to teach a course on church history for their school of missions. This means I will teach for about 20 hrs over 4 days - and I will do it all from notes on my tablet.

One of the only weakness I see so far is that Google Movies hasn't been released for all Android tablets yet. The release is rolling out, and there are other apps like Netflix and Redbox that you can watch movies on, but if they want to compete with Apple, Google really needs to fix that soon.

Was there life before tablets?
I look forward to the future, when all the bugs will be worked out. These things are great tools.

Go to Sleep, Sister!

When we got back from our visit to the States last week we moved Felicia's crib into Nate's room, which seemed like a great idea at the time, and both kids were excited about it.

But since then, partly because of jet-lag - which Nate got over faster than Felicia because he went back to óvoda - Felicia has been waking up in the middle of the night and yelling "NATE!" to wake him up.

Sometimes she is successful at waking him up, and sometimes he talks to her and they laugh and make silly noises at each other, but other times he is just annoyed with her because he is tired and wants to sleep.

Tonight we overheard him telling her: "Go to sleep, sister! Be quiet! It's night time! It's dark outside, we have to go to sleep!" - in other words, all the things we used to say to him when he didn't want to sleep :-)

So in the end we made Felicia sleep in another room.
It's hard to be too frustrated with them when they are so cute :-)

**Update** - Tonight when we went to put the kids down, Nate told us: "Don't let her sleep in here. She is going to talk!"

Colorado Trip

We will be coming to Colorado for 2 weeks from October 6-20.
In addition to visiting family, friends and supporters, we will be visiting Whitefields Community Church in Longmont, who we have been partnering with for a while and who sent a team to Eger this summer. Nick will be teaching at the church and Rosemary will teach at their women's conference.

If you are in Colorado, we would love to meet with you. Please write us so we can plan ahead, as our time there will be very short.

Ministry in the Eger College

The Lord has opened a great door for us into the college here in Eger to share the Gospel and meet students.
For the third year in a row we are working together with FÉK, which is the Hungarian branch of Campus Cru (who until recently were known as Campus Crusade for Christ).

We do their túlélőcsomag (survival pack) outreach here in Eger, which means that we go into the college dorms and go door to door handing out these binders which contain note paper, articles and a questionnaire for them to fill out which has questions relating to ethical and spiritual issues. Based on the responses on the questionnaires we then follow up with those who said that they would be interested in knowing more about a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

In addition to personally contacting those who are interested, we organize follow up events which we promote to all the students.
The first of these follow up meetings will be on Monday, Oct 3, and will be a presentation in the main dormitory. I will be the one doing the presentation and the title will be "Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-roll".
The next follow up even will be on Wednesday, Oct 12 in the Hallgatói Klub, and will be a concert and lecture by a guy from FÉK in Budapest.

Please pray for the college students here in Eger that we would be able to reach them with the Gospel and follow up with them effectively, for their good and for God's glory.

World Heart Day Outreach

Today we had our 3rd annual outreach for World Heart Day - in which we organized free medical check ups in 2 locations downtown and were able to serve hundreds of people and share the Gospel with even more.

The idea for this outreach came from a lady in our church - Ági - who since birth has had serious medical issues relating to her heart. The basic premise is that we organize a free service in the city, complete with doctors who volunteer their time, and we measure body-mass index, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. The "patients" then have the opportunity to get medical advice from a doctor, who, in addition to the medical advice, share the Gospel with them and offer to pray for them.
We also hand out fliers which on one side give information about how to keep your heart healthy, and on the other side speak about the importance and need of receiving Jesus into your "heart" as your Lord and Savior.

For the past few years we have gotten a lot of publicity for this as well - we have worked together with the local government and the city hospital, and the event has been reported on in the local news.

This year in addition to people from our church who came out and spent their Saturday serving the Lord in this way, we had helpers from Budapest, Debrecen and Szeged who joined us and were a great help.

It was such a blessing to be out on the streets doing something to benefit the people of our city and getting to share with them the love and hope that is found in the Lord Jesus.

Photos by Kiss Ági:

Eger Airport

One of the best things about living in Eger is that there are a lot of festivals. Every weekend in the summer there is something going on. One of the main sources of income for the city is tourism and they do a really good job organizing these events.

This past weekend there was a festival at the Eger airport. There were vintage cars on display and demonstrations with small aircraft.

Here are some pictures:

Reflecting

Our friend Ocean took this picture of Felicia when he visited us last week:

Archeological Proof of the Kingdom of David

One thing I love about the Bible is that as time goes on, and as more and more archeological work is done, archeological discoveries confirm the historicity of the Bible.

One of the most famous such discoveries was the discovery of the ruins of a great Hittite civilization in Turkey. The Bible mentioned the Hittites as a great and powerful nation, but because no reference to them was found outside of the Bible and no remains of a great Hittite civilization had be found, the Hittites were used as an example of how the Bible was not historically accurate....UNTIL the Hittite capital and records were unearthed in Bogazkoy, Turkey in the early 20th century, and it was found that the Biblical descriptions of them really were accurate.

Another claim that has been brought against the historicity of the Bible is that there is very little historical record of the Kingdom of David mentioned in the Bible. There are records of Solomon, but very few of David, and for this reason, some have questioned whether David actually lived, or whether he was a purely legendary figure.

CNN put out this video recently about some archeological discoveries which could be proof of David and his kingdom.



I have great confidence in the Bible, and I'm sure that with time more and more archeological discoveries will be made that prove the Bible to be historically accurate.

More Thoughts on Tablet Computers...

CNN put out this video report today about the legal battle going on between Apple and Samsung:



I have one of these disputed Samsung tablets, and I love it. It is really similar to the iPad - perhaps the only significant difference is the operating system, which in the end was the very reason I chose the Galaxy Tab over the iPad - because I prefer the Android Honeycomb OS to the iOS.

I haven't seen many people in Europe with tablets yet, but I suspect that Android tablets will dominate the iPad in Europe because Apple products are much more expensive here than in the US because of all the import taxes. And if people here can choose between two products that are essentially the same, but the one costs less and uses a more widespread operating system, I'm sure people would choose that.

We'll see what happens :)

My Wife is Cool

I am impressed with my wife.

On Saturday Rosemary organized a birthday party for Nate with some of his friends from church. Lídia, Julcsi, Alex, Korni and András - and of course Dani bácsi were in attendance, all at Nate's request.

Our little boy is pretty decisive about what he wants. Rosemary took him into a few stores to plan his birthday party, and he knew exactly what he wanted - a Lightning McQueen cake with chocolate on the inside from the cukrászda in the plaza, and balloons with helium and confetti poppers.


But what I think was most impressive was that Rosemary built Radiator Springs in our back yard for the kids to drive their cars on during the party.








She had a lot of other good ideas for the Cars theme and for games the kids could play - and they all got Piston Cups at the end.




A good time was had by all. My wife is cool.

Family Portrait

Yesterday was the celebration for the 20th anniversary of Calvary Chapel in Hungary. There was a big event in Budapest with people from all over the country getting together for one big service, remembering what God has done and looking forward to what He will do in the future through our movement in this country.

We rented a bus to take people from our church up to Budapest for the event - but at the last minute I ended up deciding that I needed to stay home with Nate who has an infection in his throat and a high fever. I was bummed that I couldn't go to the event, but I wanted Rosemary to be able to go and get to see everyone, and Nate wasn't in any condition to go.

So, while we were at home yesterday Nate and I made a present for mommy: he drew this family portriat:

Everybody's in there - Nate put himself in the center, Balázs is the one in the corner with glasses and hair that stands straight up.
I'm not quite sure why Nate gave me so much hair :)

We framed his family portrait and put it up in his room:

7 Years Ago

On this day 7 years ago Rosemary and I stood before God and witnesses and took vows of love and faithfulness and service to one another.

By God's grace, 7 years and 3 kids later we are still going strong - and by God's grace we will continue to do so.

I love you Rosemary Cady! Happy Anniversary!

Four Years Ago

On this day in 2007 our baby boy was born, and we named him Nathaniel, which means "gift of God".

Here is the birth announcement that we made for him:

Today Nate turned 4 years old.


He loves cars, trains, ninjas and Spiderman, and doesn't like wearing shorts. He is intense and challenging and loving and sweet.



Although today was his official birthday, we have been having a sort of "birthday week" for him. Yesterday he had a party at óvoda, today we had the "family birthday" at home, and on Saturday he will have some friends over for a garden party.

Nate's request for the óvoda birthday party was that Rosemary would make cupcakes and that everyone would have juice :)

Here's a video of him at óvoda yesterday leading the party snake:


Nate and Felicia wore matching "birthday shirts" today that they got from Grandma and Grandpa:


We love you Nate!

Szalapart School and Other Open Doors

And he said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. (Luke 10:2)

Yesterday I had an appointment with the director of the school where we started doing religious ed classes last school year. They were very excited that we were still interested in coming and hadn't been turned off by the poor behavior of the gypsy children. The director asked if we would expand the ministry to two groups - one for little kids and another for older ones who will live in the school's dormitory which they just finished building. We will also start doing social programs in the school on some Saturdays for the poor gypsy population - mostly giving away donated items, like clothes and things for the household, and organizing events for children. We hope that in these ways we will be able to bless them, build relationships with them and share the Gospel.

In other news, the Bible study we started two weeks ago in Heves is doing well. We have a core group already developing. The first time out we had about 20 people show up - last week 12, and we will see how many come out tomorrow. They core group has asked me to come out to their neighborhood and meet some of their friends who are interested in the Lord, but are too shy to come out to the Bible studies. We are planning to do that next Saturday.

The thing that strikes me is how many opportunities there are in our city and region for effective and fruitful ministry - but truly the laborers are few.
I am quite glad to see that our church is an active church that really sees their city and region as their mission field. But we there are only so many of us, and we are all busy with life - work, school, family, church - including myself.

So I am praying that God will send more workers into this ripe harvest field. Please join me on doing so!

Weekend Trip to Serbia

This past weekend we filled up all 7 seats of the Dacia, and drove to Subotica, Serbia.
Our purpose in going was to take some people from our church to see the work that God has done through the Calvary Chapel there - which was the first one in Central/Eastern Europe.

On Saturday we hung out in the city, ate some great čevapi and hung out with friends from the church.
Nate and Felicia like traveling and found plenty of places to play and run around.
(pictures by Kovács Kati)




Because the Subotica church service is on Sunday evenings, Sunday morning we went down to Bačka Topola for church, and I had the privilege of preaching the sermon.


After church we went to a lake outside of town, where we drank coffee and the kids got to play at a playground.
Later in the afternoon we went back to Subo for lunch, and we hung out in the church coffee shop until service started.


Church in Subotica:


On Monday morning we headed back home to Eger, but we did some shopping first. We found this juice, which I think God ordained for our family:

I think we need to find a way to get this stuff by the trucklload!

Border Crossing with Kids - Határátkelés...Gyerekekkel

This past weekend when we went to Serbia we had a little problem at the border, and I'm writing this in the hope that it will help someone to avoid the problem that we had.

Múlt hétvége amikor elmentünk Szerbiába, volt egy kisebb problémánk a határnál, és ezt azért írom, hogy segítsek másoknak elkerülni egy kellemetlen helyzetet.

I'm pretty sure that changing laws is the main hobby of all politicians.

Úgy tűnik, hogy megváltoztatni a törvényeket minden politikus fő hobbija.

When I first moved to Hungary in January 2002, I was told not to bother getting a visa for Hungary in the US, but to just go to Hungary and then get my Hungarian visa in one of the consulates in a neighboring country like Slovakia or Romania. When I arrived in Hungary I found out that the law had been changed on 1 January, and now you could only get a Hungarian visa in your country of origin. I didn't have the money to get a ticket back to the US, so I stayed as a "tourist" for 8 months by "border hopping".
By August 2002, the law had been changed again and had reverted back to the old way - so I was able to get my visa in Slovakia.

Amikor ide költöztem Magyarországra 2002 januárjában, azt mondták nekem az USÁban, hogy nem kell magyar vízumot intézni Amerikában mielőtt megyek - hanem csak menjek el Magyarországra, és majd valamelyik szomszéd országban intézzem el a vízumot egy konzulátusnál, pl Romániában vagy Szlovákiában. Amikor megérkeztem, megtudtam, hogy 2002.január 1-jén megváltozott a törvény, és a magyar vízumot csak abban az országban lehetett igényelni ahonnan származott az illető. Mivel nem volt pénzem visszamenni Amerikába, itt maradtam "turista"-ként 8 hónapig, úgy, hogy néha átmentem Romániába egy egy pecsétért.
2002 augusztusában megint megváltoztatták a törvényt és visszaállt a régi rendszerre - így Szlovákiában tudtam elintézni a vízumomat.

So, here is what happened this weekend:
Rosemary and the little ones are dual citizens, but we never bothered to get Hungarian passports for the kids - we always just used their US passports whenever we traveled, and had no problems. This time when we were leaving Hungary, the border guard told us that we have to prove that our are Hungarian citizens, because otherwise it seems that they have been living in Hungary illegally without visas.
In the past it had been enough to show their Hungarian address cards, but this time they said it was not enough. We would have been able to prove that easily by showing their birth certificates, but those were back in Eger - 320 km away.

Szóval, ez az ami most történt a hétvégén:
Rosemary és a kicsik mind kettős állampolgárok, viszont soha nem igényeltünk magyar útleveleket a kicsiknek - mindig csak az amerikai útleveleit használtunk amikor utaztunk valahová, és soha nem volt ebből probléma. Most, ahogy elhagytuk Magyarországot, a határőr azt mondta nekünk, hogy be kell bizonyítanunk a gyerekek magyar állampolgárságukat, mert különben úgy tűnik mint ha illegálisan tartozkodnak Magyarországon vízum nélkül. Eddig elég volt megmutatni a magyar lakcímkártyait, de most azt mondták, hogy ez már nem elég. Simán be tudtunk volna bizonyítani az állampolgárságukat a születési anyakönyvi kivonataival, de azok otthon voltak Egerben - 320 km-re tőlünk.

In the end, the border guards were very understanding, and after making some phone calls were able to let us through by leaving a note at the border that we should be allowed through, as it was clear that the kids were ours and Rosemary was able to verify her Hungarian citizenship.

Végül nagyon rendesek és megértőek voltak a határőrök, és egy kis telefonálgatás után átengedtek bennünket, mert nyilvánvaló volt hogy a gyerekek a miénk és Rosemary be tudta bizonyítani a magyar állampolgárságát.

The point is this: if you have kids who are dual citizens, you need to get them a passport or a photo ID card. It used to be that they only issued these ID cards to people over 14, but now the law has changed and they can be issued to newborn babies as well.

A lényeg az, hogyha kettős állampolgárok a gyerekek, igényelni kell nekik vagy egy útlevelet vagy egy fényképes személy igazolványt. Régebben csak 14 évesen lehetett kapni személy igazolványt, de most már az újszülött babáknak is lehet kérni.

Bomba Jó - Bomb in Eger

Today while doing a construction project on a garage in Eger, they found a 250 kg bomb from World War 2.
The bomb was apparently dropped by an airplane but never detonated. It must have been covered up by dirt and was undetected for years, during which time someone built a garage over where the live bomb rested and parked a car on top of it every day for the past 66 years.

Here are some pictures of the bomb:



And here is a map of where they found it on Fazola Henrik utca:


View Larger Map

Because of the bomb, they evacuated the entire downtown.
Happens to be that our church is downtown, and was included in the evacuation zone. We have Bible study on Wednesday nights, and what's more is that tonight we had one of our "Vision Meetings" scheduled, in which we talk about the vision of the church and discuss the church's various ministries.

Because the church was inside the evacuation zone, those of us who came to church found each other, and after waiting for a while for them to let us back into the city center, we decided to go to our house and have the Bible study in our garden. Turned out that our neighbor was entertaining guests in the garden, so we tried the basketball court at the end of our street - which also turned out to be full.
When we got to the basketball court, I realized that we were right across the street from the house of a family from our church, so I went over and asked if we could meet in their garden. They are wonderfully hospitable people, and they let us come and have our meeting in their yard.

In the end, it turned out to be much nicer than sitting cramped inside the four walls of the church building.
Here's a picture of our Wednesday night group in Kati néni's garden:

Life in Eger is never dull!

Back to Normal

Our summers are always one of the busiest times of the year for us, filled with outreaches, conferences, guests and traveling.

But today, as summer is coming to a close, life is getting back to normal.

Balázs came back home today from Summer of Service in Vajta. He had a great time and made good friends. He was telling me today about how they would pray together and encourage each other - that is exactly the kind of experience we had hoped he would have. He is home a week earlier than originally planned, but it is better this way, because he can get ready for the start of school at the beginning of September.

Nate went back to óvoda today. He seemed a bit nervous at first about going back, but was excited to play with the new toys. When I took him to the courtyard where the kids were playing, he at first just looked around and didn't want me to leave, but after a minute some kids called him over to play with them and he went off running around with them laughing and smiling.

After being away from home, Felicia was excited to sleep in her own bed again :-)