serving in Vac

Yesterday was a great day of serving in Vac. We worked with Doug and Lea and Karen supporting their ministry in this beautiful city in northern Hungary. It is just 30 min by fast train north of Budapest. Part of their ministry is volunteering at a Deaf school. Doug is a great teacher and gave us a briefing on the status of the school and how the population of the school is no longer just Deaf kids but now there are other children with mental handicaps as well. After our briefing, we had lunch and then went with baseballs, gloves, bats, bases and caps to the school yard. First things first and Doug invested time in our team members who didn't know baseball. And games of catch ensued to give our team a chance to develop a new sports skill. For others of us, it was just fun to play catch. After a little while the school students came outside after their lunch and some got gloves and played catch with us while others drew pictures and plated hair with some of our girls. It was a time of getting to know one another. I have three images in mind from that afternoon: Tom helping kids with their stance when it was their turn to bat, Caroline and Ginny getting their hair braided and the little boy who came to me to play catch. He was a blond haired boy who was deaf, his eyes were such that they pointed in two different directions and his hair was in splotches. But he was excited to play catch! I found my self being very excited with him as he caught the ball eleven times!!!! He worked very hard and would NOT be discouraged. I look forward to playing catch with him again this afternoon, if possible. After their recess was over it was off to study hall for them and off to errands for us.

After a walk around the town for ice cream, Karen took the team down to a park next to the Danube and hung out for a while while Doug and I ran a couple of errands. The we all headed to the Calvary Chapel they attend to have pizza with and connect with their youth. That was a great deal of fun, we got to know one another, sang a few songs (a couple of the members of this team want to sing all the time) and ate some GREAT pizza... the best of our many choices being the Magyaros pizza (HUngarian style with HU sausage paprika and onions)... then the youth told us 14 or 15 things they think we must do while in Hungary, it was a fun time which ended too soon but we had to rush to catch the 8:22 back to Budapest, we sang songs all the way back!

The final highlight of the day was that the hot water heater had been fixed, sort of, and there was warm water for the first warm shower for me of the trip! They guys got kinda warm showers in the AM since they were still here when the repair man came. Now, it we could just find that thermostat... hmmmmm... our prayer should be that our spiritual thermostat would be turned up on this trip to awaken us to a deeper understanding of God and desire to worship Him with our lives... lukewarm is not what the Lord wants from us!!!

wow, that was a long post, I need to get to work!!!