Snow . . . It’s beautiful and still has a magical quality to it, and now
that I’m in my second year of living in a place where it is a regular
occurrence I’m figuring out the pattern. I love it for a while and then
the bloom comes off the rose and it isn’t as beautiful.

The reason? It’s the 30 minutes of hard labor that I’ve performed
almost every morning for the past week. On the first few days,
shoveling the snow was a nice experience. It was quiet and peaceful.
As you can see in the picture, it is amazingly beautiful. After a week,
it was slushy, dirty, and annoying. On the positive side, I didn’t need
as much coffee because I worked so hard I couldn’t help but wake up!!!

Overall, I still like the snow. It provides unexpected beauty. The
ride on the train to Bratislava yesterday was incredibly beautiful
seeing everything covered in snow!!! We’ll see what I think if this
keeps up for another month.

You have probably heard that tomorrow President George Bush is meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia. It seems like an obscure, out of the way place for a summit, but the cool thing is that I’m going to be in Bratislava tomorrow as well. Slovakia is the country just to the north of Hungary and the capital city is only a 2 hour drive from our house.

I’ve been working on a website project with our Campus team in Bratislava and I’m working there every Thursday. I almost had a chance to go and hear Bush speak tomorrow morning, but the logistics didn’t work out. Maybe I’ll see him around town Never thought that one of my best chances to see the President Bush would be on this side of the ocean.

For once in a long time, the Aggie’s have a decent basketball team. Up until this year, we hadn’t won a Big 12 game in a long time. This year, we almost beat Kansas, we beat Texas, and we are the only Big 12 team to have a single point deficit against Oklahoma State. Also, we have won most of the games against the bottom half of the conference. I’ve always said that it would take one breakthrough year to get the recruiting turned on.

Tonight, we are leading Iowa State by 16 with 9 minutes to go after being behind at half. It’s looking good. Iowa State has been on a roll, so it is another quality win. It appears that the NIT is a solid bet, with possibilities for the Big Dance.

Gig ‘em!!

UPDATE: Ags win!!! 75-59. Here’s a quote from an article on the game. “. . .under coach Billy Gillispie, Texas A&M has tied San Diego for the nation’s biggest turnaround with a 10-game improvement from last season. ” WHOOP

It might be something like sleep walking. I’m up at 4:30 am with my youngest daughter who can’t/won’t sleep. Been up for an hour or two. Ah! the joys of parenting. Thankfully, it is snowing like crazy outside. Maybe we will have a snow day and I can’t get a little more sleep.

I was checking out the cool online encyclopedia, Wikipedia today with my good friend Jerry on our trip to Bratislava today. I searched on the phrase, “Tom & Jerry” just to see what would happen. You’ll have to check the whole thing out by checking the link, but I did find out that the verb “Tom & Jerry” means to engage in riotous behavior. Now you probably have a better idea of what Jerry & I are doing over here in Eastern Europe. That’s better than our current job description!

On Saturday, the kids and I finally had the chance to go sledding. We had a pretty good snow on Saturday morning and so we headed out into the woods to give it a shot. After a few crashes into the trees, they had some pretty good runs.

Here’s a video of one of the runs that Kendall, Reed & Kirby Ann took together. I took the video with my mobile phone so it isn’t that great. Click here to watch.

So far this year, we have been enjoying the snow. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’m sure by the first of March, we will be ready to see it go!

Here in Budapest, our family attends Danube International Church. We have really enjoyed it and have especially loved the teaching of our pastor Ronnie Stevens. He is one of the best pastors that Valerie & I have ever heard and it is amazing that we get to listen to him each week.

Recently, he has been preaching through the book of John and yesterday he was in a very controversial part of John 6 where many evangelical churches disagree. At the beginning of the sermon, knowing that he was bringing up a hard subject, he talked about the distinctives of an International Church. In the US, typically, you have many churches to pick from. It isn’t very hard to find a church that is aligned with your beliefs almost exactly and if not, mostly. Here in Budapest, there are only 3 or 4 English speaking churches to pick from. Therefore, we aren’t as picky and we are so glad to have sermons in English that we don’t get hung up with the finer points of doctrine. It doesn’t mean that doctrine isn’t important to us, it just means that we don’t let those things keep us from worshipping together. It seems like that the church would be more unified if we all thought along these lines. There are a few things that should divide us like salvation by faith, inerrency of scripture, and few others. Too many times, we have a much longer list of things that divide us.

By the way, I thought Ronnie did an excellent job yesterday dealing with John 6:45. Whether you agree with him or not, it will challenge you. Click here to download the Feb 13th sermon and listen to it.

I had to take the “Nerd Test” to see how I compared with my friends.

Jerry – Hasn’t take the test, but is definately higher than me
Grant – 8
Rob – 17

Evangelical Blog Award WinnersCheck out my brother-in-law, Grant! He won the award for the best Youth Pastor blog!! Way to go, bro!

FOXNews.com – U.S. & World – Hungarian PM Sorry for Saudi Terrorists Quip. I wish I knew how to say “put your foot in your mouth” in Hungarian. I’m sure they have a similar expression that doesn’t use “foot” or “mouth.”

The Hungarian Prime Minister called some Saudi soccer players “terrorists.” I’m glad to know Americans aren’t the only ones that say stupid stuff and offend major parts of the world. It happened right here in my own backyard.