The view from Budapest

(Written by Valerie) Kirby Ann came home from school the other day and said, ” I can read!” It was a very amazing transformation for her. One day she couldn’t read, the next day she could read anything. Anything in Hungarian that is!!

She has been learning to read in English off and on at home over the last year or so. She has consonants, vowels, most blends, and is working on the harder blends (ou, ow, augh, etc) She can easily sound out words in English when they follow the rules. Fluent reading will come soon, we hope.

Hungarian, however, is perfectly phonetic. That is the ONLY easy thing about the language! Therefore, she realized that if she put the new sounds she learned with the sounding out she could already do, tah dah…she could READ!!!

So today, I bought my little girl her first reading book ever. She loves Bible stories and has always said that she can’t wait to read the Bible. Never would I have guessed that the first Bible Story book she would read to herself would be in Hungarian!

We had to fly halfway around the world, but my good friend, Mark Sanders and I were able to go to the A&M - Missouri football game together this past Saturday. We regularly watch college football together in Budapest and I think we have watched the last few A&M - Missouri games together on TV. It was fun to meet and actually go to the game together. The Aggies didn’t win, but they did much better than I expected and didn’t get totally blown out so it wasn’t a total downer.

Mark got us 50 yard line seats from one of his good friends. Thanks Mark for bringing me along for the ride!!  We remained friends throughout the game and there wasn’t any major taunting.

I was working in Kansas City so it was an easy drive over to the game with my long time friend, Rick Pierce. Rick & I went to high school and A&M together and it was awesome to go together to another Aggie game. I’ve had a great time hanging out with his family.

PS Despite the fact that is all I have blogged about, I have done a ton of work while in the US.  Football has been my entertainment of choice and I’ve been loving it!

  One of the great things about returning to the US this month is that I got to go to my nephew, Hunter’s, high school football game.  Abilene High is ranked 9th in the state of Texas and was playing their crosstown rivals, Cooper High School.  It is always the biggest game of the year for them and it was fun to be there as a part of it.

They won the game 34-10 and the outcome was never in doubt.  Hunter played great and even had a near sack that ended up on the front page of the Sports section in the Abilene paper!  Pretty awesome.

There is nothing like Texas High School Football!  I just wish the rest of my family could have been here to enjoy it with me.

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Yesterday I traveled from Budapest to the US.  I arrived at the Budapest airport bright and early for what I thought was a really good set of flight connections to the US.  When I checked in, they told me that my flight to Frankfurt had been delayed and that it was going to mess up my whole trip.  Therefore, I needed to go to the ticketing office and they would change all of my flights.  Bummer!

I wandered over there bummed about losing my good connections and wondered how many times I was going to have to circle the globe to get to the US.  While I was in line, Valerie called.  I told her about the delay and then she said, “Are you not taking your laptop?  because it is sitting here in the living room.”   “AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!”   I’m sure the whole Budapest airport could hear my cry.   Valerie started packing up with the laptop (at 6:30am) to bring it to me (about a 45 minute drive).   Soon after I learned that I was going out on a later flight and that she would have plenty of time to get it to me.

I didn’t connect the dots right away, but pretty soon I realized that if my flight had not been delayed, I wouldn’t have gotten my laptop.  I have no idea how I would have made it on this trip without it.  Therefore, the Lord allowed the delay to rescue me from the stupidity of forgetting my laptop.  I guess that is why the Bible says to Praise the Lord in all things.

I arrived 4 hours later than I expected and I had one more connection than expected, but at least I had my laptop.