update on baby Felicia

for all you who are praying for Felicia, God is answering. so keep praying!

here's an update on her condition:

http://nickandrosemary.blogspot.com/

friends in need

our friends, who are missionaries in Eger, just had a baby girl on Friday but she is in critical condition. please check out their blog & pray for the life of their precious daughter. http://nickandrosemary.blogspot.com/

thanks.

home sweet home

after a long day of travel, we made it home. it was a great trip. it started in LA when we we're moved into business class cause the flight to Amsterdam was oversold, so we made the "sacrifice" to let more people on the plane! now that is the way to fly. Zara did great on the flight, again!! she slept about 7 1/2 hours straight, so we both had time to rest. hopefully we won't be hit with jet-lag.

anyways we were welcome home by our wonderful neighbors who had dinner ready for us and also bought us a small Christmas tree and decorated it. we've got the best neighbors in the world!!

well time to keep unpacking!!

the good, the bad, and the ugly

no the good, the bad and the ugly isn't a description of this picture, I think this is how I'd summarize our trip here to California. it's been all of those things.

the good.... our first christmas with zara. blessed beyond words by the fellowship, care, a love of the saints. spending time with family.

the bad.... as with every trip, no matter how long or short, there never seems to be enough time to do all we want to do or see everyone. hopefully our next trip won't be in the too distant future, so we can come back and see people we didn't get to.

the ugly... this will go down as a memorable trip. it got ugly when I caught a stomach flu and was out for 48 hours. and got even uglier when my mom fell on the stairs at my aunt's house and broke her foot and shoulder. :-(

with that said and 3 days left of our trip. we're ready to get back to the comfort of our own home.

time to start packing

California

well we've been in CA for almost 2 weeks now but we really haven't talked about how our trip was with Zara. in a nutshell it was great! as you can see on the plane she had a little bed to sleep in (don't you wish they had those for adults!!). our little world traveler didn't scream or cry and when we were deplaning people said "I didn't know there was a baby on the flight". it took all of us a couple of days to adjust to the time but it's been easier than we had anticipated with Zara.

we've been so blessed to spend time with family & friends.

personally, I'm not missing the weather in Hungary. there's been a lot of snow since we left with temps in the 20's & 30's. I'm lovin' the sunshine & 70 degree temps!!

but we'll have to go back to the cold next month, until then, we're gonna enjoy every day!

St. Nicholas Project 2009

as I blogged on December 6th, we began the "St. Nicholas Project". I challenged the church to bring joy to some mentally handicapped young people who live at an institution in Szeged. it was a challenge for a couple of reasons. first becasue the school told us when we could take the gifts & do a "show" for them and it was only a little over a week from the "challenge" to the church. so I didn't know if we'd get the 45+ packages or not. aslo I felt kind of strange challengeing the church and then leaving for America. but it turns out I guess I was of "little faith". the church answered the challenge in a wonderful way. not only did they prepare enough gift bags, there were a few left over. here are some pictures of this year's "event". the first pic is the gift bags (obviously), the second is of members of CC Szeged "preforming" for the school, and the last 2 pictures are of the young people who recieved the gifts.
I was told that the staff of the school was very grateful for our gifts. but we don't want this to just be a "it's Christmas and we're Christians so we should do this", we really want to help this school throughout the year. so we're going to be talking with them about how we as a church can minister to the school, either by coming and do things with the students or renewing a room or the courtyard.
anyways, I'm just so blessed that CC Szeged answered this challenge and that we've taken the first step to really reaching our community.

more St. Nick day pictures

some more pictures of Zara & us from yesterday.