Golgota Gospel Korus

On Thursday night Lauren and I had a great opportunity to spend time with some of our Hungarian colleagues. Our office mates Eva and Eva, as well as a secretary from school Aniko, and my friend Fenyo all came to the Calvary Chapel Gospel Choir concert with us. When this choir says "Gospel Choir" they do not necessarily mean it in the way that we would in the States. This is not like your southern Gospel Choir that is all black, with the choir robes. They do sing a few songs that are like that, but they also sing a variety of other songs. Instead, by Gospel Choir, they mean something more like "Good News Choir." And they preach the Word hard core through their music. I really enjoyed it and to my surprise so did everyone else!!!
That night Aniko and Fenyo both sent me text messages saying that they really enjoyed the concert. The next day Anikor told me that she had the songs stuck in her head and that she told her boyfriend all about it.
My favorite parts of the concert: My friend Attis sings in the choir and they sang a song that had a country feel to it (although... if you live in Montana... this is not what you think of when you think Country music...) So my friend Attis and about 20 other people actually line danced on stage during the song! It was so funny and they did really well... and then when we thought it was over... they came down into the center aisle of the concert hall and danced there too! And Attis was right by us in the aisle! It was so fun to be able to point out our friend in the choir to our colleagues and friends. :) Good work Attis!!!
My next favorite part was a octet. The choir is very large, probably 200 people, and two thirds are women... at least. It was great to see a smaller group perform, with out the loud band, and actually be able to hear the different parts. The basses and the tenors just get overwhelmed by the soprano and alto majority.
The third thing that was amazing was when the choir walked down into the audience again and surrounded the whole concert hall. They sand a song completely acapella and it was gorgeous. That's the church of Christ coming out in me... still love and long to hear acapella music!
One more highlight of the concert was that they sang a song that I actually knew!

All praises be
To the King of Kings
And the Lord of Lords
He is Wonderful

Hallelujah.... He is Wonderful

Hallelujah, Salvation and Glory
Honor and Power
He is wonderful

The Lord our God is mighty
The Lord our God is omnipotent
Our God He is wonderful

It was so great to hear a familiar worship song in the midst of big choir variations of classic gospel music. I loved it.

So... I really enjoyed the concert, the singing and the dancing... it was great to see the choir praise the Lord and to join in with them on occasion.

Please pray, as Lauren and I did throughout the concert, for the hearts of Eva, Eva, Aniko and Fenyo to be open and to remember some of what they heard at the concert. It was the Gospel delivered through music quite simply. :-)

Grace and peace-
<><

Erdély

This past week has been pretty busy. Last Wednesday was Ballagás, or graduation at our school. As a result there was a lot of irregularity all week long. Monday and Wednesday we had short classes. It was just utterly useless to be there... oh well. The school was all decked out on Wednesday with lilacs (my favorite flower). It smelled heavenly. I was unable to actually attend the graduation ceremony because I left to go to Erdély.

Erdély is the Hungarian name for Transylvania. This trip was organized by Árpád, a friend of mine from the ICFB. Árpád grew up in a town near where we went to visit. There were about twenty of us, we stayed in a house that we rented up in the Carpathian Mountains. On Wednesday we drove 13 hours and arrived at four in the morning! Luckily it was a very relaxing trip, so we were able to sleep in the next day. We spent time out in "the nature," played lots of games, ate some amazing food, went to a museum in Kézdivásárhely, and spent a lot of time worshiping our Father.

Because of the international mix I somehow was asked to translate for our worship times. Árpád speaks English very well, but there were some people who only spoke Hungarian, so he wanted to give some devotional thoughts in Hungarian. We talked about communication with God, art, things that break down communication and things that build it up. It was really refreshing. We also spent a lot of time singing worship songs in English... which I really appreciated.

When we went to the museum they asked me to translate there too. It was such a good experience to try out translating. I have thought about this a lot and think that it would be good to practice more. Translating from Hungarian to English is not too hard and I can find the appropriate nuances. The museum was a little bit more difficult because there were words like "ceh" which is a guild. Or "asztalos" = carpenter. Things like that are more difficult to translate because I don't use those words every day. Church vocabulary I am pretty good at. I hope that there will be more opportunities for me to practice and that God will use this for his work.

This week has been really nice because we have seven days off from school. I got back from Erdély on Sunday and still had three days of freedom!

Yesterday we celebrated Cinco de Mayo. Lauren and I made a Pinata, tortillas, salsa, guacamole and margaritas from scratch. It was fun to have "authentic" Mexican food and hang out with some people.

Hopefully I will be able to steal some pictures from people of these great events to show you everything...

Prayer requests:
- Energy and Health to finish the school year with a bang! (Last day is June 13)
- Funding for a plane ticket home and other expenses (like grad school...)
- Harvest: we have been investing so much time, energy and love into our students this year and I just pray that they see God in it. I want them to know God so badly and I pray that they will know Him soon!
- SpeakOut: for students to have fun, enjoy and see God working at camp
- APU: I am still procrastinating... I have to do grad work... please pray for this to go well.
- Summer plans: I am still trying to work out specific dates for the summer. Please pray for the summer to be a time of rest and preparation for next year.

<><

Renaissance Night

Last night our school had a big production to celebrate the year of the Renaissance. There was singing, dancing and a few skits. I was privileged to sing with some of the girls I teach. If you want to check out the pictures you can see them here.

New Look

Since my students have found me out... I decided to remodel... hope you like it!

Discovered...

I knew it was inevitable... but it came about so unexpectedly that my jaw dropped.

Today, when I walked into one of my classes... before I even said "hello class... you may sit down..." my student Gyuri says: Miss Petty! I found your blog!

Rats. I've been found out. Yes... Miss Petty has a blog... and yes... she writes about you (her students) in it... and she posts pictures... and talks about how great her students are... and how much she loves Hungary... and she talks about God... and raising support...

So... students of Kossuth Lajos: Welcome! I love you all dearly and I hope that you enjoy reading my blog!

<3 Miss Petty

Spring is here!!!

I am extremely happy that daylight savings has passed now and it stays light until near seven! It makes me feel like I can do so much more instead of feeling like going to bed at 4pm because its dark already. Today the weather was beautiful and I spent some time reading outside. I am excited to start doing more things outdoors like play ultimate frisbee, have grill parties, visit Margaret Island, and just enjoy being outside in the sun. I know... the weather could still take a nasty turn, but right now it is beautiful.

Seeing as I am a procrastinator... I have been delinquent in posting about whats going on around here. Last weekend we had a few extra days off of school for Easter. I stayed in town for the break to relax and get some APU work done. I spent some time hanging out with friends, sleeping, reading for APU, sleeping, went to coffee house with our students, slept some more, helped a friend prepare for the TOEFL, and then slept a little more. I throughly enjoyed sleeping a lot. Apparently I needed to catch up.

Coffee House
About two months ago we started inviting our students to Rezkigyo Coffee House. This is an event every Friday night, run by YWAM. The location is underground, tucked out of sight, so its pretty cool when you get down there and realize that there is a sweet coffee shop there! They have live music every week, good coffee and tea, American treats (like cookies or cupcakes), lots of games, and it is all run on donations. They are only open on Friday nights for a few hours, but it is hopping during those hours!
The first week we invited students only one came, Attila. He had a good time, but was not able to come again until this past week. A few older students have come who I do not teach, and when they come we usually go to check out one of their hang out places after coffee house closes. About four weeks ago three boys came who absolutely loved it! Two of them have been back every week since then. One of them has been bringing a friend, who also enjoys coming. It has been so good to build our relationships with these students. Every Monday I ask students what they did over the weekend, and these two boys always talk about going to coffee house.
Every few weeks the guy who runs coffee house has one of the YWAMers give a short testimonial or tell a story. The first time this happened when we had students there I caught myself flipping out inside. I was so scared that our students would reject the idea of coming to coffee house because it is a Christian based thing. To my surprise they didn't really say anything about it or care. I am really thankful for that, and I pray that their hearts are open to hear those testimonials. I also pray that God would give me courage to speak his name boldly around my students.
Please pray for this to continue to be a good ministry opportunity, and for us to take advantage of the chance to have good conversations about God with our students.

Tuesday Open Bazis
We still have quite a few students coming over to hang out after school on Tuesdays. We did have a month where only one student would come every week, but attendance is up again and we are loving it. Thanks to a friend we now have a new tool for ministry: a skateboard. You would not believe how many of our students will come over just to try the skateboard out. Lauren happens to be a superb skateboarder so she shows them how and is a really good teacher (imagine that...) It is quite amusing to watch them go slow, almost fall, veer off and then just stop. I had my own fun on the skateboard and fell flat on my back once. Luckily no one saw and I didn't hit my head.

APU
Lets just say... I have a paper due on Tuesday. Have I started it? No.
I procrastinate by doing other things that are productive... like catching up on my blog... instead of doing what I should be doing. Go figure.

$
As summer approaches I am becoming more aware of the fact that I have procrastinated in something very important: fund raising. Ooops. Anyways... heres the deal: I have to buy a plane ticket ASAP to go home over the summer. I wish I could just stay in Hungary and not spend the money on the plane ticket... but that is not an option thank you APU and ESI. (My family is probably happy I am coming home for a bit too...)
Basically I need about $1200 ASAP so I can buy my ticket.
Then I need some more funds to pay for things like furthering my capabilities to teach English well through APU, ESI field support, teaching supplies, travel in the states (CA to MT and back), etc. The total for all of that stuff for the next year (June to June) is about $12,000. That comes out to about $1000/month... which for mission work support is pretty cheap! (My friends who teach at the Internationl Christian School of Budapest have to raise triple that every year!)
You can help by sending money to my parents or to ESI. Email me for more specifics on that. emeshea@gmail.com

Prayer Requests
*Coffee House- That students keep coming, bring friends, and that we can have some good God talk.
*Speak Out!- This is an English summer camp run by FEK, which is the Hungarian high school version of Campus Crusade for Christ. There are about six girls from our classes who are all thinking about going together. Please pray for them to all go and to take lots of friends. Most of my Hungarian friends who are Christians and speak English well went to this camp or a similar one.
*Tuesday Open Bazis- for good God conversations and high attendance.
*Funding for next year- please pray about if you should donate, and pray for others to feel called to help out too!
*APU- focus... I am a procrastinator.
*Health- I am just waiting for my spring cold/allergies. Hopefully there will be none. Also... Lauren and Jo are both sick right now. I don't want what they have.
*Parent teacher conferences- are tomorrow. Pray for good Hungarian skills on my part and good connection with parents!

Thanks for reading!
Grace and peace
<><

Spring Weather...

This afternoon it was pleasantly warm. The trees have started to bud and I have been looking forward to enjoying the warmth over Easter break.

Today when I woke up from my nap I was saddened by the arrival of a huge rain cloud that was pouring precipitation down in front of our house.

The rain alternated with hail for a few minutes, then the following sequence of events happened in five minutes:
There was a blizzard that covered the ground with snow.
The sun came out and it stopped snowing.
The sun stayed out, and huge flakes started falling.
The sun got brighter and the snow flakes got smaller, then dissappeared.
Now the sun is shinning very brightly, the snow is almost all gone from our lawn and there are blue skies...

God rocks with spring weather....

Second Semester zooooooom...

Well... I have safely arrived back in Budapest. It has been good to be back and I am very glad that the weather has greatly improved since before I left for Thailand. On Wednesday last week I awoke with some form of Montezuma's revenge and was achy all over. I stayed home from school one day, but was well enough to go back the next.

This semester has already started to get extremely busy. Some friends and I decided to take some classes from a Bible institute here so that is now occupying our Monday nights. Tuesdays we still have Word Alive at our house after school, and preparation meetings for that are on Thursdays. There are a number of other things that I can also choose to be involved in every week, but there still needs to be time for lesson planning. My weekends seem to be spoken for for the rest of the month and in March we have friends from Pepperdine coming to visit two weeks in a row.

Second semester at Pepperdine always felt like the blink of an eye. I am not sure if that will be true here or not because we teach into June instead of finishing in April. I hope that I can enjoy this semester without it disappearing before I get the chance!

Things to pray for:
- Students
- Health and Energy
- Focus in teaching
- Studies with APU

Second Language Acquisition

Our second week of class is over! I think that we all survived SLA all right... but it was definitely intense. Every night we had about 150 pages of reading (skim and scan.... if you can!) I think that the second week of this program is always going to be extremely hard because we exert ourselves so much during the first week. During Sociolinguistics I was so excited to be able to think critically and soak up information. My brain was a sponge. This week the sponge was already full so taking in information was very difficult. Hopefully I will still be able to pull off a good grade.

Last weekend my roommates Jen, Kristi, Kara and I, as well as Richard and Joanne from our cohort, went trekking. It was an amazing day. In the morning we got into a van with our tour guide, a Spaniard, a Singaporean, and a German couple and rode out into the countryside. The first activity of the day was riding elephants. Richard and I got to sit up on this huge elephant and a Thai guy sat on the elephants head to guide it. We fed it bananas and sugar cane and saw a little bit of Thai jungle.


After that we rode up into the mountains and visited a village. They showed us how they weave hand made materials, make cigarettes out of banana leaf, and explained how to know who is richest in the village. We hiked across some rice paddies, up into the forest, to a waterfall. We swam in the river there by the waterfall, even though it was really cold. Then we hiked back out to another village. At the village we got to see the inside of one of the huts that the villagers live in. The roof is made of banana leaf and the walls of bamboo and straw, or other wood. It was just one room, with a platform for sleeping, a fire place for cooking, and a table for eating.



Next we went to a restaurant where we ate "local food." Our tour guide told us it was elephant, then she said it was dog... then we realized it was just chicken. Chicken and rice in different sauces.
The last part of our adventure was a bamboo raft ride. Jen, Kara and I rode together. Our tour guide said "No wet, no fun." The guide who took us on the raft was probably fifteen years old. He was so full of energy and very intent on getting us wet. He would splash us and we would splash back. He fell off the raft a few times, but the river was not deep. It was a lot of fun.

Other fun things that happened this week: I got to see my friend Alex from Pepperdine. He is going to school here in Chiang Mai for a semester. I also got to visit with another TeachOverseas teacher, who teaches in Vietnam. He was here visiting his brother, so Richard and I got to hang out with him after class one day. I also found the church of Christ in Chiang Mai. It is right next to the YMCA... I just didn't know it. The missionary couple that works there has been here for 47 years! It was really cool to meet them and be encouraged by them and their dedication to serving the Lord here in Thailand.

Tonight I fly back to Hungary (Chiang Mai, Bangkok, London, Budapest...) and I arrive sometime tomorrow. Monday morning it is back to teaching... jet lag and all.

Please pray for a safe trip and easy adjustment with jet lag.

Grace and peace.

S'wati ka!

Greetings from a different part of the world: Chiang Mai, Thailand!

As you probably know I am getting my masters in TESOL through APU. As a result I have an excuse to spend two weeks in Thailand studying and exploring a different part of the world.

This past week our cohort (class) took "Sociolinguistics." Basically it is a mix between sociology, linguistics and anthropology. It was really interesting learning about language, dialects, language shift, death, and planning, World Englishes and things like that. We had class every day from 8am-3pm. Then we read a bunch, go for a swim, eat lots of Pad Thai and sleep. Today we had a quiz, which was more like an essay test. I think that I successfully described the difference between a language and a dialect, a pidgin and a creole, language planning in terms of status and corpus planning, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and what diglossia was. Spell checker does not like the word "diglossia" but I promise it is a real word with a real meaning in Sociolinguistics.

Tomorrow we are going on a little tour of Thailand: elephant trekking through the woods, riding a bamboo raft down a river, visiting some waterfalls and a mountain village. It should be a lot of fun and a good cultural experience.

I will be here another week taking Second Language Acquisition, then I go back to Hungary.
Please pray for me and everyone in our cohort to stay healthy and study well.

------------------

Sometime soon you will probably get an email or letter from me about fundraising for next year. The total for the year to cover all my transportation, APU, ESI costs, etc. will be about $10,000. Let me know if you can help out and I will let you know how!

Please pray for funding to not be an issue. It is difficult to focus on ministry when you are distracted by monetary concerns.

-------------------

I will update more on Hungary when I get back!!!