November Update 2008

On the terrace, celebrating Hope’s birthday

Greetings from Budapest!  I have so much to write to you about.  But some of you will not have time or necessarily want to read it all.  If that’s you, then just know that we are all well, God is guiding and helping us, and we are still getting settled in.  Then you can skip to the final two bullets below.

Health and Wellness: The family has been staying healthy, praise the Lord.  Charity’s asthma has been acting up quite a bit though, probably due to the air pollution. I have been walking many miles per week using the public transportation, so I’m getting plenty of exercise.  We love it here, especially the children.  And we consider it a great privilege to represent Christ in this part of the world.  Jennifer’s pregnancy is going well.  She feels the baby boy kicking quite often, and the other children are very excited about his arrival in February.  The morning sickness is still in the background, but almost gone and usually not bothersome.  Praise the Lord.  Please pray with us for total healing for Charity.

Hope in front of her birthday cake.

Hope’s Birthday: On 11-2-08, we celebrated Hope’s 8th birthday, and it was a real joyful time.  All went well, the weather was perfect, and we celebrated all day, had a special guest over, ate a wonderful home cooked beef stew, and had birthday cake that was very delicious.  She received gifts and cards, and was a very happy girl.

Education: Placed children in school on 11-3-08.  Had to get an official translation of their school certification which required a two hour roundtrip by public transit across the city to drop off the papers and then another two hour trip back there a few days later to pick up the documents.  However, there were issues with the school.  They bumped Charity (10 yrs old) from 5th grade to 3rd grade, and said that for Math she will be in the 2nd grade.  At the end of the school year she will be required to pass a Hungarian test in order to be certified to advance to 4th grade.  We contacted the president of the Hungarian home school association and he agreed with me that since the girls speak no Hungarian at all, it would be a useless exercise to have them in the Hungarian school.  We are now planning to take them out of the public school at the end of their first week (tomorrow), resume home schooling them and hire a language tutor for them.  Our goal is for them to learn the language and maybe we will be able to put them in public school next fall.  That seems more realistic.

The girls loved the school though.  They were extremely well liked and popular there, so they quickly made lots of friends.  None of the children there spoke English except for a couple that may have spoken one or two broken sentences in English.  But there were also some quirky things about the public school.  For example, when they change into their gym clothes, they change right in the classroom in front of all the other boys and girls.

In front of Parliament

Seeing the City: We did have the chance on 10-19-08 to go downtown with the children on a Sunday.  They loved it.

Language Acquisition: We are working on learning the language through immersion and using various language learning aids.

Translator: We have a translator who has been available to assist us part time on a very limited basis.  So this has been a blessing.  But we have also been stepping out and using what Hungarian we know to communicate with people.  Our abilities in this area are growing every day. 

More photos.    

Internet Connection: We received some very disappointing news.  We learned that we are unable to get DSL Internet service where we live, since it is not available in our area.  We did manage to get what they call mobile Internet, which is basically a USB stick that allows us to connect to the web. Once we got our home Internet connection activated, it was like Christmas!  I had been making one hour roundtrips by bus to an internet café, so it was a huge effort to get their only to have one hour or less to do everything I needed to do, including shopping for vans online, handling online banking issues, corresponding with our US office, etc.  I had a lot of work to catch up on that got backlogged while we were offline.  My new Internet cafe is in my office, praise the Lord.

Our Regular Vonage Phone: Since we are unable to get DSL Internet, we cannot connect our regular US Vonage phone unless we either buy a router, which is currently unavailable here, or a little USB device called a V-Phone which can only be purchased in the US.  So while we tried to figure out how to get one of those two devices, I bought a webcam and a Skype headset, and that opened the lines of communication for us back to the US.

V-Phone: The good news is that a friend in NH went online and bought us a V-Phone from Circuit City, which was picked up at the store in KY by a missionary to Hungary who was returning here. I plan to travel 45 minutes tomorrow to get it from him.  This will allow us to make free calls to the US and Canada on our Vonage service.  The difference between this and our regular phone is that we can only make and receive calls when our desktop computer is turned on and we need to wear a headset to talk.  We will need to watch and see how that affects our electric bill and we may need to only have our computer on for short periods during the day.  Friends and family can call us at our US phone number and we will answer here in Hungary at 603-623-4423 between approximately 3 AM (EST) and 5:00 PM (EST).  Please make a note in case you would like to call us.

Connecting the regular Vonage Phone: We are still looking into a router that would allow us to make Vonage calls from our regular phones without needing to keep the computer on all day or use a headset.  That may take a while, since the router is unavailable and it is not so easy to find specialized electronics like this around here.

Selling our Van in the US: We recently sold our Sienna minivan back in NH, so we are very thankful for that. Praise the Lord!  We were very happy with the price we got for it and so glad that a family from our church got the van. 

The 2000 VW Bus we have made a deposit on. 

Buying a VW Bus in Hungary: I have put in a great deal of effort during the past 3 weeks to shop for a family van mostly using public transit and walking, although we rented a van twice to go out shopping for a van.  But with city traffic and language barriers, it was very slow going.  Vehicles here are much more expensive than in the US, and there is a great deal of corruption in the used auto marketplace.  So we were warned not to try this on our own.   At the recommendation of our friends here, we decided to hire a trusted expert to help us whom they referred us to.   Within 24 hours after we hired him, he found us an excellent used one that is 8 years old and owned by a mechanic who has maintained it meticulously.  This was truly an answer to prayer.  It will cost us about the same amount of money we made altogether from the sale of both the car and minivan in the States. So we gave a deposit to the seller and once the money is wired to us from the US we will purchase it.  Then the man we hired will take it for two days to get all the paperwork done for us including taxes, inspection, etc.  We hope to have the van on the road by 11-20-08. 

Buying household items: We are very grateful that we have been able to purchase household items like, dishes, glasses, a vacuum cleaner, washer and dryer, office chairs, printer, computer speakers, iron and ironing board.  These are major accomplishments when everything is so far away and we are using buses or subways.  Praise the Lord!

Residence Permits and Visas: We recently took a 1.5 hour trip across town using two buses, a subway, and an electric tram to pick up our approved visas and residence permits allowing us to stay for one year -- the standard length of time given the first time you receive a visa here.  Praise the Lord.

Contact with Eastern European leaders: I have begun gradually reaching out by telephone to Eastern European indigenous church leaders whom we know in other countries.  It’s been so good to be in touch with them.  We would love to have them come to Budapest for a visit.  Since I am very busy getting the family settled in and helping Jennifer prepare for the new baby’s arrival, it will not be possible to make any long trips away from home base for now.  In order for me to eventually visit them, I will need to buy a reliable car in the next few months that I can rely on for these upcoming trips around Eastern Europe.

Some Obvious Difference: Some of the differences we have observed besides the language: 1) we live in the land of perpetual barking.  Every home in our neighborhood seems to have a dog and they bark continuously at all hours for any and every reason, 2) the usual odor of something burning in the air, 3) the smog in the city, 4) the school actually rings an old-fashioned school bell at the start of the day, 5) many people drinking alcohol out in public, as well as public drunkenness, 6) the return policy at retail stores is 1, 2, or 3 days, not the standard 30 days we are accustomed to in the States; 7) the clothes dryers do not have vent hoses, so they separate out the water from the moist air from inside the machine, which means it takes 3 times as long to dry the clothes.

Culture and Spiritual Need: There is a great need spiritually, even right here in our community.   In this city of 2.2 million people, we have found that the culture is very sensual and materialistic, which is very common in other parts of Europe as well. We know that only Jesus can fill the inner void they are trying to satisfy.   Pray for the Lord to open the hearts of Eastern Europeans and draw them to Himself.

Worship: We have been having church right here at home as a family, since we are not yet connected with a local church.  That has been going great and the Lord is meeting with us during our times of worship together.  We are also delighted to have received an invitation to attend church at the only evangelical church we are aware of near our community.  It is about 15 minutes drive from here or a 1.5-hour walk, so we have seen no gospel outreach at all in our part of the city.  We hope to visit this church soon.

New Partners: The Lord has continued to slowly add ministry partners to our team, even since we have arrived, so we are very grateful for that.  Praise the Lord.

Contacts on the field: We have already been in touch with other missionaries here who live an hour away on the other side of the city to the south of Budapest. They have been a great help to us and one couple has already visited us here at our home.  This was Jim and Brenda Puhr, whom we have been associated with for the past two years. This is the missionary couple we visited here in 2006. Jim plans to introduce me to the church leaders he is connected with around Eastern Europe.

Discipleship contacts: Meanwhile I continue to pray that until I am able to travel outside Hungary that the Lord would put some local nationals here in our lives to reach out for the sake of the gospel. Please pray with me on this.

Next steps and prayer needs: Our immediate next steps to pray about include:

1. For the glorious day the Lord gave us to celebrate Jennifer's birthday. 
2. Actually purchasing the VW bus and putting it on the rode, 
3. Finding an OBGYN or midwife for Jennifer
4. Getting a Hungarian landline telephone and a Hungarian cell phone
5. Picking up our V-Phone and connect it
6. Find a way to connect our Vonage phone without having to leave our PC on
7. Buying furniture, incl. wardrobes, beds etc (we are still sleeping on air mattress & children are still living out of suitcases since September),
8. Placing Faith into kindergarten, as the local one is already filled to capacity
9. Language acquisition including finding language tutors for ourselves and the children, 
10. Visiting the church we have been invited to, and 
11. Finding a reliable babysitter. 

Please pray that the Lord will help us and guide us in all of these as well as provide for every need.

We love you and can definitely feel your prayers.  Things are happening that could only be the Lord working them out.  Thank you so much for your partnership in this ministry.

Love from all of us,

The Lacroixs

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