Monday, July 12, 2010

Adventure in Challenge Park

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy. Sooooo many things happened and I didn't have time to update my blog. That's just life.
We've spent most of the last two weeks with the Wootens. In Hungary and Croatia. We will spend the next two weeks with them in Hungary and the Ukraine.
I will publish some of the events of the last two weeks. Hope you enjoy them.

On the 26th of June a Saturday morning we went to Csillebérc and decided to see how tough we are by going to the Challenge Park. Our kids had the greatest fun and we actually were very challenged by the different courses up in the trees.
We had fun as you can see in these pictures:



Here are some videos as well:

Diana & Robi:

Challenge Park #1 - Diana & Robi from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Enikő:

Challenge Park #2 - Enikő from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Andrew:

Challenge Park #3 - Andrew from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Enikő:

Challenge Park #4 - Enikő from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Virág:

Challenge Park #5 - Virág from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Lena:

Challenge Park #6 - Lena from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Virág:

Challenge Park #7 - Virág from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

and finally Andrew:

Challenge Park #8 - Andrew from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

We had tremendous fun. Got extremely tired and there were points on some of the courses where I didn't know how I would find the strength to finish. But God has provided.
I am very encouraged by our growing friendship with the Wootens. Their love for us and for our family is amazing. May God bless them for being there for us.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Robi's First Pentathlon Competition

My son, Robi (9 years old) has recently joined MAFC (my former team for playing volleyball) to train and compete in pentathlon. This is the sport where you have to compete in five different events (swimming, fencing, shooting, horseback-riding and running). Very cool sport. At Robi's age they only do two events, swimming and running. Last Saturday we went to Robi's first competition. He has been only training for two months and has improved a lot for those two months. But we still didn't have any huge expectations for him. He did really well. At the swimming event he was faced with an enormous challenge. When he jumped in his goggles fell from his eyes down to his nose and mouth. That made swimming a lot harder than regular condition. He swam the first two laps like that before adjusting the goggles back to his eyes. Obviously he had no prior experience in competitions. I was so proud of him, for the fact that he endured the challenge of the goggles and still didn't give up but continued to swim. Even with that Robi came in 25 out of 30 kids after the swimming and was able to improve to finish on the 24th place after running.

So here are the videos that I took during the event. First the swimming:


Szabad Robi Öttusa Diákseregszemle úszás from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Then the running (he's number is 25):


Szabad Robi Öttusa Diákseregszemle futás from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Here are the final results of the meet:













There is definitely room for improvement, but it is a good start and I am a proud Daddy to be able to be a part of it.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Hiking trip with 5 kids

As the school ended we had some of the kids' friends over. One of the things we did was a short hiking trip in the Buda hills (between Budakeszi and Telki). We had a lot of fun as you can see on the pictures. One of the exciting things was to do a cook out. Getting a fire going from the wet wood that was up on the hill was extremely challenging but after about 2 minutes I succeeded. We enjoy the traditional baking lard, Hungarian tradition - although we cheated a little and used smoked bacon. The kids were playing happily - not much patience to do the baking. And we were just one big happy gang.




It sure was a cool time. Hope to do something like that again.

End of the School Year

Last Wednesday the school year ended for both of my kids (Robi 3rd, Eni 1st grade). On Friday they had the closing ceremonies and they received their end of the year report cards. I was so proud of them. Both of them got straight 'A's. I was proud of Robi for him to have a positive (and not stressful) motivation of his own to try for straight 'A's and I was proud of Eni who did have some challenges in adjusting to the rigors and regiments of school after a quite easy going Kindergarten. But they both did it.

Here is Eni receiving her report card (and a book as an award):


Enikő bizonyítványosztás - 1.a from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

And here is Robi's class receiving their report cards (Robi is at 9 minutes).


3.a osztály bizonyítványosztás - Bocskai from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

God was good to us by leading us to this school three months ago. It made school life a lot more enjoyable and successful for both of our kids. And we are grateful for that.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Fathers' Day

The third Sunday of June is Fathers' Day in the Anglo-Saxon part of the world. This celebration does not exists in Hungary or Eastern-Europe. I wish it did. I want to wish a great Fathers' Day to every father. What you and I are doing as fathers is terribly important. I believe being a father taught me more about God than a lot of other things. I believe seeing my children makes me want to be a so much better father for them. Please, pray for me as I pray for you so that we all can be godly fathers.



May this video inspire us to be the fathers God wants us to be...

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Bible, is it from God or men? - scientific presentation by John Oakes

This summer is just getting better and better. John Oakes is going to travel through Eastern Europe and visit Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia. John is a chemistry-professor in San Diego and the president of the Apologetics Research Society. He came to Budapest two years ago and taught on understanding pain and suffering. It was excellent. This time he will do a Bible school during two mornings and an evidences class in one evening (July 5th). I look forward to seeing him and to translating him. :-) Here is the invitation (in Hungarian).

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Wootens in Budapest

Shawn and Lena Wooten are great leaders and friends of ours and this summer we have the privilege to have them in Budapest for a prolonged time. We have had so much fun already and it's just the beginning. I can't wait to see the impact they will have on my life, my family and the church in Budapest.
I am grateful to God that he provides us with people that bring inspiration, encouragement and a call to take things higher.
We will have a retreat together, visit the church in Zagreb, do a teen and preteen camp and the list just goes on and on.
Pray for them and their time in Budapest.

Saturday Make-a-House-a-Home and T-Home Kids Program

On Saturday together with some disciples in our Bible Talk I went to help paint a temporary housing facility that HOPE worldwide Hungary Make-a-House-a-Home program targeted for this year. This facility provides temporary housing for families (and single Moms with kids). We are helping with painting it so it would be more of a home than a shelter. We had a great time. There was a room (just about 8 m2 - 80 square-feet) that one family just left from that morning and was expecting another family to move in later that day. We got to work on that and also on one of the staff bathrooms. The time in the facility helped me tremendously to be grateful. I pray for the families that are there so they would find permanent housing solutions but even more that they would find God. I didn't take a camera so I don't have any pictures to share here.

Meanwhile my wife took our kids and Patrik (one of Robi's good friends from church) to the T-Home Kids' Program. They had fun and took lots of photos. Here they are:



I am so happy that we can have a life with purpose and relationships. God is good.

International Leadership Conference - Miami, Florida September, 2010

This September we will have the International Leadership Conference in Miami. The theme for the Conference will be "The Mission". I believe that the mission Jesus calls us to is incredible inspiring. I wanted to share this short video with you so you can get inspired too.



Virág and I look forward to going to this Conference and come back with a united vision of world evangelism.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Mind Change Moments: Take Heart

Mind Change Moments: Take Heart

Tom Jones is writing a blog to inspire Christians around the world. Today's article made me identify so much with what Tom is going through. I don't have MS but I also have trouble in this life as Jesus predicted. And I also need to look to God and take heart.

I'm grateful for people like Tom who help me see God.

Read the article, I'd love to hear what you think...

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Hiking trip with Virág

Virág and I took this Monday morning to spend some time in God's nature. This time we went to Börzsöny, the hill country north of Budapest. The reason being that this will be the scene of our first father-son hiking trip later on this summer. We had great weather although the soil was pretty wet and muddy. We fought with the mosquitoes a lot - thank God for repellents.
We went up to Királyrét and started out from there. Here is the route we took:

From Hiking trip with Virág - 6/7/2010

It was quite an uphill hike on the first part. But we managed.
It was amazing to see the results of the storms we had lately. We've seen so many fallen trees it was unbelievable. Patches of the forest were destroyed. Here are the pictures we took:



The Börzsöny is beautiful. I look forward to coming back here with my son and some of the men in the church. We had a great adventure. :-)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Family Day in the kids' school

On Saturday, June 5th we had a great event at the kids' school, a Family Day. We changed schools only three months ago and were really enjoying the new school. This is a lot better match for our children. So we looked forward to getting to know some of the parents as well. We had so much fun. The theme for the Family Day was the 80s. So people were asked to dress up in clothing from the 80s and each class came up with a production featuring those years. Each class cooked something as well, Robi's class did the classic potato-paprika dish (paprikáskrumpli) and Eni's class wanted to do "lángos" a traditional Hungarian fried bread but we've had trouble making them on a portable electric stove. Finally we ended up using the school's kitchen and the food came out great.
With the parents in Robi's class we performed too. (Virág and I found out about 20 minutes prior to the performance.) We featured some well known TV advertisements from the 80s. Here is the video:


Szülők produkciója - 3. a. from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Here is the video from Robi's 3rd grade class. They sang some old pioneer songs:


3. a osztály produkciója from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Then Enikő's 1st grade class performed a morning exercise which was typical of youth camps of the 80s:


1. a. osztály produkciója from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

All in all we've had a ton of fun...
We've only made a few pictures, here they are:



You can find some more pictures at the school's website.

Parenting Class

For the last year we've been doing a series of parenting classes. The idea for the classes came from John and Karen Louis from Singapore. The classes they've developed use principles form the Bible and schema-therapy (cutting edge field in psychology) and employ movie clips to convey the messages more powerfully.
Here is their website: http://www.movietherapy.org.sg/movietherapy/

We took this program and use it to help parents in Hungary. The Hungarian website is: http://remeny.hu/gyerekneveles/
The class was entitle: Szívem csücske (Apple of My Eye) and was on the topic of love, nurture and attention. These are the things that help children develop their self-esteem.
We had a great time preparing for the class and enjoyed teaching together (Virág and I teach this class together which is a great source of joy for us).
You can listen to the audio of the class (in Hungarian) here. Also we've made a few pictures before, during and after the class, hope you enjoy them, here they are:



Thanks for everyone who came.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

What's up with all the sugar...

I'm trying to keep my weight down for I don't know how long. It is an uphill battle. Recently I decided to stop eating sweets for a couple of months. Then I received this article (in Hungarian) that made me think a lot. It is about the idea of concentrated sugar being a DRUG. I'm not a hard core naturalist when it comes to food, but the article does ring a bell. If you don't speak Hungarian try to translate this with Google translator...
I hope to report some good numbers on the weight loss program soon.

Ártalmatlan összetételek? - a fruktózzal kapcsolatos kutatásokról


Édesíteni, sózni, savanyítani... el akartok keseríteni?

A mai ember mindent édesíteni, sózni, savanyítani akar. Miért nem jó nekünk a dolgok íze olyannak amilyen? Régen jó volt! Az a baj, hogy teljesen eltolódott az ízérzékelésünk az utóbbi pár száz évben.
A szervezet számára pont abban a koncentrációban tökéletes minden íz, ahogy azt a Természet megalkotta. Miért kell nekünk a szőlőből magas koncentrációjú szőlőcukrot gyártani. 1 kanálnyi szőlőcukor kinyeréséhez több 10, esetenként 100 kg szőlő szükséges! Mikor tudnánk mi megenni egy ültő helyünkben 100 kg szőlőt? Bele is halnánk! Ugyanúgy, ahogy szép lassan belehalunk a koncentrált cukrok fogyasztásába! De ugyanez vonatkozik a gyümölcscukrokra, a répacukorra, és minden olyan dologra, amit nagy koncentrációban kap a szervezet.
Az édes íz csak egy DROG! Könnyű rászokni (csecsemőként a szülők már rászoktatnak minket), és szinte lehetetlen leszokni róla. Az édes íz valójában nem finom, az csak egy illúzió, amelynek függői vagyunk. Egy illúzió, amelyet nem a szervezetünk kíván, hisz azt csak módszeresen rombolja, öli, hanem az agyunk. Pont úgy játszódik le a folyamat, mint az alkoholistáknál és a drogosoknál. És nézzük csak egy kicsit jobban meg, hogy egy alkoholistánál és egy drogosnál mi váltja ki a szer utáni függőséget? Többekközt a CUKOR - az ÉDES gontalanság illúziója. Biokémiánk belemenekül az édesbe a KESERŰSÉG elől! Pedig a lelki keserűségünket nem fogja az édesség megoldani, csak mi magunk!
Kutatások szerint az édes íz függőségéről a legnehezebb leszokni! Nehezebb a dolguk a cukorfüggőknek, mint a valódi drogosoknak, ugyanis a lelki, az agyi és a biokémiai függőség a cukor esetében a legerősebb. És az elvonási tünetek is, főleg egy gyermeknél.
Maga a kétségbeesett kérdés, amikor rádöbbentünk, hogy a cukor mennyire káros: "Úristen, mivel fogok akkor édesíteni?" - arra utal, hogy mi nem egyszerűen biokémiai  cukorfüggők vagyunk, hanem kőkeményen édes íz függők, amelyet már az agyunk diktál, meg a lelkünk! Mindegy, hogy mi, csak édes legyen! És ez a veszélyesebb! A drogot is addig könnyebb letenni, amíg csak a tested kívánja! Ha már az agyad és a lelked is, akkor nagyon nehéz, mert mindig meg tudja magyarázni az agyad, hogy ez neked JÓ!
A távolkeleti étkezés tudománya azt tartja, hogy a négy fő alapíznek minden ételünkben benne kéne lennie naggyából egyenlő arányban. Ugyanis akkor leszünk egészségesek. Minden mindennel harmóniában kell, hogy álljon! Ehhez képest a nyugati társadalomban túlnyomórészt az édes íz dominál, majd a sós. A másik kettő alig. Meg is lehet nézni a nyugati társadalmak egészségi állapotát...
A mi társadalmunk DROGnak használta a cukrot, és függővé tettek minket. Minden ételünkben benne van, mert az élelmiszeripar beleteszi, a háborúkban ételjegyre cukrot osztottak, cukorral jutalmazunk, cukorral ünneplünk! Jó így a társadalomnak, mert minden függő ember irányíthatóbb! Ráadásul időnap előtt meghalunk a cukor okozta betegségekben, nem kell minket öreg korunkra eltartani.
Ahogy itt elmélkedek a reggeli zöldteám mellett, eszembe jutott egy cikksorozat itt az oldalon, amelyet bizonyára nagyon kevesen olvastatok, mert az édes élet illúziójában magukat ringatók nem olvasnak "ilyen" cikkeket, hisz "ez" őket nem érinti.
Akkor hát lenne most egy kérésem: Mindenki, aki szeret édesíteni, aki veszettül kívánja néha az édességet, aki nem bír meglenni csokika, fagyika, sütike nélkül, az olvassa el az én külön tiszteletteljes kérésemre ezt a cikksorozatot úgy, hogy közben a cukor és a sajátmaga kapcsolatára gondol.
Bocsánat a kemény szavakért, de néha meg kell tennem, hogy kimondom őket!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Robi's recorder exam

My son has started to learn to play the recorder at the beginning of this school year. My wife and I went to his exam last Friday and were so proud of him.


Szabad Róbert - furulya vizsga - Zeneiskola from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

That's my boy!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Family Weekend with Hiking Trips

Last weekend (May 22-24) we spent some great time at Virág's parents. They live in a small village at the southern part of Hungary called Szálka.

View Larger Map
The weather was pretty rough and we got caught by a couple of rainstorms but we still had a great time in the surrounding hills. Virág's Mom, Erzsi came with us to one of the trips.



One fun part of the trip was when Robi got stuck in the mud and stepped out of one of his shoes as a result. We laughed so hard. It was also great to see the kids have so much fun together climbing the deer statue at the center of the village.

From Family Hiking Trip - Szálka

I am grateful for the family God gave and look forward to a lot of great times together.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Györgyi Pál's baptism

On May 21st we've had two baptisms in the church. An older lady and a young Campus student. I don't remember the last time I've seen two baptisms in one day. But it was amazing.
Györgyi is a fired up young woman with a great heart for both God and people.


Pál Györgyi keresztelő - Györgyi Pál's baptism from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

I pray for many more conversions in Budapest.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Judit Nagy's baptism

On Friday, May 21st we've had two baptisms in the church. One of them was a former colleague of a disciple. Judit is a grandmother already but seeing her joy and fire about becoming a Christian was so refreshing. Here is her baptism video:


Nagy Judit keresztelője - Judit Nagy's baptism from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Families Retreat - Vajta

This weekend we've had a great families retreat. Over 120 people including the kids. This is the 5th year we're doing this and it is becoming better and better. The theme this year was Anger Management. Virág and I taught on understanding the nature of anger and how to deal with it. First in ourselves and then in our children. But the highlight of the whole weekend as always was the fellowship. Seeing our kids play together and have fun together.

From Családos Kirándulás - Vajta

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Hiking trip with God - túra Istennel



I've decided to spend more time outdoors in God's creation to be closer to him. So I've done this hiking trip of 10 km on Monday which was fantastic. In the three hours I've only met with one group of bikers at the peak, but other than that it was just me and my God. It was fantastic. I look forward to doing this more often in the future. You can click on the picture to see all the pictures I took on the trip.

Peti