Happy Birthday Olivia!

Happy 17th birthday to Olivia. Today we celebrate Olivia's birthday with a "ladies' tea" at our house for a few of her friends. These pictures are from yesterday's family celebration of her birthday. Thank you to those that sent gifts and cards. She had a pile of gifts to open! She'll probably tell a little more on her blog about the party.

Did Someone Hit Our House?

It certainly looks that way! Our landlord was over today checking on some things. Curt was here at the house when the landlord arrived and Curt went outside to talk to Elemer. Elemer pointed to the concrete section above the garage door. Looked like a dent or a small crack. Earlier in the week, we noticed a lot of white stuff on the ground right outside the garage but just thought some kids had thrown some rocks around. It never occurred to us to look up and see that the wall had been hit! We're thinking the neighbors next door might have had something to do with it. They run an upholstery business out of their house and there is constant activity over there. Trucks pull up all the time with furniture to be dropped off and to pick up things. A lot of times their trucks block us in. So, the dent was high enough to make us think it had to be a truck. Well, no great damage, and it can be easily repaired.

But it IS interesting that the BSF study last week covered the part in Romans 13 about loving your neighbor as yourself! Seems like the Lord gave the Brannon family the opportunity to put that principle into action. We can thank God that He has given a way for this Hungarian family to live a decent living in a very difficult economy. And maybe we can be a little more understanding when they're loading furniture early in the morning or one of their trucks is parked in our driveway. It's great to have Hungarian neighbors!

"Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Romans 13:9b-10

brannons4christ@yahoo.com

Missionaries to Serbia

This is a recent picture of Olivia and Curt with our friends from Serbia, Yarko and Elena. Yarko and Elena are missionaries to Serbia and are supported by First Bible in Decatur. (www.fbc.org) Curt has had the privilege many times of visiting these two special people in Serbia and has led several groups from FBC to visit them, as well. This picture was taken when Yarko and Elena were passing through Budapest on their way to see family in Vienna. What they're holding are hinges and doorknobs that our family brought back from the states. The hinges and doorknobs are needed for the church in Erdevik, Serbia. This is the church that the team from FBC will be working on when they arrive for their mission trip in a couple of weeks. We'll update you with new pictures of the work in Serbia soon. Please pray for Yarko and Elena. They serve in a spiritually dark and difficult country.

brannons4christ@yahoo.com

Prayer Needs

We wanted to pass along a few prayer requests to those of you that would have time to pray for us. Thank you for continuing to pray on our behalf to our Father!

*Curt leaves Sunday for a conference in Turkey. Please pray for safety for him and for the rest of us here in Budapest.

*Time is fast approaching for the work team from FBC that will arrive for the mission trip to Serbia. Please pray for the details that need to be worked out for the trip to go smoothly. Pray for safety for the team and good health. Also, the men desire to be a blessing and encouragement to their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in Erdevik, Serbia, where the team will be serving.

*Pray for class members in the BSF class to remain committed to the end of the study. The last day of class is May 29th.

*Pray for all of us as we come to the end of another "ministry year" (May) and need to make wise decisions for our future.

We are aware of the terrible tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. Our minds can't comprehend such evil and horror. Our prayers are with the families and friends of the victims. Please let us know if you are somehow connected to this tragic event. We want to pray for you.

brannons4christ@yahoo.com

Update on School

It''s hard to believe that it's already mid-April and we're fast approaching another year of homeschool completed. We've homeschooled for 11 years (12 years if you count kindergarten!) and we continue to find it a blessing to our family.

Olivia is finishing up her Junior year and Meredith will soon complete her 8th grade year. Both girls have worked really hard to stay on track this school year---despite our crazy, erratic family schedules. Our last trip to the states threw us off a little on our usual school schedule. So, we'll probably school further into June that we normally do. But it's worth it since we got the chance to see family and friends in March!

It's quite a challenge to homeschool here in Budapest. Access to resources is limited and we have to bring most things we need back with us from the states. For example, Olivia is taking chemistry this year. She and Curt do as many of the experiments, as possible. We had to order a chemistry lab package from our curriculum company and bring it back in our luggage. Now that was tricky! Also, we don't have the great libraries that we're used to having. We are thankful, though, for a small Christian library run by some missionaries here. And we also have some access to the library of the Christian school in Diosd.

We do plan to continue homeschooling and Olivia will graduate next year as a life-long homeschooler, God willing. All of us are in the process of determining God's direction for her next step in her education. She's looking at several colleges and has had opportunity to visit a few. We would greatly appreciate your joining us in prayer for this important decision.

brannons4christ@yahoo.com

Contact Information

Just to answer some questions we've had about our contact information:

*Yes, we do have an American address that is treated like a permanent address for us. The address is PO Box 1943 Madison, AL 35758. This PO Box is checked regularly by Shay's sister and brother-in-law and any mail that needs immediate attention, they graciously take care of that. You're welcome to send mail to us to this address. But please remember that it will be a while before the mail reaches us and we can reply to you. Shay's sister takes the mail received, bundles it up, and sends the mail periodically in a global package to us.

*Yes, we can receive mail in Budapest. It seems like it's getting shorter and shorter for a piece of mail to reach us. It used to take about 10 days for mail to arrive. Now, many times mail from the states reaches us in a week. Our address here is:

Tavasz Utca 4
Budaors 2040
Hungary

*Update on email addresses: Our main family address is brannons4christ@yahoo.com All our scsonline.com accounts are pretty much obsolete. The girls have individual accounts as well and if you would like those addresses, please email our family address and we'll let you know those. Please know that we DO answer our email and we love receiving email! So, if for some reason you don't get a reply from us, we probably didn't get the original email. Happens all the time. We sometimes even get emails a week or two later after the sender has sent it! Please be patient with us and just resend your email. Thank you!!!

He is Risen!!!

This cross overlooks the village we live in. We hiked up to it yesterday to look out over Budaors and Budapest and to pray for the salvation of the people of these places.

Near the cross are some cave-like cuts in the mountain. We think they look just like empty tombs. Very appropriate we thought to have the cross and tomb together!

Easter Morning in Budapest

Olivia and Meredith sang on the praise team for Easter

Shay and Curt taught Sunday School for grades K-2. There were 19 of them! In this picture, the children are putting together a large-size puzzle. Then, we shared the Easter story with the kids. The children are from different cultures and have varying degrees of English language proficiency.

"He is not here. He has risen, just as He said." Matthew 28:6

Easter Is Coming

Hope this finds everyone enjoying this blessed Holy Week. The significance of this week is incredible, isn't it?! As we look around us here in Budapest, we don't see much activity or evidence that others see the importance of Easter. Just since we arrived here 3 years ago, there have been more and more "Eastery" type things to buy. Eggs, candy, bunnies. We didn't see that much in the stores then. Now, there's been an explosion of things to buy. Well, an explosion in Budapest terms! Budapest will never have as many things to buy as Walmart or Target has! But that's it. It just looks like Budapest has "adopted" what people in the West do for celebration of the beginning of Spring. And now, Easter is just about the eggs, candy, and bunnies. At least in America, you DO see a few things in Walmart or Target that are religious-themed. It's encouraging that there is SOME attempt by these retailers to acknowledge the true meaning of Easter.

So, we have had fun putting out our pretty, painted eggs that we've found in Budapest. And we have several Easter baskets sitting around with bunnies in them. (By the way, they don't do Easter Baskets here. We do our own. Must be an American thing!) But we have been reminded that we need to include the Christian emphasis in our decorating, as well, and to emphasize the crosses that we have hanging in our house. All of those have been put in strategic places to help us remember what an unbelievable sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us.

P.S. We only have brown eggs here. Does anybody have any ideas on how we can dye those to make them look nice??! Guess we're used to the white eggs....

brannons4christ@yahoo.com