Merry Christmas!!!

By the time you read this, Christmas in Hungary will be well into the day. So, we have been celebrating the birth of our Savior for several hours now! Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas Day. We promised to share a little about how Hungarians celebrate Christmas. The following is an excerpt from a monthly newsletter that comes out for the benefit of expats living in Hungary:

In Hungary on December 24th, everything closes around noon, or by 4 PM at the latest. All public transportation stops as well. People get home by that time, and start putting up the tree. (It's rarely done before the 24th - You will not see decorated Christmas trees in Hungary before December 24, except perhaps in stores for advertising purposes!) So, the afternoon and early evening of Christmas Eve is occupied by decorating the tree, together, with the family.
Traditional Hungarian tree lights always included candles and sparklers.

According to Hungarian custom, Christmas tree decorations always include very special holiday candies, wrapped in bright gold, red, or other colored foil and tied with bows, called Szaloncukor. These are chocolate on the outside, with marzipan, raspberry, orange or other flavored jellies inside. Some time before Christmas, Hungarian children have already written their letters to baby Jesus, or "Jézuska," much in the same way American children might write letters to Santa Claus. They tell baby Jesus what presents they want for Christmas. Then they leave their letters, on a windowsill for example, to be picked up by angel messengers during the night, while the children are sleeping, and to be "delivered" to baby Jesus! Baby Jesus and the angels will then deliver their gift requests on the night of December 24.

Definitely different from American customs! But the "custom" that the Brannon family desires for all people is the recognition that God sent His Son in flesh to the world to save His people from their sins. Isn't that amazing that God would love us that much??

We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!! We send our love and prayers to you......

brannons@scsonline.com

Check back later for Christmas Day pictures.

Just In Time

We're very glad that the construction outside our house has finally finished! It lasted almost 3 months and we thought it would never end. Check out our September blogs if you missed seeing what a mess it all was. It's been a little tricky getting to the places we needed to go with all the heavy equipment blocking our garage door. But we've decided it was worth the hassle since we now have a very nice street, driveway, and sidewalk. Also, things finished just in time for the predicted weather forecast of snow showers for the next few days! It wouldn't be fun to have all that dirt and snow together---MUD!!!

brannons@scsonline.com

Happy Birthday, Meredith

Meredith is 14 today on the 14th! We actually celebrated yesterday since we're leaving early this morning going out of town for a few days. To us, Meredith is a gift from God and we're blessed to have her in our family!

BSF Team Members

We are SO blessed to be able to serve with such wonderful BSF team members here in Hungary. Bob and Shari Volk, with their granddaughter, Madison, arrived in Budapest in April, 2005. The Volks have become our close friends and fellow workers. All of us serve with BSF but we also serve together to proclaim Christ in any avenue that God allows. The 7 of us have had unique opportunities to plant seeds for the gospel and hopefully to have made some eternal impact on the people here. We are thankful for that! This is a picture of us at our Christmas get-together. We had it a little early since the Volks are going back to the states for a couple of weeks for Christmas.

brannons@scsonline.com

A Sunny Day

Yes, these are pictures showing the sun! Never would have thought we all would be so thankful for a beautiful, sunny day. But we are grateful. It's been over 2 weeks since we've had a sunny day like today and we are thanking God for the weather. No snow yet! Hope wherever you are in the world, it's terrific weather there, too. But with or without sun, isn't it still a wonderful day to praise the Son? The Son of God, that is!

brannons@scsonline.com

"The Son is the radiance of God's glory...." Hebrews 1:3

Mikulas Nap (Nicholas Day)

Happy St. Nicholas Day! In Hungary, Santa has nothing to do with Christmas. He comes today, December 6, to visit children everywhere. He'll make his rounds among the shops, schools, and parades to give children some candy and chocolate in red wrappings. Another part of this day is the custom of children setting out their boots or shoes in the windowsill on the night of December 5. During the night, if the children have been really good this past year, they might get tangerines, candies, and even small presents from St. Nicholas. But if the children have been naughty, then they will get a lump of coal or a bunch of switches! We won't tell you what Olivia and Meredith got in their shoes! :)

Check back on our blogs to find out more about Christmas customs that the Hungarians celebrate. It's very fascinating and we are still learning about this culture.

brannons@scsonline.com

Happy First Sunday of Advent!

The girls got the opportunity to sing on the praise team today at church. Hark the Herald Angels Sing! was one of the Christmas hymns we sung. We just love Christmas music that praises the birth of the Lord Jesus!

Correct Mailing Information

Just in the last few days, we've gotten some email traffic from people trying to clarify our mailing address and the process to mail a letter to Hungary. Thanks for your interest in the mail! We LOVE mail!!

You can address it to any of us by name. Sample address:

Olivia Brannon
Tavasz Utca 4
Budaors 2040
Hungary

Please be sure to put the country! We just got a Christmas card in the mail and it didn't have the country name on it. Don't know how that arrived here!

It costs 84 cents to mail a letter to our address. You don't have to go to the post office for a special stamp. Just plop about 3 U.S. stamps on there and drop it in a mailbox! We would love to hear from you and we're pretty good about sending a reply, too. :) Thanks so much. You all are the greatest!

brannons@scsonline.com

Things We Like About Budapest

Goodness, we heard from a lot of you concerning the recent blog about little things we missed! Thanks for reading our blogs and responding. It was fun to hear about things that YOU loved about the United States.

But to make it balanced, we thought we would come up with a few things that we DO have here in Budapest that we particularly appreciate and thank God for:

*A BSF ladies' class that has the privilege of studying Romans
*An International church to worship with on Sundays
*Electricity! We rarely have problems with this and we know other missionaries in other parts of the world sometimes do.
*The Internet
*A garage to put our car. This is wonderful during cold months!
*Plenty of food. A little different than what we're used to but we're not starving.
*A good landlord
*Wonderful ministry teammates to work with here
*A reliable car that gets us anywhere we need to go
*A great public transportation system

Just a few things but our list could be longer. We do feel the Lord's grace and protection here and we know that is because of your prayers for us. Thank you!

brannons@scsonline.com

Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! Thanksgivings here are obviously a little different. But this year will be especially different since Curt and Meredith are in the states. We're so glad to know that Curt and Meredith are getting to go to Headland, Alabama, to be a part of the big Thanksgiving celebration there. This is Curt's side of the family and he has many relatives there that mean so much to all of us. Every Thanksgiving, anyone connected to the Brannon family that's within driving distance of Headland, will come and celebrate together. Many times in the past, we've attended this event. So much food! So much talking and visiting! So much fun! It's a blessing to be with family members that we rarely have the opportunity to see. Curt and Meredith will stay with his grandparents, Nana and D-daddy. We know from past history that Curt and Meredith will be treated like royalty at their house. So, hello from Shay and Olivia to everyone in Headland! We love and miss you and send hugs by Curt and Meredith. Eat some turkey and dressing for us!

brannons@scsonline.com

Little Things

Shay and Olivia were thinking today about little things that we love and used to take SO for granted when we lived in the states! Would you like to know some of those things?? Maybe you have little things you love, too, and appreciate about life in America!

Things we had there but not here:

*Mail on Saturday
*Chocolate chips for chocolate chip cookies
*Two cars
*Walmart and Target
*Newspapers in English
*Clothing using American sizing and not European sizing
*Waffle makers
*HGTV
*Reliable mail system
*Beautiful Christian church buildings
*Christian bookstores (we have one little one here)
*Central heating
*Magnolia trees for Christmas decorating
*Large ovens and strong microwaves
*English measuring system instead of metric

Oh, well. Nothing to lose sleep over and nothing that keeps us from finding joy in living here and serving God here! The most important thing we appreciate about America is YOU--our family and friends!!!

brannons@scsonline.com

U.S. Visit

Curt and Meredith will be leaving tomorrow for a 2 week visit to the states. Shay and Olivia will stay in Budapest and hold the fort down here. Hopefully, Curt and Meredith will get to see many of you to thank you for your support of us. Please pray for their safety in their travel and for protection for Shay and Olivia in Budapest. Thanks so much for caring about us!

brannons@scsonline.com

So Much Fun!

Shay's working on Meredith's hair before the performance. Lots and lots of hairspray to last!

Not a great shot but one of the few taken during the actual performance and Meredith's solo.

Check out Meredith's blog later in the week for more pictures and how she felt about the opportunity to be in the Cinderella play. About 260 people came the first night and about 250 the second night. Meredith didn't seem nervous at all performing in front of all those people!

Cinderella

Meredith has her Cinderella play this weekend. She's really been working hard attending practice, learning her lines, and singing the parts she's responsible for. These pictures are from one of the Saturday practices they had. We're really excited that she's been given this fun opportunity and she's had a terrific time being a part of the production. The International Christian School of Budapest is putting the play on with the middle school students. Although Meredith is homeschooled, they were very gracious to allow her to audition for one of the parts. She plays the godmother in the play. We'll let you know how it goes!

brannons@scsonline.com

Dr. Hannah

Dr. John Hannah is in Budapest this week teaching at a Campus Crusade event. He also preached at our home church here, Danube International Church. Shay had the opportunity to sit under Dr. Hannah's teaching while she was at BSF Institute this summer. She found out during that time that Dr. Hannah would be in Budapest in November. So, we got an opportunity to meet him again and greet him on behalf on the BSFers here in Budapest.

Lunch With The Prime Minister??

The man facing the camera is the Prime Minister of Hungary. The lady to his right is April Foley, the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. She's new to Hungary and took the place of George Walker.

Curt and Shay tried to look professional in hopes that no one would realize we've never been at a luncheon with a Prime Minister and a U.S. Ambassador!

Curt and Shay got an incredible opportunity to attend a American/Hungary Chamber of Commerce Luncheon this past Friday. The guest of honor at the luncheon was the Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany. Also in attendance was the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. It was a really big crowd because the Prime Minister was to speak and then to answer questions from the audience. Of course, we kept our mouths shut because we had nothing to contribute and we were obviously out of our element! Hopefully, we didn't embarass ourselves too much and didn't look like rednecks from the country! :) The lunch was delicious and it was a rare opportunity to be among people that will directly affect the future of Hungary.

brannons@scsonline.com

Budapest Demonstrations

Some of you may have seen pictures like this on the news this week. Thanks for checking on us to see what was going on during the October 23rd celebration of the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets. The uprising happened 50 years ago this week and this year's celebration was supposed to be a big one. The celebration was marred by demonstrations like this. Many of the demonstrations were peaceful but some protesters are still very angry about the political situation and the current Prime Minister. We stayed away from the area and we feel that there will be no more demonstrations like this in the near future. Please pray for the peace of Hungary--the peace that only comes through the Lord Jesus Christ.

brannons@scsonline.com

International Day of Prayer

Did you know that Sunday, November 12th, is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church? In many countries, our brothers and sisters in Christ can not worship God freely and proclaim openly their faith in Christ. They are persecuted physically, socially, or even financially. Many have their lives threatened. We must pray for them and be informed about their struggles! An organization that tracks these situations and informs the world about them is The Voice of the Martyrs. Their website is: www.persecution.com Mark your calendars for November 12th to pray and why not consider adding this issue to your ongoing prayer list? We feel the need to do that at our house!

brannons@scsonline.com

Men's Group

Lunch on Thursdays is men's small group time at the Brannons. Several men gather during their lunch hour for a quick bite to eat and then discussion on issues that face Christian men today. A nice size group comes each week and several of these men attended the group last Spring. There have been 5 or 6 new men that have joined this fall. After the group time is over, most of the guys have to quickly get back to their jobs. But there are a few men that are willing to stay a little longer to pray specifically for a potential men's BSF group. This prayer group has been a great encouragement to Curt and to his fellow BSF teammate, Bob. Please pray with us that God would allow men in Budapest to become interested in a BSF class and that men would be willing to participate as leaders in this future class.

brannons@scsonline.com

Sunday Preaching

Thanks for all the prayers for Curt as he prepared to preach at our Budapest home church. He preached last Sunday on some verses from Nehemiah. Ronnie Stevens, our pastor here, needed to be in the states for a couple of weeks so he asked Curt to preach for him. All the Brannon ladies think Dad/Curt did a great job!


brannons@scsonline.com