The Real Office!

Yes, this is where it all really happens - the kitchen table. Chris is on Facebook in our spare room "office", so this is where I usually work.

Don't you love the office?

As their days draw to a close, what do people say? "I wish I'd spent more time with my family"? Very possibly. One thing they do NOT say is "I wish I'd spent more time at the office"!

We actually have a very nice little office at the Ellel East base, but I'm so glad that I don't have to spend too much time there. This means that when we DO have to be there, it's quite a pleasant experience, but virtually impossible to do any real work, just research and networking. The real work, writing and preparation, has to wait for quiet evenings at home, with no interruptions.

The best "work" of all is teaching and ministering the Kingdom. It's exhausting, but I love it! Things happen!

At home...

At home. Working. Writing e-mails, sorting out travel and payment for next month's Ellel conference in Blackpool, arranging a car service, buying medicines, paying bills at the post office (gas and water), looking at a small patch of black mould on the kitchen ceiling and wondering how to sort it out, long phone conversation with our director about the aftermath of our wonderful/amazing/inspiring conference in Bucharest, now cooking good old fish and chips!

The fun never stops...

Totally amazing conference!

The conference "Healing and the Kingdom" in Bucharest last week was an amazing event. We were able to use the beautiful hall of the Romanian Bible University.
Peter Horrobin and Otto Bixler were on top form, totally led by the Holy Spirit.
The hall was pretty well full for every session. People came from all over Romania and also from Moldova and Bulgaria.
Roger taught two sessions; The Healing and Deliverance Ministry of Jesus, and Relationships and Soul Ties.
Chris Used Jim and Tanya as living visual aids as she taught about Godly Sex and Sexuality.
All through the conference there were times of ministry, and in the last evening people came forward to re-dedicate themselves to following God's destiny for their lives.

However wonderful the conference was, even more amazing was a Pastors' Day on the Thursday before, where over 100 pastors came together in unity to hear Peter Horrobin teach on God's purpose for the church.

On the Sunday after the conference, team members spoke at various Bucharest churches. Roger spoke at two Baptist churches - a traditional one in the morning, and a charismatic one in the afternoon!

In Bucuresti

So, our intrepid team arrived in Bucuresti after an overnight trip. We were two hours late, thanks to the train in front catching fire, but I have to say that Romanian trains are vastly superior to Ukrainian or Russian ones - with one exception. In Ukrainian and Russian trains, there is a constant supply of tea or coffee from the sleeping-car attendant, but in Romania it is apparently "very difficult" to get hot water.

Serbian School

The "ACC" School ("Answering Christ's Call") in Novi Sad, Serbia, got off to a great start as we taught the first two days of this six-day interactive school. Our 32 students were very willing to take part and to put the teaching into immediate action.

The driving time from home to Novi Sad is only about four hours (plus stops and a border crossing), thanks to excellent roads, which makes regular visits there not too arduous from the travel point of view.

Registered with the police

I was so glad here in Serbia this evening that Chris remembered something ... This is Serbia! That means we have to register our arrival with the local police! Our hosts were full of apologies for forgetting about this too, and they quickly took our passports to the local Milicia station. We were more or less within the 24-hour limit for registration. Getting out of Serbia tomorrow might have been very awkward without the registration card.

The ACC course is going well. We have 32 students, a large number for Serbia with its small Christian (non-Orthodox) population. Feedback is very positive. We have discussed ongoing training courses with Margaret Jans, but they all come up against the same problems: nobody can take time off work, nobody can afford to pay a realistic price, and churches cannot afford to sponsor people. However, we know that God has the answer!

Novi Sad (New Garden)

Well, we arrived in Novi Sad, Serbia, after an interesting trip. The car stopped on Hungary's M5. Just stopped, and would only go at 3mph/5kph. The electronic engine management system simply shut down the injectors, as far as I can tell. The "engine warning" light was on.

We crawled to the nearest exit and stopped by a run-down petrol station. The car started again! The revs went up, no problem! But the "engine warning" light was still on. (Handbook advice: "Consult the nearest Citroen agent." Oh thanks.) We carried on, and stopped an hour later for a sandwich and coffee. The engine started again, no problem, and this time there was no warning light. Praise God!

Was this just the "usual discouragement" before an event? Or are we expecting "discouragement" now? We'll never know. But next week, the car will go in for a full electronic health check!

Black Ice

It's been raining this morning, which is very bad news indeed. The frozen roads are coated with a layer of ice. In Szeged, southern Hungary, where we will have to drive through tomorrow on the way to Serbia, nothing is moving. There are no buses running and the government has told people to stay off the roads! We are praying that things will be better tomorrow...

In our Hungarian base, students from Slovakia are starting on a "Creativity Day". Things are happening already, after only 15 minutes. God is at work...

Conspiracy Theory

How's this for a conspiracy theory? I heard it recently in Bulgaria.

The rapid fall of communism in the late 80s and early 90s was actually arranged by communist leaders. As communists they had power but not enough money. By getting rid of communism and becoming capitalists they could not only retain their power but also accumulate much more wealth. The "people" would all welcome this move as they had seen that the capitalist world was wealthier than they were, and capitalism as a concept was very attractive.

The only communist leader who objected to the plan was Romania's Ceausescu, so they had him killed very early in the process. Now all the former communist countries are operating on a pseudo-capitalist system in which the rich and powerful are getting more and more rich and powerful by continuing to exploit the masses in the same way that they did before, only under a different label.

An interesting theory!

Timisoara!

We're just back from two days teaching the Modular School in Timisoara, Romania. There were nearly 200 people there! This is a record. The subject was Acceptance and Belonging, we had some good ministry times, and God was glorified. What more can you ask?

Thanks to the new M0 motorway (Budapest's M25 which now goes more than two-thirds of the way round the city) and the M5, the driving time to Timisoara was only four hours! This is very different from the "old days", crawling along narrow roads behind smoky Trabants and decrepit East German IFA lorries.

God help the UK

So now we have 800 buses in the UK bearing this and similar messages. God help my native land.

Unmentionable...

Well, we're back from the Budapest hospital where unmentionable things were done to Christine's intestines this morning. The only good part - the cold weather meant much shorter queues at the outpatients department. Sometimes we've been sitting waiting for four or five hours, but today it was barely half an hour. The result? Nothing new was found, which is good.

Now I've got to go out and find the best place to change a 500-euro note into forints. Living and working in half-a-dozen different currencies is basically just a nuisance, but better than living in poverty, which is where we could end up if the pound continues to slide.

A different kind of postal service!

Imagine this situation - you have a vitally important letter to send from Hungary to Ukraine, and it has to get there the next day. How do you do it? Forget about normal post or registered post, even express mail can take two weeks. Forget courier services too; they're safer, but can still take more than a week, and some won't deliver to private addresses in Ukraine.

So, you do what Ukrainians and Russians have been doing for years - use the unofficial "railway post", as I did this evening. I had to send UK Visa original invitation letters to our team leader in Ukraine, so that she could come to twoUK conferences later this year.

1. Go to Keleti Station in Budapest, and find the platform where the Tisza Express to Kiev and Moscow is waiting.
2. Find one of the two Ukrainian sleeping-cars and explain to the attendant that you want to send a letter to Kiev. (It helps a lot if you speak Russian.) She invites you into a compartment, because this is not exactly legal according to the Hungarian police.
3. Show her the that the letter has no money in it (because that is totally illegal in Ukraine), and show her the name of the recipient who will meet the train in Kiev.
4. She gives her own name (for identification purposes) and happily accepts a $10 note.
5. Outside, send a text message to Ukraine with the name, the coach number, and the arrival time (journey time is 24 hours).
6. The deal is done, and the letter will definitely arrive safely. If ever a letter didn't get through, nobody would trust the system any more and the attendants would lose a valuable source of income.

Life in this business is never dull! Walking around cold Keleti Station in my thick leather jacket and handing packages to strangers on long-distance eastbound trains has an almost romantic air of Central European espionage about it. I quite enjoy it really. By the way, I got the photo from the web, but the two men playing chess were still there this evening!

The Fun Never Stops

Here we are, second day of 2009, and the work continues. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails as we arrange the programme for the coming year. Making presentations for the conferences in Bucharest and Blackpool. Thinking about the Annual Report - oh help!

Meanwhile it's still very cold but the sun is shining. Our huge tiled stove is on all the time, providing most of our heating. We're getting through the logs quite fast - maybe enough for another month, but we will be away for a while, which helps. Then we just leave the central heating on, set at 10C, to keep the house bearable for our return.

Keep meaning to write something about the world in general, but it would be very long and rather angry, so better not.