An Adventure of a Lifetime

Wow! Well, here we are halfway around the world. It’s been an amazing adventure so far and we’ve only had one full day here in Hungary. We took three flights that were five, seven, and three hours long and lost eight hours in the time change but it was an adventure for sure. On the first plane ride we were pretty lively, and even on our two hour layover at JFK. But on the seven hour flight to London we were all zonked out. But we did have a delicious dinner on board and also an early morning (5am) hot croissant breakfast! We arrived in London at 7am, went through the UK border and hung out in the airport for about six hours. Some of us got food while others crashed out on the benches for hours. Finally we boarded our flight to Budapest and were off by 2pm. Once again, most of us slept the whole way over. Finally, we arrived in Budapest, claimed our baggage and met our contacts. But the travels were not over. It was then a three hour bus ride to Debrecen. We did stop halfway for a pit stop at the local Shell station, which was fun. When we got to the hostel, we were all dead tired from traveling for over twenty hours, but it was pizza time. The hostel was surprisingly nice. We were three to a room with all our own bathrooms in a beautiful building. We were definitely not expecting it to be that accommodating.
Morning came quick and off we were for another adventure. After breakfast we walked down the streets of Debrecen to church for the Easter service. I think it finally started to sink in that we were a long way from home. The streets are lined with buildings older than dirt. The church service was an amazing experience. The worship was sung in Hungarian with English below. It was a beautiful thing to listen to worship songs we knew in a different language. The service was in Hungarian with English translation and was about the resurrection of Christ. After church is when we really started to meet some people. We stayed at the church for a few hours after the service, had lunch, and started to get to know the people we would be staying at the camp with the next two days. It was a lot of fun learning some Hungarian and getting past the language barrier to get to know people. There was a lot who spoke English though, which was a big help.
When it was time to go we got on a bus with everyone and took a short trip to Dorcas camp. We settled in and then started playing games. Some of us guys kicked around the soccer ball with the Hungarian boys from the orphanage and broke in to their circle. Its amazing what games can do. From that moment on, we all came more and more comfortable with each other and the relationships started to build. It was easy to see that God has His hand in this trip and us here for a purpose. We had some great group games which included a huge game of spoons, and an indoor scavenger hunt; it got pretty wild. Tim gave a talk and then we hung out for a few more hours.
Its amazing to be here with everyone. Keep praying for strength and opportunity to reach these people for Christ, and also for health for our team members. Some of us are fighting back colds we got from our long travels. We’ll try to update this BLOG more frequently now that we can get to the internet. Thank you so much for all your support!

(Sorry for the late post, it's been hard to find internet while we've been at the camp. Hopefully I'll be able to post again about our second and third day at Dorcas later this afternoon--we are eight hours ahead of you guys! Hello from the future!)