A Close Second

So, the second came first and the first came second...???  What I mean is, Ed's second brother Mike came first, and now, his first (oldest) brother Alan came second!  Yes, we've already had two siblings come for a visit!  Alan and Julie came after their work in Germany was finished.  We had a great 6 days with them!  As with all of our American visitors, we so enjoyed spending multiple days together, talking and laughing together, and exploring the town.  Like Mike and Rachael, Al and Julie came without their kids because of their work trip to Germany.  We again missed having the cousins around.  We're always thinking about how great it would be if the next trips included all the kids!

We took Al and Julie to a different castle that we had never been to before, and spent some time in our town too.  Shaylee always gets in on the daytime activities with our guests while the other kids are off at school, so she had a great week with four adults and her! Julie and I had some great times just chatting, in the kitchen, on the porch, or at the cafe in the square.  Alan and Ed bonded while fixing our 4-wheeler!  All in all, we agreed that spending a week together was really great for the family ties!

Thanks, Alan and Julie, for making the huge sacrifice to come visit us, taking time away from your busy family schedule, and from your great family, to extend your work trip to be with us!  We truly loved our time with you two...the late nights of talking were really fun!  Thanks also for the encouragement you were to us and to our kids!  They, too, loved you being here!  Our kids are so blessed to have such love and attention from their aunts and uncles!  It was fun to see them enjoying you and getting to know you better!  We miss you already, and are so thankful that you came!

Story time with Uncle Alan

Thanks, Debbi, for the clothes you sent with them for the girls!

The First of the Siblings

And the winners are...Mike and Rachael!!!  Ed's brother and sister-in-law, Mike and Rachael, gained the title of the first of our siblings to visit us over here!  What a great time we had with them!  Two of Ed's brothers, Mike and Alan, work together and have a client in Germany.  Because they had work to do for that client this month, they and their wives made a vacation out of their work trip, and extended their time in Europe in order to "swing by" our very out-of-the-way-from-Germany town of Bardejov!  Mike and Rachael came here before their time in Germany, and Alan and Julie will be coming after it.

We loved every minute of the time we were able to spend with Mike and Rachael, as did our kids!  Mike and Rach were not able to bring their three boys with them on this trip, and although we were all disappointed to not have the cousins along, our kids made the most of the time with their aunt and uncle, and were so blessed by the attention and love that Mike and Rach showered on our five!  You'll see from the pictures that the kids basked in the attention!  So, thank you Mike and Rachael for loving our kids so well!  Also, they brought an entire suitcase filled with goodies from both them and Ed's parents!  These treats are always so fun for all of us!

Mike and Ed accomplished quite a bit during our week together.  They built some easels for our English camps and made a batch of the most delicious yeast breads I have ever tasted!  Very impressive and diverse talents in these guys!  And Rachael and I enjoyed going out to coffee almost every day!  We all enjoyed great times in our town: touring the town, the square, the historic church and tower, and enjoying the town's coffee and ice cream cafes.  We also took a drive to a huge castle ruins just an hour from our house, and enjoyed a day there.

Some of our favorite times during the week that they were here were the late night talks and card playing!  We have great memories of many nights back in Morton and Tremont, when we would spend evenings at one of our two houses, doing just that.  So, to have a whole week of it was incredible!

Mike and Rachael, thank you so much for coming to see us, for spending the extra time and money to see our world over here!  We loved catching up with you, having such concentrated time with you two, and making some wonderful memories together!  We really hope that someday you can return here, and this time with your boys...what fun that would be!  Thanks for the many laughs and deep talks!  Thank you for the great encouragement you were to us.  We love you!

My cousin, my other cousin, and our friend

We have guests!!!  They've been here for a little over a week, and have 5 more days with us before they continue their travels to some other great cities in Europe.  They are: my cousin Grant Zimmerman, my other cousin Ben Getz, and our friend from our home church, Phil Schafer.  These three guys have just graduated from their undergraduate studies and decided to travel Europe before going on to graduate work and jobs in July.  And they started their trip with us!  We are so honored that they came this far east, and are spending such a great two weeks with our family!

Our kids are having an amazing time with the attention of these three great guys!  As you can see, the "big boys" are incredibly gracious to our kids: playing with them, reading to them, jumping with them, helping them with homework, holding conversations with them, even being their "horsey"!  The guys have been a huge help to Ed and I also, doing yard work, planting flowers, doing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of the kids, and tomorrow and Monday they will help us with our English camp promotions.

We will be going into the schools here in Bardejov, talking to the English classes of many of our town's public and private schools, telling them all about the English camp that will be held in July, and inviting them to come.  We let these classes know that the camp will allow them to practice conversational English in a fun and interesting way, and that there will be evening meetings lead by people from our local church.  Many students have come to camp in the past because of hearing about it during these in-school promotions.  We are praying that the hearts of the students in these schools will be open to this idea of English camps, and that they will want to join us this year.

We saw some girls from last year's camp in the town square this week, and all three of them want to come again this summer, and one of them is planning to bring some friends along with her!  That is exciting for us!  So, even though Grant, Ben and Phil won't be here for the camp in July, they will be great promoters of it with their bold personalities and energetic deliveries!  The guys have also been helping in our youth group, giving the devotion last Friday night, and both this Friday and Saturday nights.  The Slovak kids have loved meeting these guys and getting to know them.  And the guys have done a GREAT job getting out and meeting kids here in our town, even attempting to communicate with them...in Slovak...great job, Ben!!!

So, Grant, Ben and Phil, we want to tell you a huge thank you for spending these two weeks with us, encouraging our family, blessing our home, and being a true breath of fresh air to us here!  You have been so easy to have, great to communicate with, and so fun to watch as you are enjoying every bit of life here in Slovakia, from the taste of our creamy milk, to the beautiful weather we've been having every day, to the touring of that amazing castle, to the Thursday night soccer you've gotten in on!  It's been great getting to know all of you better, and we and our kids have been blessed by your presence here in our home!

For any of you who are interested in reading more details about these weeks with the guys here, you can read Ben's travel blog.  You will be amused by these posts, as Ben is a great writer, and is great at documenting details!  You can find him at http://benjgetz.blogspot.com/  He has also posted many pictures of the fun we've been having.  I laugh out loud nearly every time I read it!

Sink or Swim

When this incident first happened to me, I (Ed) thought that there really is no fathomable way to spiritualize this embarrassing blunder.  Actually, one of my first thoughts was that I would be very sympathetic to the individual if he/she did something this stupid, but the reality is that it would never happen to me!  :-)  Maybe, that train of thought was enough for God to allow the mishap.  So...let me digress so that you all can have a good laugh and feel better about yourselves for a while.  Here is the story behind these photos.

Last Monday, I picked the older boys up from school and had just returned home.  As we were exiting the van I was talking to Tate about something and was not finished.  I got out in a hurry to continue the conversation.  In my haste I neither put the van in gear nor put the emergency brake on.  We finished our conversation and went inside.  The road out in front of our house is fairly flat, albeit not totally flat, a fact which I now know.  I was talking to Wendi in the foyer of our house when Gage ran in and said, "Dad, who is driving our van?"  It took a few seconds for that to register and just as it was registering, Jayce was looking out the front door and said, "Dad, why is our van moving?"  I looked out just in time to see my lovely, gray van gently passing by the front gate with the ease of a jogger in stride.  I grabbed the keys, sprinted out the door, through the gate, in front of the guy who was honking his horn (thinking someone was asleep in the van), and reached the far back corner of the van in time to send it down the forty-five degree hill and into the river that has rather large boulders lining the river bottom.

I looked at the van, and by this time, the guy honking his horn got out of his car and came to check on me.  He asked if any kids were in the van.  Blessing #1-No kids in the van!  I think he thought I was weird because I was smiling and not looking worried about what just happened.  Blessing #2  No fisherman out on the banks in front of our house that day...often they are!  Blessing #3  The river was very low because in the past our van would have become a boat!  I finished talking to him and called a friend who had the local firemen here in ten minutes.  Great...except that not much happens here in our little town, so they came through town with their lights on and sirens going.  A bit much in my personal opinion!  That in turn brought on more spectators coupled with the fact that the other side of the river is the town walking path.  Then the firetruck had to be sideways in the road, thus blocking traffic from both ways.  For some reason none of the people turned their cars around in order to avoid the wait.  On the contrary, they got out of their cars and started taking pictures with their camera phones.  Whoever thought putting a camera in phones was a good idea?  I hope that they had some low quality phones!  All in all, I met about five firemen and one "expert" on how to remove vans from a river, must be common over here, and one hundred or so spectators for this admission-free event.  I politely introduced myself as the goof who forgot to put his emergency brake on, and now more people in Bardejov know why I am here  :-)

In the middle of this whole ordeal I was laughing at myself and how foolish I felt when God gave me a teachable moment with my kids.  Jayce said to me, "Dad you got more upset last time when we were all in the car getting ready to go to church and the van did not start.  And Dad this seems like a much bigger thing then that was."  And Tate said, "Yeah Dad, why is this funny to you?"  I said, "Guys remember how I am always telling you that God gives you a choice as to how to respond in every situation in life?"  Kids, "Yes Dad."  "Well last time Daddy sinned in my response because I got angry and chose sin over righteousness and then I had to come back and ask you all for forgiveness.  But this time when God said, 'How are you going to respond in a way that honors me?', Daddy chose God's way instead of satan's."

Life will throw us all types of difficult or different situations.  Sometimes it is family or friend relationships, or your child gets cancer (Doug and family I love you), or finances or whatever it may be, but God always gives you a choice in your responses.  What will yours be next time?

What is going on...

Shaylee loves to read...anywhere!

Jayce with his Jelka cake

We have been keeping busy, as I'm sure all of you have also.  So much of our life here is comprised of just normal, everyday situations.  In fact, I was struggling to find something worth writing home about.  Then I decided to just let you in on the latest normal happenings in the Rumbold house:  Jayce turned 10, Shaylee is now potty-trained, and I had a cookie-baking party with some girls.  Those are our highlights!  The rest of the details are very much the same as previous reports:  kids are still in school, we are all still working on language, and we are continuing to prepare for this summer's English camp ministry with camp preparations, intern plans and North American church recruiting.

Speaking of summer, my parents and my Aunt Mary have purchased their tickets to come to visit us in June!  They will be attending the English camp with us again, as Mom and Dad also did last summer.  The students who know they are coming are already very much looking forward to their return, and of course, we Rumbolds are ecstatic about it!