Planting vineyards

This particular chunk of Amos kept coming back to me as I was walking around, praying in the streets. I wrote it down a few times and posted it around the place.

...and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. “They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

És hazahozom a fogságból az én népemet, az Izráelt, és fölépítik az elpusztult városokat, és lakoznak bennök. Szõlõket plántálnak és iszszák azok borát, és kerteket csinálnak és eszik azoknak gyümölcsét. És elplántálom õket az õ földjökbe; és nem szaggattatnak ki többé az õ földjökbõl, a melyet adtam nékik, azt mondja az Úr, a te Istened!

Ámos 9:14-15

Photo album

As well as the video diary instalments below (I guess it makes more sense if you scroll down and plough back upwards through the archive to sort of watch/read in chronological order - blogs are a bit cumbersome like that), there's also an online photo album.

Video [14]

That'll probably do for now. Like I've said before, things deposited in an instant can take months to unravel. Lots of praying and thinking and processing to do.

Video [13]

Video [12]

Filming inside the senior school. I think it was a student called Eszther who was lined up to chat with me, but she got too shy. Her replacements, Katinka and Irena* (names changed, obviously), were pretty shy too, but it was a weird situation all round, and I needed to keep reminding myself of this fact.

Irena's house was affected, and is set to be bulldozed. I think they've bought a new house in town. Katinka told me (with Kate, their English teacher, translating - hey, this was supposed to be English practice for the girls!) that they hadn't given up hope, and that she'd seen me on the local television (presumably talking at the public meeting - I just thought the cameraman was filming it for the Mayor's office, or the green party who hosted the meeting, or for his own collection.)


The flash has whited out my daughter's picture that she drew for the children over there, but I was really proud that at 5, she's already written "Magyar".

Video [11]

I can't blame them. I stuck out like a sore thumb - what were they supposed to make of this strange pilgrim? Groundbreaking eco disaster tourist? Greenpeace snoop? Industrial espionage? So there was an inevitability about the police car slowing down and two armed cops (one with shades) stepping out and asking what I was doing. I know enough Hungarian to say (in a decent accent) "I'm sorry, I come from England. I don't speak Hungarian. Do you speak English?" They didn't, but they wanted to see my passport. And they hadn't heard of Miklos Mold either. Maybe these are out of town cops. (Oddly enough, for a trip full of oddly enoughs - funny how coincidences multiply when you pray - oddly enough the guy I sat next to on the flight back, his cousin is working as a police officer in the area. Maybe one of them was him.)

And there are a lot of police cars on patrol, ostensibly to stop theft from vacant (utterly trashed) properties, but some of the locals at the town hall meeting were complaining that they get stopped four times a day to show their papers, but when something is actually getting nicked noone gets, well, nicked.

Anyway, God was ahead of me on this one. About forty minutes earlier, I'd only been in Kolontar for a minute when I rounded the first corner towards the street that leads to the red zone and a car pulled up with a woman called Monika. She spoke English, said she worked for the Christian community down here, and seemed pretty choked when I said why I was in Kolontar. Turns out she's also a journalist from Budapest. Anyway, we didn't chat for long, and I headed towards the reservoir wall, or as close as I dared. And on the way back the police thing happened, and while I was still rummaging in my bag for my passport, she pulled up in her car - instant translation of why I was there, bemused looks on the face of the cops, and then I say "Yes, my dad was a policeman for 30 years, and he collects badges from around the world. Do you have any spares on you?" Shades cop rummages in the glove box for a velcro shoulder flash, then it's photo time.

No documentary is really complete without at least one near-arrest.

Oh, and another thing about God's timing. Monika said that if I'd have arrived a week before, the whole area was still cordoned off by the Disaster Management team, and I wouldn't have been allowed in. So going at Christmas wouldn't have been a smart move. And if I'd've left it until the Easter break, the 250 houses in Devecser would likely have been bulldozed (which I heard they were planning to do in March.)

Video [10]

A couple of clips from the morning in Kolontar.

Video [9]

Video [8]

Példabeszédek 16:9
Az embernek elméje gondolja meg az õ útát; de az Úr igazgatja annak járását.

Proverbs 16:9 (CEV)
We make our own plans, but the LORD decides where we will go.

Spur of the moment stuff, sometimes. Head to this town or try a previously closed door again. Holding loosely to the specific mission of meeting up with the family that lost the two children in the flood, hoping it might still come about, that day, the next. No audible voice on this one, no writing on the wall, just trying to flow and listen out and move.

Video [7]

I couldn't get through any journey to Europe without making fun of food packaging. And I trust I'm not alone in this.

I also love the way tea is marketed in middle Europe. They go for names that suggest English traditions, history, status, class. So in the local CBA supermarket you can choose bizarre fruity combinations from Milford (which sounds like someone calling for their butler), Pickwick (think Dickens, think our local Aldi), and my favourite Sir Morton. Images abounded of tea clippers and Victorian gents. And if you think I'm making it up, then take this you cad, you bounder:

If I was introducing a rival brand into the already saturated market I'd probably go for Lord Tommy.

While I'm banging on about Hungarian food retailing, there's a major barrier to the concept of Fair Trade. That reassuring logo was nowhere to be found. And if I remember to get round to it, I've a whole treatise on the brew about the use of English to brand those energy drinks. In Hungary you can get Hell, Burn, Spirit, Monster...

Video [6]

Retelling Marianna's story that she shared at the restaurant the evening before.

Video [5]

Early Friday morning, Marianna and Zsolti already left for work, my eyes only partially opening.

Video [4]

When God provided somewhere to sleep, and the start of a whole lot more.

Video [3]

What's left of Kastely Park, Devecser. Try to picture it like your local park, mostly green, flower beds, bushes and stuff.

Video [2]

Video [1]

Back in Rugby now. If I was smart enough I'd do yesterday's route as a shape poem, but it goes something like this:

Budapest-Deli station-metro 2 to Deak-metro 3 to Kobanya-Kispest-bus 200E to Budapest Ferihegy Airport Terminal 1-London Luton Airport-Err, bus to Milton Keynes Central doesn't exist like it did on the trainline.com timetable, it left ten minutes ago-quick, phone the rail enquiries and get on bus to Luton Airport Parkway rail station at same time-find out en route that there are no more trains from Luton Airport Parkway-take £50 taxi to Milton Keynes Central-train to Rugby-taxi home-hug wife-don't wake the children...

But with lots of sitting around on transport comes lots of chances to talk to people on the way: an Italian violinist on her way back to Modena, taxi drivers (well, they can't actually move, classic captive audience), a Hungarian guy living in London on his way back from seeing his dentist in Budapest (there and back by plane in the same day - it still worked out cheaper for him somehow), people who offered to help me on the metro or at the train station, cashiers at the National Gallery...

Anyway, I want to get some of the story out, and the quickest way for me will be some rough edit video clips. That way I get to spend time with my family, get back into the swing of school work. So it won't be polished, or a nice linear narrative, there'll be gaps. But hey, dip into what you fancy.

And besides, every keystroke is dedicated to the people of Devecser and Kolontar, so if you reckon I've gone nuts with the amount of detail or putting myself in the spotlight, then sorry, but I'm kind of doing it to honour the likes of Gagarin and Marianna, or the guys who stopped the car to give me a lift to Kolontar, to the people whose lives have been turned upside down and are still battling for answers, justice, hope and restoration.

So here's clip 1, from Thursday lunchtime, the train into Devescer. It's come from Ajka, through Kolontar, in the direction of the red tide:

Szombat (Saturday)

Hotel Mercure,
near Budapest-Deli station

A first installment from the road, but the main content will have to get churned out once I"m back in England, and even then I imagine it"ll take a few weeks to get typed up.

This keyboard is a bit confusing, and I can"t work out the system for apostrophes, and the Z and Y keys actually type the opposite to what they say...

So I+ll keep it short, and get out into the chilly sunshine to see some of Budapest itself (the bits beyond the nearest supermarket, at least).

Five ways that God showed up on my trip to Devecser and Kolontar, bearing in mind how little was sorted out in advance.

1. Getting to stay at the OM mission base in Erd that first night, and for other people to sort of accidentally be there (sorting out paperwork for second hand cars they"d just bought) and the way they were around to pray me out the next morning. Istvan, a big St Nicholas/Falstaff of a man, grabbed me by each shoulder and prayed in Hungarian, then Marcel in Dutch (I even figured out he was praying for my wife and children back home, which really moved me). Great camerarderie.

2. Providing Gagarin, a guy who works for the Mayor's office (found that apostrophe now!) in Devecser, the only English speaker they had, and the way he offered to give me a place to stay, how he and his girlfriend Marianna took me under their wing, took me for dinner, showed me the public meeting in the town hall...

3. ...which just happened to be on that night. And how He gave me a chance to speak to the people there and declare God's hope and justice for that place, and how He sorted out translators for me (and how later the next day I heard from a student at the high school how she'd seen it on television...)

4. How he showed me someone at the local elementary school (actually, that was a word through Attila, team leader at the OM base, to seek out the local school as a route in) who spoke English and then gave me a chance the following day to meet the English teacher at the high school (Kate) who just happened to be on a free when I turned up, unannounced, which led to a chance to meet a couple of students, Boggy and Viktoria, who mostly giggled.

5. Getting to meet the local Roman Catholic priest, Miklos Mold, who hadn't been there the day before (but his mother, it turned out, had tried to explain that to me at the time, with gestures and expressions), and in a strange hybrid of German, Dutch and Italian we managed to talk about why I'd come, and how God gave me the courage to lay hands on him and pray for him.

More later. The Hotel Mercure is queasily over heated and I need to sort out some water pronto.

Preparations

Spent some time this morning getting my two superstars ready for what daddy's going to be up to later this week.

Video mugshot

Just so that Jill Hitchcock at OM Hungary has a bit more of a clue about what I look like. [Jill's going to be picking me up from the airport on Wednesday. I'm just so chuffed that I get to spend some time with the OM team before heading off to Kolontar. ]

For more on OM's response to the disaster, click here.