Merry Christmas

I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with my first own Christmas tree!

Christmas Party

Last Friday we organized our Christmas party for high school and campus students. About eighty students came and listened Christmas stories, music and Gospel. The atmosphere was very good you can see in the pictures. Lights, Christmas tree, cakes, hot tea, hot apple drink with spices. We are hoping the Gospel touched their hearts and they will come back to our weekly meetings.

Prayer time

Yesterday evening our students organized a prayer time. We gave thank for last semester, praise God and prayed for students' exams. Lots of things happened in this semester. Survival Kits distrubution, german and american project, fall retreat, personal evangelical appointmets, EQ Seminar. Some numbers: we approached 615 students personally, we talked with 403 students about Gospel and 8!!! students received Christ. Praise God!!!!!

Ice-skating

Last Wendesday we went to do ice-skating. It was the last campus weekly meeting. It was very funny. I really enjoy the time with our students, but it was the first time doing this sport in my life. In the first circle two of my friends pulled me :) At the end it was not too awful :) After it we went to eat Hungarian pancakes. We talked and laughed a lot. Here is some pictures from that night.

Fall Retreat

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Last weekend we moved to a camp for our Students Retreat. It was in a former communist children camp. Gabor, our National Director was the speaker. He talked about how we can experience God’s presence in our life.

About 70 students gathered for this weekend. We spent a good and useful time with our disciples where we had worship, teaching and fellowship together. There were QandA time designed into the program as well and lot of small group discussing and time with the Lord.

In the talks Gabor mainly addressed four things:

1. The many ways God expressed himself and made himself known to us.

2. The reason why we don’t experience God - which is our hardened, turned and divided heart.

3. The way we can experience God - through death on the cross.

4. The practical way of experiencing God: getting closer to God by humbling ourselves, obeying to Him and being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit.

At the end we almost stayed there, because it snowed so much and many cars got stuck in the big snow. God broght me home without any accident.

You can see a short video about our worship.

Talking about sex

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Yesterday there was an unusual campus weekly meeting. Five of our staff members sat in front of students and answered students’ questions about sex. I was one of those staffs. It was a very strange feeling for me. In one hand I enjoyed to talk about that I think and believe about this topic and why I am waiting until marriage. In other hand it was strange because of the topic J. I hope it was a good help for students.

My sister visited me

Last weekend my sister, Emi visited me. I invited her to a musical in a theater. This musical was the Romeo and Juliet. It is a very famous play that Emi wanted to watch it. She was very happy because it was her birthday gift. Before the musical we went to have a lunch together. The restaurant was a popular "all you can eat" restaurant. I ordered a small birthday cake to her. When the waiter brought the cake with a tiny firework she was very-very surprised and happy :) During the waiter was coming the Happy Birthday song sounded and everybody clapped in the restaurant. So, it was a very good weekend for both of us.

Faces of YTL

I am involved in the campus weekly meetings. We are very thanksful for God because so many new students come for week to week. We invite the students for a dinner and a good speaking and small group discussion. In these weeks the topics are relationships, dating and sex.
In every week we would like to introduce our staffs (the faces of YTL) to the students. Last Wednesday I was introduced. Csaba made a small interview with me. He asked me about hobbies, funny stories, cooking (I made sandwitches every week for students).

EQ Seminar

We organized the EQ Seminar (Emotional Intelligence) two weeks ago. About 25 students came. It was a great team, I think :) Last Wednesday and Thursday we met all of the participants. I met two girls. We looked through some surveys about them and I tried to advise them how they could develop in their personality. You know we would like to share the gospel every time. In these face to face meeting we could talk about God. I will meet with these girls next weeks. I hope they will be closer to God. Their names are Zsuzsi and Emese. Please pray for them!

Speak Out 2008 promotion

Come to YTL Speak Out 2008 camp! Watch this short film below and visit our website. If you know some high school and campus students that would like to serve God next summer please show this video to them. Thanks for your help in our ministry!!!

www.speakout.hu/staff

Our High School Ministry in classrooms

The next 2 weeks will be very busy as well, because now we will focus on High Schools. For the coming two weeks we will go to dozens of high school classrooms to talk about friendships, relationship, why wait, etc. and invite them to a special evangelistic event we will have on October 12th, `Friday night. We got permissions in 6 high schools so far (and 3 more are in the process) to have an assembly in these high schools where they gather all the students (hundreds of them in each school) and we can speak to them for 45 minutes about why wait and invite them to October 12th, to our evangelistic event. Pray that many would come to this event!

German Project

This week we have students from Germany here to help us further utilize some of the momentum and contacts we now have with new campuses as well. We are able to get into campus classrooms to give lectures on some YTL topics and invite students to the weekly gathering.

Bringing in the Hungarian Harvest Project

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A group of 32 Americans came and spent a week with us helping some of the outreaches on campuses and high schools, also, helping distributing the SSKs. It was a very busy week for the group. We went out to campuses to survey students and share Christ with them many times. We had activities and clubs going on in two different dorms. We had many high school lectures they were speak at. They had many classroom and it was so well received that both the teachers and the students want to repeat this. This was a great opportunity to invite these students to our Friday night student weekly meetings. The room on last Friday night was packed with students.

We also had a special YTL outreach on that week at the Economic University. About 50 new students came although we had to compete with some very attractive campus activities and discos. Laci, the campus director gave one of the YTL talk on personality types and used that to bridge to the gospel.

SSK in Budapest Univercity of Technology

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Those days was very exiting. First day was perfect. Freshmen came very fast but we could ask them to fill out our survay and they got a Student Survival Kit (SSK). They were very obidient that we ask they did it. The second day was rainy. We stood under some trees and we tried to talk with them. In afternoon there was a girl, a student leader who was very interested in SSK. She led freshmen group to introduce the univercity. She let us to distribute SSK to every student groups. God's time is perfect. She promised to help us next year!!! It is amazing.
Statictics:
2500 ssk distributed
1500 survays came back
600 freshmen interested and there is phone or email address in the survay
It means we can call back 600 freshmen to listen Gospel!!!!!! Praise God!!!

Student Survival Kits Distribution (SSK)

Yesterday we went to Zánka to a freshmen camp for legal students. We could ditribute approximatelly 300 SSK. We are very thanksful for God because we got back about 200 questionaries. So we can call them back, arrange a meeting and share the Gospel. They need God!!! We just listened them and they talked about drinking. They were proud for how much they could drink. So it is awful! THEY NEED GOD! We know it and we have to tell them!

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Prayer requests

Please pray for these upcoming evangelistic opportunities!
September 3 - 7: distributing 8 000 survival kits. We hope to have LOTS of contacts we could share the Good News with after this week!
September 17 - 20: BHHP week. 30 American business men and women will join us in several evangelistic events!
September 20th: Large outreach at on the largest youth clubs of Budapest!
September 24 - 28: German CCC students join us for a week of evangelism!
September 29 -30: EQ leadership seminar. We are hoping to reach many leadership oriented students with the Good News!

Preparing the Freshmen Survival Kits

Even though we are planning to hand out 8 000 FSKs to freshmen on the week of Sept 3rd! We had fun packing them, and already started to hand some of them out in freshmen camps!
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Annual Staff Conference August 14-19,2007

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Each year all the staff who serves together with us in Hungary gathers for a time of prayer, encouragement, vision and planning for the coming ministry year before we all split in teams to focus on a specific campus or high school. I am thankful for your prayers for this conference. We have worked very hard to prepare for it. We had a very intense schedule (from 7:30am to 10:00pm), but the time was very fruitful.

We serve together with 24 Hungarian staff, 6 Americans and 1 Hungarian from Romania.

We have started each day with an intense time of prayer led by different staffs each day. I led this time last day about God’s provision and we prayed about physical needs of staff members and ministries. After prayer we have listened to devotions from our Regional Director (Marek), his wife (Ala) and our National Director (Gabor)

The theme of the conference was: The Life of an Evangelist.

Our main speaker was Rod Powell and Margi, his wife. They serve in muslin republics of Russia. They live in Kabardino-Balkaria. When they have arrived there were only 6 Christian in the whole republic. It was very encouraging to hear how God is working among all nations and bringing to His kingdom muslins, too. The hard and dangerous work of evangelists, like Rod and Margi will bring fruit. Maybe it is not always visible at first.

Gabor, our National Director gave a message on Jeremiah’s calling, specially focusing on what it means if God calls someone into the ministry. We were discussing about the job of an evangelist. That is to sow the seeds. There are plenty seeds. Our job is not to be concerned about where the seed lands, just to sow it.

Outside of the spiritual messages, we have spent lot of time talking about the practical application of our calling and what are expectations from a staff member in our ministry. We gave a clear job description to everybody with a specific schedule. Our staffs are very much committed to work very hard for the sake of the Gospel. It was a great time of refocusing our vision, re-commit ourselves and prepare for the very intense time ahead of us in the ministry. Everybody is committed to make faith steps in the ministry and not just do what we can, but do what we believe in, what we have faith for. We always have to set faith-goals: things we can’t see how we will accomplish, because those are the things we will really start trusting in God.

I gave thanks specifically for our ministry partners, who are participating with us in this ministry through prayer, support and encouragement. I also prayed that God would bless your and encourage you through our ministry. Thanks you for participating with me!!!!!!!

Annual Staff Conference

Right now I am greeting our staff members in our annual staff conference. We are in Révfülöp. It is a little town near Lake Balaton. Lake Balaton is the biggest lake in Hungary. Rod Powell will be our lecturer. He is a staff in CCC in South Asia. He is real evangelist. So, our topic is The Life of an Evangelist. Please pray for us. This week will be a refreshing week in spiritually and we can prepare for next ministry year.

Speak Out 2007 Fruits

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This week Speak out finished. Many of are students have so many stories of personal change, and stories of lives given over to God through Christ.

Let me share some of the results/fruits of our time here! Let this be a testimony of God's faithfulness and may it bring glory to God!

- We had 237 campers at our camp!
- Other than these campers we have approached another 1100 young people on the beaches of Lake Balaton.
- So together with the campers we have approached and initiated with almost 1350 people!

- Out of the people we have approached on the beaches 589 people have heard the Gospel through a personal conversation!

- 26 people on the beaches trusted Christ plus 28 campers made decisions to trust Jesus as their Lord and Saviour!
- Altogether 54 people indicated a life saving decision.

And way more people indicated a further interest in learning more about God. We are planning to follow up many of these contacts!

PRAISE GOD!!!!!
Thank you for participating in Speak Out 2007 through your prayers and financial support!

My vacation

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I spent my vacation with my church in a small town in Northern Hungary. In the mornings we read together a book by Henri Nouwen that’s title is With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life. Nouwen uses the Emmaus road passage (Luke 24:13-35) as the backdrop for his words. We tried to understand the Eucharist (Lord Supper) in a deeper way. There are five themes in the book that lead us to Eucharist: Loss, Presence, Invitation, Communion, Mission, leading the reader to find a "network of connections" between the celebration of the Eucharist and daily human experience.

We also could relax in the afternoons. We went to have a trip, to swim, to play. So I enjoyed that week with my friends from my church.

A story from Speak Out

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Gabor, our national director told us this story from our English Camp:

Last Thursday afternoon 18 years old David (one student leader of our ministry) and I went out sharing to the beach. We met with Dani, a 16 years old student. We've asked him to help us fill out a questionnaire that we use in YTL as an introduction to a discussion about the gospel. He was happy to answer those questions. The last question we ask is this: "Would you be interested to know God personally?" He said he would. So, we've started to talk through the gospel. We had a long conversation. Finally I told him that he can start a relationship with God if he express his desire to God, ask forgiveness for his sin and ask Jesus to become his Savior and Lord. I asked him what hinders him to make this decision. Dani said that he doesn't know if he can accept Jesus as his Lord. We started to discuss about that how he can trust in God, because how much He loves him, how much He sacrificed for him. "Would a loving God who sacrificed His own Son want something bad for you?" - I've asked Dani. He said No. "So, can you trust in Jesus as your Lord, too?" - "Yes" - he replied. So, we've prayed together and he accepted Jesus as his personal Savior and Lord at the beach. Now we follow him up. Pray for Dani that the Lord would still work in his heart.

Speak Out English Camp in Keszthely

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In 3 weeks we had 237 students coming to Speak Out camp each spending a week here. These are non-Christian high-school and campus students who have heard about the camp through YTL. Yesterday the final week of the camp started and we have 90+ students which is a large crowd to work with individually. The American volunteers who are with us are great help in this. We saw many of the Hungarian students make decisions for Christ. Pray for this final week of the camp. Hundreds have heard the gospel through personal conversations and at the large events we had so far, but we still have a very important week ahead of us with multiple and great opportunities to present the gospel. The awesome thing at this camp is that we are able to share the gospel by modeling the Christian life to these students since we basically live together with them, beside of sharing the gospel to them multiple times verbally. These kids are very much opened!

Another segment of the camp is that we have the student leadership of our ministry here and we go out sharing Christ to non-campers in the city. 4 times a week we spend the whole afternoon just going out sharing Christ in the city.

Staff women together

Our staff ladies met every month to share our life with each other and every second month we went to share our faith to students in a univercity.

Yesterday we met again and our leaders told us what they honored in us. We read Roman 12,10 "Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. " They practised this verses.

My leader read to me Roman 5,3-5 "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." It was very encouraged to me.

Campus Retreat last weekend

Last weekend we had our traditional student spring retreat in Kecskemet, a city, 80 miles away from Budapest. The two ministries, the college and the high-school ministry were together. It was a very blessed weekend.

The topic of the weekend was how to grow in the difficulties of life. We talked about what kind of difficulties we have to face, how to stand in the midst of them and how to handle them.

I enjoyed this weekend because I knew better our students. I felt myself the part of the mission. I saw that I also work for these students in the Finance Department.

Happy Easter!

Campus weekly meeting

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I try to participate in our Campus Ministry. Every week we meet in a cafe, always start with a free pizza for the students. So the atmosphere is just really relaxed, social and fun. I think I enjoy these meetings not only as someone who is there to serve, but I LOVE TO PARTICIPATE as well!! Ministry is fun! In this week lecture was Some kind of religions in the world.

Battle of the Bands

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We have invited Rock bands and their fans from all over Budapest. They had to be high school kids, and had to perform one of their own songs and a song from another better known band. 16 bands registered and close to 500 students showed up altogether.

Of course we had our Christian band participate. The lead singer has shared his testimony in a powerful way with all these kids present.

This was one of the most effective outreaches we have done for a long time! We praise God that we could host such an event, and were able to openly share our faith with so many kids!

The 20th YTL symposium

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March 2-4, 2007 we had the 20 YTL symposium. We had 300 educators from all over Hungary and from many other countries. We had guests from Kazakhstan, from Russia, from Serbia, from Romania as well.

8 educators prayed to receive Christ. 65% of the educators decided to show the Jesus film in their classrooms.

This symposium will take YTL to over 10,700 kids.

The symposium itself became an officially accredited training for the participating teachers! So this is a government funded, government approved training, where we openly share the Gospel and invite teachers to make a personal decision to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior!

Besides this they receive a quality training which they can tak back to their schools and train their students based on biblical values! The doors are wide open in Hungary!

Outreach @ Budapest Business School

In Marc 1th we had an outreach at the Budapest Business School. Mark Sanders spoke on love and dating. He did a great job!! He was funny, very personal and very clear about God's love for us! The evening was fun for the students and about 40 students at that school heard the Gospel!

YTL Symposium

In March 2-4 we will have our next annual YTL Symposium. About 280 teachers will arrive. Please pray for them to receive Christ. In Saturday evening they will listen the Gospel and they will have an opportunity to talk about Christ and faith in a tea house. We pray for lots of interested educators. They usually teach public schools. Every teacher will get a Jesus video to publish it in the class rooms.

YTL on the Hungarian National Radio

On January 26th the Hungarian National Radio (government owned, largest radio) had an half hour long radio-show, interview with us about YTL. This was a perfect timing because it was before the YTL symposium and gave us a great opportunity to advertise it, too. They approached us with this idea and we met with them to talk about YTL. This is a great opportunity for the Gospel and for promoting YTL, too.

Keep praying for the YTL symposium, too (2-4 March, 2007), as we are working hard getting ready for it. The details are always overwhelming.

Birthday

Today I am thirty years old :) This is a happy day for me, because I celebrate my birthday in Christ in this day. I received Christ eleven years ago in my dormatory room.

Three of our staffs have birthday in end of Janurary and begining of February. Our friends organized a surprised birthday party in end of Januray. You can see the party's pictures if you click here.

Kata

I would like to share a story about Kata and Ritchey. They are very interested students from my former collage, Finance and Accountancy Collage in Budapest.

I only have a picture of Kata. She and Ritchey have been dating for three years now. She came to an Emotional Intelligence seminar we held in September. Then she brought her boyfriend to our fall retreat. She wanted he saw we could be fun without drinking. They both loved our fall retreat.

They have not made their decision yet. But as we talked to Ritchey some weeks ago he said he is ready, but wants to make his decision together with Kata. Last week I met with Kata she wants to decide for Christ seriously. Because she knows it determines her future and this decision changes her life totally.

I enjoy them a lot! They both seem to be very mature emotionally. They communicate well and they are both very serious about their pursuit of God! They come to all of our events now and we meet with them personally on a weekly basis. Please pray for them to receive Christ!

Guys-Girls Day

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This event was on the last Saturday, the 27th of January. We invited all students invovled in our ministry for a Girls/Guys day. For some parts of the day we were together, for some other times we guys and girls departed. We touched on many issues involved in the relationships between girls and guys, like sexual purity, dating, biblical viewpoint of relationships. God really blessed this day. 70-80 students were there. Their response was good. One of the girls, Niki said: "Every student should hear it''! Please pray that these students would follow Christ in their relationships, would wait until the marriage, and will have healthy marriages when they will be married. Thank you!