Happy New Year

A film about Hungary

Merry Christmas!

Silent night in Hungarian

Prayer week

Last week our ministry set aside everything else to spend time with God as an organization. We prayed for our ministry, our students, our country, missions etc.

I keep being humbled every year when I think of the fact that it is part of my job description to PRAY! I know that many of you have to “steal” moments from your work or family to spend time with the Lord. So thank you for making it possible for missionaries like us to have prayer – as a part of our job:)

Warsaw

I had a great week in beginning of December in Warsaw. Ira, the Ukranian Financial Manager and me made an audit in Polish Campus Crusade. I always enjoy knowing an other ministry and help them improving their financial system. Thanks for your prayer for us!

Fall Retreat

Close to 200 of us were at the Fall Student Retreat! In Hungary, that is a huge number – I remember having 20 students less than ten years ago… The theme of the weekend was “God’s faithfulness”. The topic came from the line with Hebrews 13:7 “Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instructs you, as well as their truthfulness.” (The Message translation)

We invited 2 missionary couples who have lived in Eastern Europe in the last 30 years. Trent and Vivien were the first CCC missionary couple in East-Germany. Virgil and Kathy they were the fist CCC missionary couple in Hungary in 1979! They are still in Eastern Europe with Campus Crusade.

They shared about how they experiences God’s faithfulness throughout these years...

They were great examples to us. We asked them to share their stories with us. We learned for example that these Americans were here on tourist visas. And although they had a family and a home here, every single month they went to Vienna, applied for another 30-day-long tourist visa and prayed that they would receive it! And they did this for almost 10 years!

Speak Out English Camp

Here is a fun video about Speak Out. Please send the link to your friend who are interested in a mission trip.

www.speakout.hu/staff

Improvisational Theater

On that sunny Friday afternoon our high school team just finished the preparation before any of the kids arrived. We rented out an old movie theater for this event, which had a kind of theater feeling. Close to 200 teenagers were in the auditorium. The show started, and I can tell you they loved the improvisational theater. I think this was one of our best shows! At the end my colleague introduced one of our student leaders who shared his personal testimony. It was so great to see the boys and girls who were laughing in the last hour, now listened very carefully and quietly about God’s work in this fellow’s life. After that the host of the night summarized the Good News that changed our life, and can change their life too. One hundred thirty of them gave back a comment card! Their reactions are very positive. So, the next step is to meet these new students in the next few weeks.

Mission opportunity for students

Every year we organize the Speak Out English Camp. About 30-40 christian american students come to talk with Hungarians. We would like to ask you to forward this invitation to your friends, maybe one of them or their relatives or friends knows somebody who is interested in. Thanks!

Prayer Request

1. Our partnership with the Presbyterian Church and the Police is taking us to new territories and the exhibition will become nation-wide next year. We are working on a follow-up plan with the churches and need to develop more capable speakers.

2. BHHP - October 2-10 - 20 Americans are coming to help us to reach students in campuses and high schools and utilize the many opportunities we have. Pray for great success during that week.

3. Traveling – I will go to make an audit to Poland from November 29 to December 4. Please pray for wisdom and the audit will be a help for Polish Campus Crusade ministry.

4. Church – In my church the year started. I got a new responsibility. I mentor three home group leaders. Please pray for wisdom to able to help them. I also lead an evangelization small group in Alpha course like in last some years. The participants are around forty-fifty years old. It will be a new experience because I usually lead 30s group.

Student Survival Kits

Campus team was working hard in Budapest. We've already got permissions in every major university to be a part of their freshmen orientation and give out the Evangelistic Student Survival kits (SSK). Thousands of students filled out the survey attached to it and now we are processing to see how many would like to hear personally about God, so than we could call them.

The growing student leadership volunteer team is greatly helping this work, and by now they do most of these evangelistic appointments. Students are leading other students to Christ and disciple them!

Contrast Exhibition

The program YTL, the Policy and the Presbyterian Church started, called "Contrast exhibition" had a big start in two major cities. In each city we held a press-conference and basically all the important media were present. Important government, political and religious leaders were speaking. It even made it to the evening news in the national television (for those of you who speak Hungarian - here you can watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF9xRtgZICE ) and there were many other reports showed in TVs and radios. In many of these interviews it is openly mentioned that the gospel is a part of this exhibition.

Students between ages of 14-18 in these cities are required to come to this exhibition as part of their classroom activities. But before that each school organizes a special seminar for them and we travel down to speak to these students on Why wait? Also we train the educators - and give them reason why they should allow Christianity to be promoted and a Christian-based program, like YTL to be used in their classrooms. We had incredible discussions and saw great openness - they are so hopeless, they don't know what to do and how to deal with youth problems.

In a short two weeks we've already gave talks and opportunity to hear the gospel to 4,000 students and 300 educators. These events are organized by the schools and we just have to go there and speak.

Opportunities generate more opportunities:

1. Two universities offered us to teach courses in their universities and train campus students on YTL for credit!!! This means that they allow campus students to get credit to come to a class where they will hear the gospel!!! WOW! 1Cor 1:26-29 is truly become reality - God is using the fools, us...

2. Next year the government wants to take this exhibition nation-wide and bring it to Budapest. They'll provide the resources for the exhibition and we need to provide the speakers for the student's and educator's seminars!

3. Also, we had been asked by the government to help develop a curriculum for schools to prepare kids for family life. We've developed a possible strategy of such program and that had been published and distributed by the government to every school already - in 5000 copies. On November 5th, we'll introduce this in a conference for professionals!

Annual Staff Conference

Each year we spend a week together with our 37 full time staff and 4 short-term missionaries a week for fellowship, teaching and planning for the up-coming ministry year. We had a fabulous time together between August 16-22. We’ve studied Haggai together as well have heard great lectures on leadership development. It was a very beneficial time as we are facing with a very busy semester.

Speak Out English Camp

69 Hungarian Student Staff + 30 American Volunteers + 22 Hungarian missionaries were hosting over 330 non-Christian students and sharing Christ with them as well doing evangelism on the beach, and in many other cities. We've trained a team from Slovakia - they've came to observe how they could start this camp in their country. Also, we've sent a team to Albania and Romania to reach students there.

I would like to transmit to you a letter, Eszter, who participated in Speak Out English camp as a staff. Eszter is a leader in our campus ministry. I thought you would better see the camp through the eyes of a student.

Dear Ibi!

It is just one week ago that I arrived back from Speak Out. I would like to say thank you for your support and to share with you some wonderful things that happened to us in this month.

For us, staff, the camp started on 27^th June when the group of 41 enthusiastic Americans arrived to Keszthely. Our orientation week consisted of talks, trainings and games that prepared us to the challenges and difficulties of the next few weeks and they also helped us to become a team that is ready to serve together – not just towards the campers but also towards the people at Keszthely and each other. The deep spiritual teachings of this week meant a source for all us in the following 3 weeks, and so did the prayer chain that deepened the unity even more. The prayer chain started on the last night of the orientation week at 11 and we all took part in it, even the staff families. We were praying by rooms for the campers coming in the following weeks: each room prayed for 6 campers by name. The chain was symbolized by a candle that was received by each room and passed on to the next one after 15 minutes of praying. So the way of the candle started at 11 and ended at 7. Our room was to pray from 2:45 to 3:00. It was simply wonderful to see how this team could faithfully pray through all night and how God strengthened us to be able to wake up and pray for unknown students after that tiring week.

That is how we finally started the first camper week on 4^th July: full of enthusiasm and ready to challenges. It was an awesome experience how we could see God working daily at the camp: on Sunday we started by chatting with the campers, but by Tuesday these conversations turned to serious and were able to build a relationship on them. Through them the campers finally understood why we, staff are so different from them, why we are so ‘normal’ (as one of the camper girls said). And even though the love they could experience among us and towards them was already a testimony, we also had the chance to share the gospel with all of them during the 3 weeks. Related to this I would like to share with you one of my deepest experiences that happened on the first week. I got the chance to see how the image of God changed in a camper’s mind. His name is Mike. At the first tutor time he declared himself as an atheist, but in spite of that he was thirsty to hear about spiritual issues. Other campers spent the nights having fun but this guy I always saw sitting in the hall, talking to his tutor about spiritual issues. And even though he did not get to point where he gives his life to God, but the way how he thinks of God and Jesus changed radically by the end of the camp. This is just one of the miracles we experienced – there were hundreds. They way how God was holding us through this month was also a miracle. We didn’t have strength by ourselves for all these overnight conversations, for evangelism four times a week, for the cheerful presence at the programs of every night, for the tasks we had to keep in mind and to organize: we got our strength from God who is source of everything. If we had wanted to do this by our own, we would have failed on the first week for sure. But as we fully relied on God, we were strong enough to do that. Personally, I lived through the strength of the Holy Spirit and of the prayer like never before. These experiences seriously transformed my relationship with God.

One thing I also learnt is that we always need to be ready to share our faith. There were days when I felt like I was useless for God’s purpose because I was so tired or busy with my own problems. But I realized that these were the times when God was using me the most in conversations with the campers or during evangelism. Maybe because my strength was not enough any more so I just let God talking through me. Everything, including the trainings, the fellowship, the Bible study, the ministry was teaching me how incapable I was to live the Christian life by my own. We shared the gospel with 1599 people (including the 336 campers), 94 of them decided to give the control of their life to God and we made the follow-up with 55 people so that they could experience the wonderful life God wants to give them. It would have been literally impossible by our own.

And let me tell you finally what was the most astonishing for me – and I think for the campers too – during Speak Out. The whole staff was made up of 99 people. 30 of us were Americans and 69 of us were Hungarians. Each one of us came from a unique background, situation of life, family, some of us had problems or difficult situations left behind. But in spite of all that these 99 people could serve together with such a godly love and unity that this could be a testimony towards the world. We prayed a lot for this unity before the camp and even throughout the camp. And one thing that everybody experienced this summer is what it means to form one body in Christ and what Paul writes about in 2. Corinthians 3:18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” That is why it was really hard to say goodbye to this team, but one thing comforts me and it was actually said by an American guy: “The good thing is that when we, Christians say goodbye, we never say it forever, because we know for sure that we will see each other again.”

I just want to say thank you because you supported me and helped me to experience all this. I am very thankful for the financial and prayer support. I am thankful because I could be the part of such a blessed ministry and a wonderful team. I am sending you some pictures with my e-mail that was taken at the camp and also a list about the students that I personally talked to during the 3 weeks and who got closer to God. I will keep praying for them namely and I ask you to pray for them too if you can. Thank you once more!

God bless,

Eszter

A day with my church

Last Saturday my church (Reformed Church in Gazdagret) joined to a community day in Gazdagret. Gazdagret is a blocks of houses area in Budapest. About 20000 people live here.
We tried to show who we are. We organized children program, worship. There was a book store, pictures about church life. One of our elder made a survey about life of Gazdagret and Christianity. If somebody stoped to watch pictures or books we asked to help to fill out our survey. We could talk with some people and invite them to our church and our evangelization course.

Flood situation critical in North Hungary

I found a short article that write down the flood situation in Hungary. You can see pictures here:
http://galeria.index.hu/belfold/2010/06/07/arviz_a_magasbol/

Please pray for our country!!! THANK you very much!

"Several thousands of people were still stranded Saturday in northern Hungary as the flooding situation remained critical after over a month of near-continuous rainfall, authorities said.

"Along the banks of the Hernad, Sajo and Boldva rivers some 2,300 people were evacuated due to the water flooding homes in the towns and villages" in the northeast region, a spokesman for the rescue services said.

Over 12,000 police officers, soldiers and firemen are involved in the rescue operation, which has enjoyed a rare dry spell since Friday that is forecast to last for the next week.

In Budapest the docks of the flooded river Danube were shut and the banks of Margaret island, a major tourist destination in the capital, were protected by sand bags.

Agriculture has been hit by the incessant rainfall too, with experts predicting a drop of between 30 and 40 percent in fruit production.

In the month of May alone, between 210 and 220 millimetres of rain fell per square metre, the equivalent of an entire year's worth of rainfall normally, according to meteorological services.

In northeastern Hungary, the level reached a record 273 millimetres per square metre."

Weekend in Mandok

My homegroup (a Bible study group in my church) spent a wonderful weekend in Mandok, a small town in North-East Hungary. One of our group member grew up in Mandok. She showed us that beautiful side of Hungary. We saw nice little churches from 13th and 17th century. A little, sweet lady told us the story of the church. This area is full of Hungarian folklore.
You can see some pictures about our trip:

Student retreat in Csilleberc

Twice a year we spend an entire weekend at a local youth camp with all of the students from the high school and university ministries. These weekends have historically been amazing experiences because the students who come (both Christians and non-Christians) are often treated to incredible moments of spiritual growth.

One incredible moment during the weekend was on Sunday morning when three of our colleagues, (Kriszta, Zsuzsa, and Gyuri) each shared about some great difficulties that they have been facing in recent months. Kriszta was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 8 years ago. From one day to the next she simply couldn’t stand on her own power anymore. What followed was many years of physical therapy, surgeries, a lot of confusion and prayer. In spite of the doubts of her doctors, Kriszta and her husband Roland gave birth to their daughter, Sonya, two years ago. Kriszta shared with the students that even though she would never have imagined that this was God’s plan for her life…she knew that He was sovereign and in complete control. Zsuzsa shared about the birth of her third child, Kamilla, who has Downs Syndrome. In her own words: “Even though we didn’t desire this for our daughter, we also are so happy to have her. She has brought an indescribable joy to our family.” Finally Gyuri shared about the recent death of his mother (in February) in a car accident on a snowy road. Gyuri stood before the students and said, “Of course I wish my mother was here, but I do know that she is in a place now where there is no more pain…and I know that I will see her again.” The students sat absolutely riveted to these stories. What made the moment so special was precisely because the staff were not talking about things that are easy in the Christian life. They were talking about the special joy that comes alongside moments of great difficulty.

Mark

During the sharing time at the end of the weekend one of the new students who one of our staffs started to talk just two weeks ago, Mark (in the striped shirt below) stood up and confessed that just a few weeks earlier his uncle had passed away. He said that his uncle was close enough to him to feel like a brother. Mark said that he felt he had received the same love this weekend as he used to feel from his uncle.

Rahel and Agi

And, finally, joyful news about a new believer. Agi (on the right) stood up at the end of the weekend and tearfully said, “As I was sitting here this morning I felt the presence of God. I decided to begin my relationship with him!” Agi has been coming to our weekly meetings since February. We are so happy for her!! Here is a shot just after she confessed her faith to the audience. She is hugging Rahel, the daughter of the Campus Crusade director of the country (she is the girl in the left above). Rahel’s mother told us later that Rahel had been specifically praying for Agi to trust Christ.
We are blessed to be involved in such a ministry. It is God’s ministry and He permits us to experience these amazing moments.

Happy Easter!

Kisvárda again

Our partnership with the Police and the Presbyterian Church is expanding and leading us to new territories. In the first city (Kisvarda) where we've started to work together, we've spoke to 3,800 students and trained over 250 educators. We've also had been asked to train the Seminary students of the Presb. Church on evangelism. We've spent the last weekend with them at Kisvarda - so we could not just give a training but to show them in practice how it could work. On this picture you can see the last group of students we gave a YTL talk - there were so many that the city had to open the Stadium to fit them in, because none of the school had a large enough auditorium to held that many students!
We had been asked to join into a long-term partnership with the Police and the Presbyterian Church as they seek to take YTL and the exhibition to every major city.

Prayer movement

It's very encouraging for us to see God at work through our prayer ministry. We organized a prayer night in the beginning of February. We praised God, confessed our sins, prayed for our ministry, for the World, Europe, Hungary. We were taught about fasting, and a few students were lead to begin fasting.
Two of our disciples (Zsofi and Emese) lead a religious radio broadcast and two other FEK girls were interviewed about fasting on the show. God lead one of our staff members to encourage other believers in praying regularly for a spiritual change among the Hungarian nation. Last Saturday we began a month long prayer chain for this purpose. We have an online prayer calendar with Bible verses and questions to provoke thought and lead to confession. Also prayer requests for Hungary. Pray that many would be renewed during this prayer month.

Transylvania

Two weeks ago a team of 8 went back to Kolozsvar, Transylvania. Three staff and five students set out from Budapest, Hungary. For four of our students, this was the first time leaving our borders on a mission trip. The goal was to help the campus ministry in Kolozsvár and that our students would get a wider perspective and experience of missions as well.

This trip was paved with God's blessings. Our students took the initiative and boldly stepped out of their confort zones. As a result of it there were about 50 one-on-one evangelistic conversations with hungarian university students. Many came closer to God, two trusted Christ.

About 170 new students came to an outreach on Tuesday night and we were able to contact most of them on the phone as well afterwards. Our relationship with the believers and Campus students in Kolozsvar grew as well that week. It is a special joy for us to have witnessed how much the Kingdom grows through FEK: We had three evangelistic and follow-up trainings, three follow-up meetings, one Bible study for guys, and even an outreach among Romanian students. Another joy was to see students from local churches get excited and boldly step out in reaching other students.

God does have a plan with Transylvania!

Thank you for praying for the ministry there.

Girls and guys day

Thank you so much for your prayers for the girls’ and guys’ day on February 7th. Of course the theme of the conference was about dating. Some of the topics were for example: the role of the leadership as guys, God is the one who satisfies not relationships, how to dress, purity, etc...

As I talked to some of the students about the day, they told me that they heard so many useful informations at the conference. Praise God for that!

Over 50 students came to this event.

Kisvárda

Last Friday we spent one more day in Kisvarda to give a talk about sex to students from Catlic High School. It was amazing to see the students and go to see the exhibition. I wrote about the exhibition in my blog two weeks ago. It was socked when I looked it. It represent clearly the gospel. God gave a very good idea to a pastor and he obeyed Him. Praise God for it!

Staff women conference

Two weeks ago our staff ladies spent four days together. We had worship time, we heard teaching about David, we prayed, we had some fun time, too. Our weekend title was Journey of the heart. We heard about a heart of a shepherd,a prepared heart for battle, a diappointed heart, a heart in the wilderness, a choice of the heart. I really enjoyed this some days.

working with Police continue

A young Presbyterian pastor, Laszlo lives near to the Ukrainian border of Hungary and had been using YTL for two years with many students in his city, Kisvarda. He had a desire to share Christ and provide the information given in YTL to every student. His idea was to open an exhibition where the kids and their educators can watch short, eye-opening clips on the topics we discuss in YTL: Family-problems, Drug, AIDS, Why Wait, Friendship, Abortion and the Gospel. Laszlo approached his Bishop and the Chief Captain of the Police in the whole country with his idea. They’ve agreed to support this idea and field-test it in Kisvarda. The Chief Captain of the Police, the Bishop of the Presbyterian Church and many prominent leaders along with many nationwide media came to the opening ceremony on January 11th. We had been asked to partner with them and provide the program. It means that the students and the educators before they can see the exhibition (where the gospel is very clearly and boldly represented to them) they have to come and listen to one of our YTL talk in the city’s Palace of Art. This was mandatory for every students and educators. This gave us the opportunity not just to give talks to over 2,000 students and 150 educators, but also to invite them to Speak Out or to the YTL symposium. This leads to a greater opportunity we’ve every dreamed of: the Hungarian Police and the Presbyterian Church would like to take this opportunity to every high school and campus students in the country and have asked us to partner with them to give the training and talks in the cities they take the exhibition.

Thanks for your prayer!

Thank you very much for your prayer!!! Yesterday, we arrived home. On Thursday we gave a report to the Czech Leadership Team. They were really nice and they accepted our recommandations. On that evening we could go again to see Prague. We tasted the real Czech food, knedli, baked pork and cabbage :)

Prague

Thanks for your prayers. I arrived safely to Prague. It was only little snow. Tomorrow we will starts the audit. We have to give a riport the Czech Leadership on Thursday afternoon. On Friday we will drive home. I work with my collegue, Bela is a Albanian lady who lives in Hungary.

prayer requests

On Sunday I will drive to Prague, Czech Republic to audit their books with Bela (Albanian lady). Czech has a strong Athletics in Action ministry. We will have three days to look through everything and give a riport to the leadership in fourth day (Thursday). Please pray for us to arrive safely by car. It will be snowing. It is about 6 hours drive.

I will attend a women's conference from January 20-23 for all of our staff women and some others who had been invited for this. Pray that this would be a refreshing time for all the women serving with us, especially in their walk with God and in their vision for our ministry.

Working with Police

We'd been asked to participate at a nation-wide attempt to influence youth by teaching them some of our YTL classes. The Hungarian Police officially supports that effort. As a first attempt of this campaign we'll travel next week (11-15, January) to a smaller city to speak to over 2,000 high school kids and than train 150 educators on how to use YTL (this will be a 3 day series of speaking). This campaign carries not just multiple speaking opportunities in schools, but each time the gospel can be represented and students can be invited to events, like SpeakOut camp or our other outreaches. It generates momentum and creates credibility along with an opportunity of representing the Message!