Festival of Folk Arts in Buda Castle

Every year for four days Buda Castle is in the centre of interest all over the country. Thanks to the Festival of Folk Arts about 800 craftsmen and 80 000 visitors spend these days in the spirit of traditions.

The Festival of Folk Arts, this traditional meeting of folk artists, will be held for the 25^th time this year. In the historic environment of the Buda Castle, for four days craftsmen will be displaying traditional crafts and skills in open workshops and visitors will be involved into the process of creation. In addition to the folk craft shows the craftsmen will also offer their goods for sale in the traditional folk art fair. Hungarian and foreign folk dancers and musicians will perform on different stages and there will be a traditional – wear parade entitled “Ages and age groups – casual and formal fashion” everyday and holiday attire of the Galga the Sárköz the Kalocsa and the Rábaköz regions.

In day time hours visitors will be entertained in a lively fair atmosphere: street theatres, puppet shows and childrens programs and in the evenings they will be invited to dance in the dancehouse. This year the Festival of Folk Arts will share an anniversary with the 20 years old Wine Festival. That will give an opportunity for a series of programs that popularize vine culture as well. Lopózás – “colouring corner”, “bottle it yourself” programs and a winemaker's training courses for children will wait for the youngest visitors.

I visited this festival for a half day to look around and find some nice gifts to my friends. I hope you will enjoy my pictures and will like the Hungarian folks.

Speak Out 2011

"SpeakOut 2011" ended with great blessings and success beyond our hope. Numbers are very inadequate way to summarize the camp, but represents at least some of the impact of the camp.

• We sent teams to 4 cities in 3 countries.
• Over 360 non-Christian campers came to spend 3 x 1 week with us.
• Our student volunteers approached over 2,700 students at those cities and offered the opportunity to discuss about Christ.
• Over 1,600 students have heard a personal gospel presentation from one of our student volunteer or staff.
• 97 students indicated a decision. We never saw such openness and results!

We had so many programs for the campers, morning class, SpeakOut groups, sport afternoon, staff hunt, American culture night, Hungarian evening, etc. But we wanted to put this camp together mainly because we wanted to share the gospel with them. Each camper had different opportunity to hear the gospel in different ways throughout the week. While the Americans spent time with the Hungarian campers in the afternoons we Hungarian staffs and students went to the beach and shared the gospel with students there.

Statistics

There are only two types of people in the world: those who like statistics and those who don’t. If you belong to the second category, this post is probably not for you…

However, if you like statistics, here’s what we gathered during this last schoolyear:

Number of students personally approached by staff with the gospel: 4572 (only one-on-one, personal conversations)

Approached by staff by week: 10.34 (as stated above, this is only one-on-one approaches, and also, if I took my disciple with me and he shared the gospel, that does not count here.)

Evangelistic discussions: 2802 (it means that we can have a spiritual conversation with more than half of the students that we approach)

Student evangelistic descussions: 2952 (So our students shared the gospel with more people personally than we as staff did. This is a good sign in a movement, because it means that more and more is done by “the followers” and not the leaders.)

Decisions with staff: 48 (1.7% of the conversations) – This means that altough Hungarian students love to talk about spiritual things, it is extremely hard for them to make a decision to follow Christ.

Decisions with students: 78 (2.6% of the conversations) – This shows that our students – who live among other students – can be better testimonies to their non-Christian friends and classmates. Statistically speaking, 52% better…

Gospel shared at evangelistic events: 1924 (this many students heard the Good News at a talk or other event from us)

Decisions at event: 48 (2,5%) (it might show that events are more effective, but at the same time it is easier just to put an X on a response card than to commit your life when someone personally knows about your journey – but this is just my opinion:)

Entering follow-up: 136 (this many new believers started to meet with us to hear about the basics of walking with God like prayer, Bible study or going to church)

Received gospel literature: 6996 (this many students recieved the gospel in a written form from us)

Other evangelistic impact: 13492 (for example people reading the gospel on our website)

Total evangelistic impact of CCC Hungary this school-year: 45989