Pray for Speak Out!!!

Although SpeakOut camp is 6 weeks away, it's already obvious that we are looking at the largest camp ever.

• 159 Christian volunteers (46 of them are American volunteers) signed up and went through the qualification procedure to serve at the camp. They dedicate a whole month and raise support to be able to serve at SpeakOut.
• Already close to 300 non-Christian campers signed up to come to the camp when we are 4 weeks away from the registration deadline.
• We will be sending teams from the camp to Albania, to Romania, to Slovakia and to Siofok (another city in Hungary).

Why is it so significant?

These days the most valuable assest people have is TIME! Life is so busy, people are distracted with the things compete for their time and they are less and less willing to dedicate even short hours to ministry in churches or missions. It is outstanding that 159 Christians volunteer dedicate a WHOLE MONTH to serve with us and they are willing to raise money to cover all their costs! Why so many are choosing to serve with us at SpeakOut when in Hungary this project requires the greatest commitment both in time and in finances? Why is it that year-to-year more and more Christians (students and adults) are willing to make that commitment? It is an evidence of God's abundant grace choosing the nobodies and the insignificant. We are humbled and scared by this responsibility!

Pray that every volunteer would be able to raise their support! Pray for health for volunteers and the campers. Pray for the thousands of personal gospel conversations we will have.

"I'm not ashamed" -story

In Romans 1:16 Paul says that he is not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation. We've recorded (and continue recording) short (max 2 minutes-long) stories of people who had been saved through YTL because there was someone (a staff or student) who boldly initiated toward them and clearly explained the gospel to them. These stories represents people who were coming from non-Christian background and without a bold, initiative Messenger they wouldn't get saved. We are launching this story-telling series (titled "I'm not ashamed") to encourage Christians not to be ashamed of the gospel because it is the power to save and change people's lives. 

BHHP

We had an extremely effective week with the help of 32 American volunteers who came for our mission trip (called Bringing in the Hungarian Harvest Project, BHHP). Over 700 students showed up at the 7 dorm outreaches and at the two special outreaches we had for campus and high schools students. Also we went to about 100 classrooms to speak to students and invite them to after school activities. I can't share all the great stories, but the following four short stories are summarizing well what we see happening in YTL.

Story # 1: We've closed the BHHP mission trip with our annual YTL educator's symposium. 160 educators from all over Hungary came to spend the whole weekend with us to learn how to use our program and curriculum. (From their written feedback we know that they committed themselves to teach YTL to over 12,000 students this year). As always it's is our practice at these symposiums we've shared the gospel with the participating educators through Dave Robinson's and Gabor Gresz’s testimony and ask them to consider giving their life to Jesus. Four educators indicated a decision. After they shared their testimonies, the gospel and asked them to consider turning their lives to Jesus, one educator, named Beata came up to them. She shared that after hearing how God changed Gabor’a heart and made he able to forgive to his abusive father, she immediately realized that she lived her life in a prison. In the prison of not forgiving her mother. She has spent her whole life to prove herself to her mom. She preformed really well, but by now she got to a point where there is a lot of hate and bitterness in her and she can't forgive her mother. She never considered the existence of God, never believed in God. But now she felt so compelled by the pain in her heart and the freeing love of Jesus that she opened her heart "just a little" - as she said - to Jesus. She said that during the whole symposium she felt that everything was for her. In tears she said her first prayer in her life with very little faith, but with an honest and broken heart! And we all know that God take those prayers very seriously!

Story #2: Saturday noon an educator came up to Gabor before lunch. She wanted to introduce herself. As she said her name he immediately recognized the name - one of the newly converted student's mother. She told her story why she came to the symposium. Her daughter - Fanni - was a teenager who got into a lot of trouble. The parents couldn't handle her, they had a tons of conflicts at home. The parents even had been called in by her school many times because she got into big problems there. They were miserable as they saw how they are loosing their daughter. They've sent her to our "SpeakOut" summer English camp a year ago. And Fanni's live has been changed dramatically. Her mom said this to me: "I've never imagined that in one week this could happen with MY daughter!!! Fanni came back a totally different person. So now I came to this educator's symposium to find out what is this YTL thing that saved my daughter and our family!" Fanni's life changed because Christ changed her life. And now her mom understands this. Since then she is turning her school up-side-down in a good term. She is sharing Christ with everybody - students and teachers, and bringing them to everything we organize. Fanni is a very outgoing, leader type of person - a really fireball! Before knowing Christ she used all her energy to make her family's life hell, now she is using all of that to get others into Heaven! The teachers are amazed how she has changed. They really like the "end product", but they don't understand the "process".

Story #3: One educator at the symposium shared with us that 6 years ago she came to a YTL symposium and prayed to receive Christ. Since then not just her life has changed, but she felt called to help other educators and students to find Jesus. She led one of her colleague to Christ and brought her to this symposium. This past year God opened a huge door for them in their city, named Vac to teach YTL in all the high schools. As a result of their work we've started to travel there last year and even this week we are holding a two day assembly to all the high schools there. Thousands of students are hearing the gospel this week because one educator 6 years ago came to the symposium and her life was changed!

Story #4: God used this week to change the life of the Americans who came to BHHP. Many of them expressed what a faith step this was for them to share their faith and how this impacts their everyday walk with God as they go back. But there was one American couple out of the 32 participants in the group who - during this week - got convinced that the Lord is calling them back to Hungary to full time ministry. Laborers are the most needed resource in the mission field!

Sometimes we just wonder what is going on! How many lives are changed and impacted. And we just only see the surface!

It is short film about the partnership between the Police, the Reformed Church and YTL. We showed it in our Area Staff Conference in Slovenia.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

YTL Symposium

This message is not adequate to describe to you the impact of this week and the YTL symposium. We can’t share with you the dozens of meaningful conversations, the hundreds of invitations we’ve received to go to schools and speak there to students. We have received 215 feedback cards from the educators and 94% of them wants to use YTL and need our help in that!

In the past week with the help of 22 Americans (who came to the Bringing to the Hungarian Harvest Project - BHHP) we had this special “celebration” which led to directly impact over 30,000 students and educators. Just to briefly summarize the impact of these here are some statistics:
-150 students came to the campus outreach and close to 200 students came to the high school outreach and have heard the gospel
-at 8 high school assemblies over 1,500 students were listening to a ,,Why wait?” talk and had been invited to an outreach event.
-our team with the help of our guests spoke at over 50 classrooms in both high schools and campuses and invited hundreds of students to the outreaches
-over 4,000 evangelistic SSK’s had been distributed to freshmen on campus
-shared Christ with over 100 students personally
-280 educators came to the YTL symposium, for 222 of them this was the first YTL symposium. Four of them prayed to receive Christ. These educators will teach YTL to more 25,000 students and they’ll show the Jesus dvd to more than 15,000 students in their classrooms. The new 3rd YTL curriculum and dvd that we’ve produced was a great success!
-at 4 dorm outreaches over 130 students have heard the gospel.

But what best describes the life-changing impact of YTL and really motivates us are the changed lives. Here is just one out of the hundreds: "5 years ago I was at a YTL symposium and it had a great impact on me. I've received Jesus Christ there and since than our lives are continue changing, my life along my family's life. The emphasis in my life had been changed, I don't direct my life any more, but I listen what the Lord of my life, Jesus Christ wants to tell me through the Holy Spirit. It was a great spiritual adventure - in a positive way - to get to know this way and leave the old lifestyle. I needed great courage to believe that God loves unconditionally, forgave me and I can trust in Him; I can rely my family's life and my friend's life on Him with hope and faith. Thanks God and for you for this great miracle." - these sentences were written by an educator who came to the 15th anniversary celebration YTL symposium and gives a great example of the impact of YTL in the lives of the educators and students.

Your prayers and support were absolutely essential in the past 15 years! God used your partnership to impact over 500,000 students in Hungary and millions around the World through YTL! Thank you!

YTL Symposium

We had a great symposium. The atmosphere were excellent.
Thank you for your prayer!

You can see some pictures here >>

Just a couple of statistics from the symposium:

There were about 200 people. Here is what we know:

71% indicated that they will show the Jesus film in their classrooms
to 13332 students.

15916 students will be in a YTL class.

21% of the participants said that they would like to talk further
about Jesus Christ.

6 prayed to receive Christ.

About 80% were first timers.

The feedback and reaction was very positive.

YTL Symposium this weekend

Please pray for us. We are waiting two hundred teachers end educators for our YTL Symposium. It is new place where we organize this event. We are hoping every details will be in their places. On Saturday evening we will share the Gospel. Please pray God's good news break the teachers' hard heart and open their eyes and ears!!! After it we will have a tea house where we would like to talk about Christianity with teacher.
Thanks for your prayer!