Greece

Dear Friends, our ministry year has started with full-throttle in mid August. But before we dug in we went on vacation to Greece with another staff couple and had lots of fun. We were on the beach a lot and even went to a Waterpark near Thessaloniki for a day. Had the chance to see old Philippi and the ruins of the first Christian Church there as well as the prison of Apostle Paul. Here is a picture of us at the prison entrance:

Származási hely: Greece

Whiteboyz and Rhonda

A bit of Speakout FUN!

Whiteboyz


with Rhonda

Cookie Dance by Zach

A bit more of SpeakOut FUN!



The famous Cookie Dance at Speak Out 2008!

Speak Out 2008

This is a little video about the SpeakOut summer project we have every year by the Lake Balaton in Hungary. It is really good for the whole family!

God spoils me...

We are 2 weeks after our student weekend retreat and are very happy to have been there. Many students came, actually more than those signed up to come. Our guest speaker was a pastor named Monty Taylor, who’s been living in Hungary for over 27 years. The title of the weekend was “Issues of the Heart”. He mainly talked to us about missions. One of the great things for me was that my disciple, named Gábor – I wrote about him in a previous email and on our blog as well, though to protect his identity then, I titled the blog entry “Robert” – came and really enjoyed the weekend. He said afterwards that it allowed him to understand much more about the things of God. Gábor has just submitted his application to come to SpeakOut as student staff last week! This is wonderful also, because this summer project will give him a great vision for the Christian life and ministry. This week Gábor and another student as well as 2 of my staff colleagues we started taking them out to share our faith! Gábor was paying close attention to how we shared and enjoyed it a lot! God spoils me with Gábor :). Click to see a picture of him.

Mission: Hungary

Please check out this short video about the Hungarian Ministry!

Area Staff Conference 2008 - Tihany, Hungary

In this short video Gábor Grész, country director of the Hungarian ministry speaks in english. You can download the whole session by clicking here. You can see how 1100 full-time missionaries from 18 countries worship together. It was a wonderful experience to listen to teachings as well as worshipping together day after day for a week! It has truly encouraged our hearts!

Old Testament 2

No, Old Testament 2 isn't a new translation or version of the Old Testament... only one of a dozen IBS courses we, as CCC staff are required to take. I was quite nurveous in the beginning. Many hours of daily reading, several tests and an essay filled my first two weeks of January. I really enjoyed the course taught by Paul Dickason. It was wonderful to go deeper in the Old Testament and to understand its big picture, history and literature better and thus understand the God of the Old and New Testament. A God who is the same in both and does not change. Oh, and I passed!
Praise the Lord!

K

Season's Greetings!

Oh, and someting else - Click here!

Robert

Last Friday, we met with a law student from Károli University. He received a Survival Kit this September and on it indicated some interest in spiritual things. We met with Robert (not his real name) in a Burger King and he listened to us attentively as we explained to Him God’s plan for salvation. He was very open and wanted to know more. He had many questions, and the more he asked, the more questions came up. After he seemed to understand the message, I asked him what stands in the way for him to make the decision to follow Christ. He said he had questions he needed to have answers to and understand as much as he could. I explained to him that no matter how many questions he will ask and how many I can answer, it will still require his faith at the end to decide. I will meet with him again this Friday (tomorrow) and give him the “More than Carpenter” book, which he said he is very excited about reading! Please pray that as we continue to meet he would have a genuine desire to know God personally!

All the Christian lawyers please stand up!

We advertised the discussion with this poster/flyer (Kalman’s design)

I cannot say there are many Christian lawyers in Hungary. The Hungarian Evangelical Christian Student Association’s (internationally: IFES – International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) local Bible group and YTL organized a roundtable discussion this Monday at the University of Law. The title: ”Christian lifestyle and lawyer’s call: Can they get along?” Invited to the discussion were two professors and two practicing lawyers. Our goal was, in the form of this conference, to step out towards non-believer students and to show them real Christianity that can be represented and lived among lawyers. Turned out that one of the professors was a seeker, but was not a born-again believer. God used him to raise good questions in the discussion and though he did not agree with many things, by the end he claimed that: “I thank my colleagues around the table, it was an honor to be here. I have learned much tonight and I am left with much to think about.”

The three other lawyers were very bold in talking about their personal faith in God. He brought 17 new (non-believer) students at the discussion and all the response cards we got back were all positive. Among the student attendees, there even was another professor, who was curious to hear about this topic. God is doing something amazing at this school.

- Please pray also that more students and teachers will open up to the Gospel
- Please pray that this event will be an encouragement to all involved (to the local IFES Bible group as well) and that there would be lasting fruit!

Experiencing God at Csillebérc!

Last weekend’s YTL youth retreat at Csillebérc (a camp on a mountain near Budapest) went really well. God has blessed us with His presence through worship, teaching, fellowship, small groups, games and rest. There were about 80 of us – university and high school students as well. Over all we have seen several people come closer to Jesus. A girl named Eszter wrote an email to one of our student leaders few days ago and said that she claimed to be a believer before, but realized over the weekend that she was following God from a great distance. She said that she could not talk about her faith, but the kind of love she saw among us was and experience of God. She came close to Jesus and her life will never be the same again. Praise the Lord! I saw Eszter last week at the Economical University and she was eagerly wanting to share her faith. Once we face the living God, we just cannot remain the same.

Call to prayer!

Something wonderful is going to happen in our (yours and ours) ministry this weekend. Every year, and so this weekend, we gather about 90 of us together at Csillebérc, in a former Communist Pioneer camp in the Buda hills, to hold a YTL (FÉK) Student Retreat. This will be a weekend of worship, teaching, prayer, group discussions and fun. The theme: Experiencing God, our speaker will be Gábor Grész, National Director of CCC Hungary. We have out lots of prayer and planning into this and we want to ask you, our partners in the Hungarian harvest to please pray. We need your prayers! There will be many young believers as well as some non-believer students.

Please pray that:

- the students would come to a better understanding as to what it means to experience God Biblically.

- the students would experience personal growth.

- those students who do not yet know Jesus, would come to know Him personally.

- as members of the Sunday morning panel discussion, Julcsi and I would be able to help the students by answering their questions as much as possible.

- Judit, a girl from Szeged would be permitted to come by her parents.

K

1st week

This is our first week of full-time ministry with the YTL (Youth at the Threshold of Life) Campus Team. It is exciting, we have a lot to learn and we have to adapt to a completely new timetable. At first it seems like a lot, but we believe that one step at a time we will get used to things. The first 3-4 days, we have had team meeting, planning meeting, personal meeting, student meeting, student leadership meeting and weekly meeting. Quite a full and joyful first few days.

Thank you for all your prayers for us. One of our prayers was to be able to start full-time student ministry by the beginning of November. God has answered this prayer. Thank you for all your support in prayer and in finances. We praise the Lord for you and His wonderful plans!

New SOTS Set

New SOTS Set
Originally uploaded by Kool.

Friends,
After 2 months of hard work in collaboration, we presented the new Story of the Soul (SOTS) 2 disc (CD-DVD) set to the SOTS Conferencees 2 days ago.

As I am writing this, about 40-50 staff and students from about 12 countries in Eastern Europe and Russia are meeting downstairs in the conference room to be trained in the philosophy and practice of SOTS. It has been a good year for SOTS, ministries in several countries adopted it and are using it among students to share the Gospel in a revolutionary way. It is obviously not a perfect method - none are :) - and it surely does not replace descipleship, but it does well in what it was designed for: Bringing students without God to the realization of their spiritual need through the "cry of their own soul" and giving them JESUS.

Due to the appearent success of SOTS, it needed a structural and graphical redesign. We outsourced part of the project to a young webdesigner and programmer to have the interactive CD programmed in Flash animation. The CD is completed. We designed its contents so that it could be easily uploaded to a website. Something I am working on even now.

We are registering storyofthesoul.net and storyofthesoul.org. Please make sure you check it out in a week.

Please pray that the Lord would continue to use SOTS as He has in the previous years.

Wedding

Wedding
Originally uploaded by Kool.

Behold my wife!

Some Wedding Photos

Dear Friends,

We just got back from our honeymoon. We had an absolutely wonderful time!
Please check out some of our wedding photos online at
http://balsa.smugmug.com/Weddings

You can also order them from this site if you wish. It will be printed at
Smugmug Fuji and delivered to you if you wish.

Kalman and Julcsi

Story of the Soul at YTL symposium

YTL (Youth at the Threshold of Life) has been a world-wide success for several years now, and like Story of the Soul (SotS), started in Hungary. It has been reaching students and teachers with the Gospel in the hundreds. Maybe even thousands. Through it, CCC has been able to train teachers to use the JESUS Film as a means to teach students in classes about the historical facts of the Gospel. Now, SotS and YTL met for the first time. Dave Robinson, the brain behind BOTH outreaches held a SotS session at the YTL teachers' symposium last night.

Here is his report:

"The Story of the Soul at the Youth at the Threshold of Life (YTL) was historic. I wanted to pass on a couple of highlights.
* three believers, key leaders in Church Planting and Reform Churches
ABSOLUTELY loved Story of the Soul. I invited them to come to the training.
They are thrilled and so am I.
* One 25 year old, hip long-hair, educator from Sopron came up to me today
at the close of YTL and said he loved Story of the Soul and would like to be
resourced. He will LOVE what you all are doing. He was so enthusiastic I
thought him to be a believer so I asked him. He said, ³No. Not yet. But
the whole thing touched me deep in my heart.² Later I found out that Matt
Jackson shared Christ with him the night before.
* Out of the 329 there, 155 passed back to us a comment card and 16 of them
prayed to receive Christ.
* One 60 year old woman said, ³I have been to many training sessions in my
life ­ some for drug prevention, some for the mental health of our students.
It was good. Like here, methodology was stressed. The traditional
trainings, however, are missing something badly needed and I did not know it
until this weekend. It is missing your added dimension. YTL has a strength
and insight into what matters most and offers great help. The values, the
character development, the tools for building friendships and our students
self-worth are wonderful. And I will tell you why. It has been prepared by
love. It is filled through and through with love. I am so grateful to all of you for this.²

Our Multimedia team has been working on taking SotS to yet another level. We have brought in a young designer Phil Konya to help us with the project. We are completely redesigning the SotS training package. Part of it will be an interactive training CD and a DVD full of short clips to help learning about, planning and executing a SotS session. It is already looking great. The CD is planned to be completed beginning of May and the DVD in September. We are looking forward to how it is going to be used by God in the coming months. Please continue to pray for SotS!

Kalman

Legal wedding photos

legal
Originally uploaded by Kool.

Dear Friends,
you can now find the first batch of photos of our legal wedding. Just click on this photo. More, higher quality photos are coming soon.
Kalman & Julcsi

Rejoice with us...kinda' :)

Dear Friends,
Yesterday afternoon at 1pm Julcsi and I got legally married. In Hungary this is a necessary thing. One does not have to have a church wedding, but has to have a legal wedding. So among Christians this is something they do not over-organize. Usually close family and the witnesses are invited and the whole ceremony takes no more than 15 minutes tops.
Christian couples do not consider this the real wedding so they do not move in together afterwards – thus the kinda’ :) in the subject. There is also a church wedding sometime afterwards. Ours is on the 1st of April as I might have mentioned before.
Please pray for our next 3 weeks as this will be an extremely busy time with work, school and getting ready for the wedding. We both feel exhausted and that we are longing to have quality time together – something we have had very little of in the past months.
We’d love to have you all join us in the ceremony if it was at all possible...
Praying for you all,
Kalman & Julcsi (pronounced “yool-chi”)