Prayer requests - 06.10.2008

As you can see God is answering our (and your) prayers in many ways!

„And all things, whatsoever all of you shall ask in prayer, believing, all of you shall receive.” Matthew 21:22

The coming weeks are about following up with many student and the SSKs. Also beginnig one-on-one and group discipleship.

Requests:
- Many students are still sceptical about us calling them to meet one-on-one. We need wisdom in our phone conversations with them.
- The Spirit would convince the students of their sin. The "low point" of most meeting is the "Your are completely in sin" part. They need to see God for who He is, in order for them to see themselves correctly.
- Lasting relationships with students
- God would raise up student leaders, who would be willing and teachable to lead others.

BHHP 2008 Comments

These are some comments from the Americans attending BHHP 2008:

"Although I've been a believer for many years, I have not been very faithful in terms of sharing my faith with others. Sure, I tell people when asked, but I have not been very good at proactively sharing my testimony. So, for me, the BHHP week was one of the highlights of my journey with Christ and a catalyst to go out and proclaim the gospel."

"I just wanted to send a great big THANK YOU for helping to arrange another amazing year with BHHP!!!!! I know that none of it could have been possible without God, but God definitely used you to arrange and schedule everything and without that, the things we did would not have happened."

"God taught me more about Himself this trip and I have learned to be more focused and responsive to the Holy Spirit.As we observe you and your staff modeling this, it encourages and even corrects us - Your ministry is not to Hungarian students - it to many Americans also. Praise God for His love and care and that He doesn't want to leave us where we are but complete His work in us, using any means necessary."

"While my goal was to give, it is apparent that the Lord wanted me to receive as well. Your love for the Lord, your love for each other, your love for the lost sheep, all of these are inspiring to me. As I learn more about your country and what your people have struggled through, I am amazed. Just eighteen years out of communism and a hopeless environment. Now you are there spreading the Word of God…the only hope that any of us truly have whether we live in Europe, North America or anywhere in God's creation. After two or three days in Hungary, that I felt there could be a real revival in Budapest. You are planting the seeds throughout your city and we know that God works in mysterious ways."

BHHP 2008 Video

BHHP 2008

We've had some quite full weeks behind us. 2 weeks ago we had the BHHP Project, through it, 20 Americans came to serve with us among the students of Budapest. Julcsi and I both got sick in the first half of the week, but were able to attend most of the programs we organized throughout the week. We had:

1. Evangelistic events for students: We organized a "4 basic personality types" evening a little "refreshed" during our weekly meeting again this year. About 40 new students came. Kalman and an American called Kevin talked to a catholic student that afternoon on the Technical University campus and invited him to come. He seemed interested and showed up! After the evening he said: "I do not regret coming tonight." He also said he wanted to stay in contact with us, because he liked what we do.
On Tuesday we made a presentation at one of the dormitories of the Corvinus University of Economics about business intuition. It the room next to our the dorm had an alcoholic drinking contest. They were quite loud and we prayed that God would use even this to glorify Himself. He did, as we noticed that several people started coming over to our meeting from the contest. I had a conversation with a Jewish student studying politics. He had his convictions but we had a good conversation about the divinity of Christ and the authenticity of Scripture. Please pray that God would show Himself to this student named Gergo.
On Wednesday evening we had a similar presentation about EQ in the Bethlen dormitory of the Karoli University. One of my disciples, Sara lives here. She helped us a lot and we had 30 people come. We could see the presecne of the Lord in the depth of the discussions, the powerful testimony of Sara and the fact that at midnight they still didn't want to let us go. This was a huge encouragement to me. We planed to start a FEK Club in this dorm. Our plan was to have open discussions about topics, like: relationships, superstition, astronomy and other religions vs. Christianity.
Last night we had the first FEK Club and about 20 students come down for about 2 hours to talk about relationships. Most students were a bit quiet, but some had something to say to every question. A staff gave her testimony. Please continue to pray for openness in this dorm.

2. English classes: We came in contact with many open student and teachers(!) as well. Praise God It seems that we have an open door to go and do English classes any time we want.

3. SSK (Student Survival Kit) distributions: With the help of the Americans we distributed about 2000 SSKs during the week on 6 major campuses and dorms. We are thankful that we can have a presence on these campuses!

4. Random Evangelism: Every afternoon we went to the Technical and Corvinus Universities to randomly walk up and talk to students about God. For many Americans this was the first time doing something like this and they showed tremendous faith in stepping out and initiating to students like this. God blessed us and them as well. See the comments in the following post.

Technical University SSK distribution - 2008-09

Származási hely: FÉK

Last Monday and Tuesday we handed out 2500 SSKs at 3 main entrances of the main Technical University of Budapest during freshmen registration. It was a very good experience for our team as well as all our student volunteers who were there. Again we saw about 4 SpeakOut campers from this summer among the freshmen. More relationships, praise God! :) Please keep praying for us and all the students who are interested in Jesus, that we would be able to make one-on-one contact with all of them in September and October. Probably about 1500-2000 students this year.

ELTE Law School SSK distribution - 2008-09

Származási hely: FÉK

We have been handing out student survival kits and starting up our weekly group meetings for the students these previous couple of weeks. We are trusting God that He will bring us students who will be open to the Gospel. We have so far handed out over 2700 of the 5500 we have for this year on 4 campuses. We'll be doing this until the end of the month and also start calling back those intersted for a personal meeting. We are excited. :)
Two weeks ago Friday we went to a historical city called Eger, about 2 hours from Budapest to attend the ELTE Law School's Freshmen Camp. There are only 350 freshmen this year and we were able to hand out 200 SSKs and got 100 responses back to the survey. Not as many as we had hoped, but God is in control. :) It was fun to see a freshmen called Kata, who attended our summer camp, SpeakOut this year. She said she wants to be part of FEK (YTL) this year. Pray for her, she is not a believer yet. Over all we made some good connections with students and the only thing that made this day difficult: this was the second day of my diet... :)

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!