June 2015

Dear Friends,

Preaching and Teaching Opportunities:

The Lord gave me several opportunities to speak in other venues over the past two months. On April 24^th I preached to about 100 Baptist pastors at the annual meeting of the Hungarian Baptist Union. I was asked to speak on  the theme: “I Believe in Preaching.” Hopefully it was an inspiration to the pastors to preach with conviction and Holy Spirit power.

April 27-30 I taught at the Word of Life Hungary Bible Institute. I teach a 10 hour class on the Christian Family to the second year students. I had 20 students from a number of different countries. It is my prayer that the class will help them not only build their own families on a firm foundations, but be able to teach others as they move on into ministries of their own. I also had the opportunity to preach to the entire staff and student body in chapel.

On May 16^th I taught a class on Homiletics at the Szunergosz Bible Institute in Budapest. The students were very receptive, and I trust that the class will help them become effective communicators of God’s Word.

Esztergom:

The big event in Esztergom was a baptismal service held on May 24^th. Benjamin Dobi is a 21 year old young man who was reached through our youth ministry. Benjamin is very bright, but mildly autistic. It has been remarkable to see the transformation in his life over the past two years. Benjamin gave a wonderful testimony of his salvation and his commitment to follow the Lord. Rebeka Body is the daughter of Bulcsu Body. You may remember Bulcsu is our deacon who became very ill several years ago and is now an invalid. Rebeka has been in our church since she was an infant and was saved during last year’s English camp. It is great to see how the Lord is using our children’s ministry, youth ministry and special events such as our English camp to bring people to Christ!

Not only were these two baptised, but we also received six others into the church membership. We are thankful for the Dorka family who began attending our church about a year ago. They have been believers for a number of years, but had gone through some very difficult times in their family and had been looking for a church home. It has been great to see the Lord bring healing to their lives over the past year, and we were glad to add them to our church family. We were also glad to bring Rachel Csiha officially into our church family. We are thankful for Marci and Rachel’s ministry with us in Esztergom and Nagysap.

Tata Update:

We are still waiting on our building permit in Tata. It has been promised with specific dates several times, but there always seems to be one more signature missing, or one more hurdle to get over. Please pray that the building permit will come through soon! We received several more gifts toward the building expenses – one very significant, so we are very grateful for that. Please continue to pray for the needed funds to come in.  All monetary gifts can be sent to our mission board and designated for “Hungary Building Project.”

Nagysap:

We have had several positive developments at our church plant in Nagysap as well. Our team moved the main service from Sunday mornings to Wednesday evenings, and that brought an improvement in attendance. They also just launched a course called “Christianity Explored,” which is an eight week overview of the Christian faith. They had their first meeting last week and had 26 in attendance with several adult visitors. Please pray that these visitors would continue through the entire course and that several would be saved. We are thankful for the faithfulness and hard work of our team.

Family news:

Nancy and Ben finished their first year of college. We are really please with how well they did with their school work, jobs and ministry involvement. Ben’s health has also been gradually improving, for which we are grateful. They are going to work for a few more weeks and then fly back to Hungary on June 23^rd. We can hardly wait to see them again! Esther and Hannah (and Charin) have a few more weeks of school. Hannah will be graduating from 8^th grade on June 13^th. Thank you for your prayers!