Exciting developments and important prayer requests!
Further growth:
On May 21st we added five new members: two married couples and a single young man. One of the couples formerly served as a pastor and pastor’s wife for more than 20 years. The husband now serves as general secretary of the Baptist Union of Hungary. He is about my age, and we have been friends for years. Both of his adult children had already joined our church. He has already jumped in preaching a couple times and is leading small group discussions. I hope to have him help in our leadership training in the future. It is a huge blessing to have another couple our age come along side us and help raise up the next generation of disciples and leaders here in Budapest!
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| New members |
Larger venue:
After much prayer and discussion, we have decided that beginning in September we will move up into the main auditorium located in the same building as the coffee shop we currently use. This is the same auditorium that we have used in the past for baptismal services. It is a bit larger than we need as it can seat up to 400, but it seems that there are great advantages to staying in this same building. The location is fantastic with a nearby subway stop, a large parking lot, and a large park all located in the immediate vicinity. Hopefully we will be able to grow into it in the next few years.
Expanded office space:
After the decision was made to stay in our current building, we decided to expand our office space in this same building. We were sharing an office suite with another mission organization which moved out in May. We decided to rent the entire suite. We removed a wall to create a space big enough to seat about 20 people. We will use this for weekday meetings and Saturday training sessions. This area will also double as a studio and practice space for our worship team. The suite also has two smaller offices and some storage areas. We are so thankful for the expanded space, and also that our office suite is in the same building that we use for our Sunday services.
The expanded office space and larger auditorium will double our monthly rental expenses, so this will be a challenge for our young church, but as the church grows, we continue to see our offerings grow as well, and we are trusting the Lord to meet these needs.
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Working on new office area
English Day Camp – July 3-7
Our biggest prayer request is for our English Day Camp that will be held July 3-7. Last year we held our first English camp with 21 children. This year we were praying for 40 children. Believe it or not we have 62 children signed up! We closed registration two weeks ago, as we felt like we would not be able to handle and additional children. 90% of these children have no connection to our church. Many are from the public school where Charin teaches. This is a tremendous opportunity to get the Gospel out and connect with unchurched families in our area. We have a team of eight arriving from Fellowship Baptist Church in Thonotosassa, Florida to help with the camp. We have several other missionary friends who serve here in Hungary who will also be helping this week. And of course, many of our church members will be serving as translators and leading various aspects of the camp. Charin leads the camp, so it has been a huge amount of work for her. Please pray for health and strength for all those serving this week, and that the Lord would work in a great way! We will have a closing service Friday afternoon for the parents and also invite everyone to our Sunday service. Please pray that we will see several new families connect with our church through this special week of outreach!
These are exciting times! Thanks so much for standing with us in your prayers and support!
Marc and Charin Patton
