March 2016 Prayer Letter

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Hungary. After a mild winter, it seems like spring is on its way. We are looking forward to a great season of planting and harvesting.

Expanded leadership team in Esztergom:

On March 6^th we ordained a new elder and three new deacons. Tibor Kruska has served faithfully as a deacon over the past ten years. We have seen his gifts develop in the area of preaching, teaching and leadership. He leads a small group in his home each week and last year took on our youth group as well. This is alongside his full time job as owner of his own IT business. 

Our three new deacons are Marci Csiha, Zsolt Kovacs and Laci Puskar. Marci has been serving as a missionary in our church for the past three years. His main areas of ministry are evangelism, discipleship and Biblical counseling. He and his wife Rachel have been a great blessing. Zsolt married one of our young ladies and joined our church back in 2007. He serves in our worship team, does some preaching, and leads our young adults ministry. Laci was baptised in our church 12 years ago. He owns his own business. He and his wife are very faithful members of our church, and they host a small group in their home. Laci is also the only member of our leadership team who is older than me, and we believe that his life experience will be a blessing. I mentioned Gergo Szimon being brought on as our assistant pastor in my previous letter. We will ordain him later in a separate service. I am really excited about the men the Lord has given us. I believe that our expanded leadership team will make our church even more efficient and effective!

News from Tata:

Our attendance in Tata continues to be excellent. We have been running 70-80 on a regular basis. On March 6^th we had another baby dedication with numerous visitors , and our attendance was well over 100. With the arrival of warmer weather we are gearing up to complete our building project. We received several large gifts from Hungarian churches and individuals over the past few months, so we have the funds to move forward. Please pray for wisdom and strength in the ministry there.

News from Oroszlany:

Our team from Tata held their third “Family Night” outreach service in Oroszlany on February 28^th. We are not seeing huge attendances, but there are visitors at every service. One young couple seems very interested and close to making a decision. Please pray for Sanyi and Kata to be saved soon. Evangelist Allen Buchanek will be with us for the Easter weekend. He is a great preacher and has been a great friend over the years. He will not only be speaking for us in Estergom and Tata, but he will also be speaking in Oroszlany for their special Easter outreach service. Please pray for many visitors and decisions in all three locations!

Nancy’s trip:

February was an amazing month for Nancy, as we received a bit more than $1,000 toward her trip. Thank you so much! She is still trying to raise about $1,000, but we are making good progress toward her goal. She is planning to go to Zambia after school ends in May.

Trip to Israel:

Charin and I have long had a dream to visit Israel. Last year one of our church members in Tata got wind of this and gave us a large sum of money to cover our expenses. We are scheduled to be in Israel from April 6-12 with a group from the Baptist Union of Hungary. We are looking forward to a great time of fellowship, discovery and learning.  

Thanks again for your faithful prayers and support of our ministry. God bless!

Marc Patton

Tibor Kruska

New Leadership Team

Balazs Emho teaches the Bible in Oroszlany

February 2016 Prayer letter

February 10, 2016

Dear Friends,

It has been two months since our last update. Sorry for the delay. These have been busy days.

Trip to the US:

What a privilege it was to spend the Christmas holidays with family in the States. Nancy and Ben joined us from Florida. It is a joy to see them doing so well. We spent the first two weeks with Charin’s family in Indiana. We then were able to spend a few days with my parents in Tennessee before returning to Hungary. We  love our family and appreciate their investment in our lives.

January news:

January is always a month of planning, budgets and meetings as we prepare for the new year. Pastoring two churches essentially doubles the work. The growth at our church in Tata, the building project, and the multiplication of ministries there has really forced me to adjust my schedule. Tata used to get about 20% of my time, but it now gets about 40%. I am working hard to develop leadership and also put structures in place to help us be more efficient. I think we are making good progress.

We also expanded our leadership team in Esztergom. On January 31^st the church voted to bring Gergo Szimon on as assistant pastor. Gergo has been working as an intern for the past few years. He not only heads up our mission work in Nagysap, but I have been increasing his responsibilities at our main church in Esztergom. I plan to continue that process which should make my time investment in Tata a little easier. We also added three new deacons, so we will have a leadership team of seven. We are planning to ordain our new deacons in March.

New Converts and discipleship:  

I have begun discipling a young couple at our church in Tata. Janos and Brigi began attending our church in Tata more than a year ago. Brigi was very open and receptive and soon made a profession of faith. Her husband came along more slowly, but he too has now professed faith in Christ. They both have requested baptism, and I am meeting with them monthly to disciple them. We have one other young lady in Tata in our discipleship program and four others in Esztergom. All these are being discipled by other church members and are preparing for baptism later this year. We are thrilled to see people coming to Christ and pray for even more fruit this year.

I did want to say thank you to those of you who sent money toward Nancy’s missions trip to Zambia. She has received $855 so far. We continue to pray for the remaining funds. She needs about $2,000 more. 

There are many of exciting things ahead. We are grateful for your prayers and support.

Serving for His Glory,

Marc Patton Family

Patton Family Christmas 2015

Gergő and Rose Szimon

Janos and Brigi Nagy

November Prayer Letter

November 4, 2015

Dear Friends,

We have had a busy Fall with a lot of special events. Here are the highlights:

Christian Workers Conference in Esztergom:

One of my ministry goals is to influence other churches in Hungary in the area of missions and evangelism. On September 26^th we held a regional conference for Christian workers. The turnout was excellent with more than 100 adult and teen participants. We were very pleased to have people attend from 10 different churches. Most were from our region (North-east Transdanubia). The feedback was excellent, and we will see how the Lord leads in further meetings. 

One church in our region has specifically asked for further assistance. The Baptist church in Oroszlány, Hungary is located about an hour from us. The church has only 10 members, most of whom are elderly, and is struggling to gain new people. They have one fine young couple who have a desire to evangelize and reach new people with the Gospel. A few  of us from Esztergom and Tata  met with them to see how we could help. We had a great meeting, and the Lord led us to put together a team of people, who would go once each month to hold a special evangelistic service in their city. The first such service will be held on November 22^nd! One of our men from Tata will be preaching, and our worship team from Tata will do the music. Please pray that many visitors would come, and we would see this dying church find new life!

20^th Anniversary service in Esztergom:

On October 15, 1995 we held our first Sunday service in Esztergom at one of the local high schools. On October 11, 2015 we celebrated the 20^th anniversary of our church! What a great day we had thinking back on all the blessings of the past 20 years. Some of our earliest converts who were young people at the time are now married with teenage children!

We had two services on this special Sunday. In the morning we held a special thanksgiving service and gave our members the opportunity to give testimonies of God’s blessings in their lives. After 1 hour and 15 minutes of testimonies, we had to cut things off for lunch.  We had many visitors attend our afternoon celebration including the mayor. Janos Papp, president of the Baptist Union of Hungary, was our special speaker. It was a great day of encouragement for us personally and also for our church.

First service in our new auditorium in Tata:

On November 1^st, we held the first service in our new auditorium in Tata. This was not our grand opening,  as we still have a lot of work to do on the exterior of the building, grounds, and the refurbishing of our old building. Nevertheless it was a special day of thanksgiving and praise. On July 1^st we began construction, and it is amazing that just four months later we are now able to use the auditorium. The vast majority of the work has been done by our people with hundreds of hours of volunteer labor. I am especially grateful that Gabor Szucs, one of our men, has overseen the entire construction project.

It is our prayer that this new auditorium will not only be a blessing to our current church members, but also give us the opportunity for more growth. Thank you for your prayers and support of this project.

Special prayer requests:

November 22 – Special outreach service in Oroszlany, Hungary

November 29-December 13 – Evangelistic Sundays in Tata and Esztergom

Upcoming Christmas events – puppet outreach, Christmas shoebox gift distributions.

                                                            Serving for His Glory,

                                                            Marc Patton

Meeting in Oroszlany

Team prepared to help in Oroszlany

20th Anniversary Service

New auditorium

September Prayer Letter

September 23, 2015

Dear Praying Friends,

A lot has happened since our last letter. Nancy and Ben are back in Jacksonville, FL as sophomores at Trinity Baptis College. Esther is now in 11th grade here in Hungary. Hannah has started high school. Charin is back teaching three days a week at two different elementary schools. Our two churches are in full swing. We enjoyed a great summer in our family and ministry and are looking forward to a great fall season as well. Here are some highlights.

Building Project in Tata:

We have made a huge amount of progress on our building in Tata. The roof of the new building is pretty much completed. We are still working on replacing the roof on our old building and would like to complete it before winter sets in. We are also beginning the work on the interior of our new building. Our goal is to hold our first service in the new building in November. One of our church men is overseeing the work on a daily basis, which is a huge help to me, as I only have to be involved in the major decisions. We are also doing most of the work ourselves, which means a slightly slower process, but our people are enjoying having a personal investment in the building program. We have had two big “church wide” work days recently to work on the roofing. It was a blessing to see our people working together to accomplish a common goal.

It looks like we have enough money to finish the new building, but we will need additional funds to remodel the old building and do the grounds and landscaping of our courtyard. I am guessing that we will need another $10,000-12,000 to finish these projects. If you would like to contribute to our building fund, you can send the money to Global Faith designated for „Hungary Building Project.” We are grateful for all the help that we have received so far. 

Esztergom news:

The big item of news is that we have a new youth leader for our teens. Our previous youth leader resigned in January, and I became the “defacto” youth leader while we sought a replacement. I had not really realized the amount of time and energy involved! I had two of our men helping out on a rotational basis, and we were very pleased that one of them felt led to take on full responsibility. Tibor Kruska has been in our church almost from the beginning, and has also been one of our deacons for a number of years. One of his three sons is a teen already, so he has a vested interest in our youth program. This past Sunday we had a special prayer for him and our youth group asking the Lord to bless him in his new ministry. I am grateful that the Lord has met this need. 

Two big events:

This Saturday, September 26, we will host a Christian workers conference for area churches. We have about 100 people preregistered from nine different churches. We specifically targeted smaller churches with fewer resources. Several of the churches are without pastors and in need of encouragement and direction. Please pray with us that this conference will be a blessing to both us and them.

On October 11^th our church in Esztergom will celebrate its 20^th anniversary. It is hard to believe that we have been in Hungary that long! We have invited numerous people for this special occasion. We have tried to focus on both former members who are out of church, and also on lost people who have visited in the past. We were also pleased that the mayor of Esztergom also accepted our invitation. This will be a first for us. The president of the Hungarian Baptist Union will be our guest speaker. He is a great preacher and has been a friend of our ministry over the years. Please pray that the Word of God would go forth with power, and that this will be a great day of both celebration and outreach!

Thank you for your prayers and support.

                                                                        

Serving for His Glory,

Marc

Building Project in Tata

Interior of building

Tibor Kruska our new youth leader

Prayer of blessing on Tibor and young people. Tibor's wife, Kriszti, is on the far right.

August prayer letter

July 27, 2015

Dear Friends,

July was one of the hottest months we have ever had here in Hungary, with record breaking high temperatures.  It was also a busy, fruitful month in our churches. Thankfully, the Lord can work whether it rains or shines!

English Camp in Esztergom:

July 13-17 we held our English Camp in Esztergom. We had about 70 children attend in the mornings and about 30 teens and adults in the evening. This was our biggest attendance ever. With the help of 15 American volunteers here for the week, everything went very smoothly. We had a closing ceremony on Friday where the children showed what they had learned. 50-60 parents and grandparents were in attendance, and I was able to bring a brief Gospel message. We also had about 10 visitors return to our service on Sunday. Please join us in prayer that we will see at least one family reached through this year’s camp.

VBS in Nagysap:

We simultaneously held our VBS in Nagysap. Gergo and Rose Simon  organized that, and about half of the American team went to Nagysap every day to help out. They averaged about 15 children each day over the course of the week. They also had a Wednesday evening service for adults and teens and had a good attendance and spirit. Please pray for the work in Nagysap, that we would see real growth and consistency in the lives of those who attend.

Baptismal Service in Tata:

July 19^th we held a baptismal service at our church in Tata. We were pleased to baptise three adults. Sandor and Szilvia Galamb are a wonderful young couple with three children. They were invited to our church by church members about 2 ½ years ago. They were drawn by both the preaching and the loving fellowship that they saw and experienced. The Lord led them both to repentance and faith, and they were both pleased to make a public profession of their faith in Christ. Andrea Szabo was from a very strong Catholic background, but through various circumstances became disillusioned with the church. Our first contact with her was about 6 years ago at a special evangelistic rally. She attended sporadically for several years, and then made a decision to commit herself to the Lord during the past year. Please pray for her also to stand firmly in the faith.

Building project in Tata:

We have made good progress on the building project in Tata. Our men finished the pouring of the foundation and concrete slab on July 17^th. After the baptismal service on July 19^th, we had a short service “laying the cornerstone,” which is a tradition here in Hungary. We placed a list of church members, a picture of the church family, a signed decision to build and several other items in a box and sealed it into the foundation of the building.

This past week the prefabricated walls of the building were also put together. There will be a brief break as we have a teen camp and outreach camp the next two weeks, then the work on the roof will begin. Please do pray for wisdom and safety during the project. Our men are doing much of the work themselves. Please pray also for the needed funds to complete the building. Our goal is to be in it by the end of October.

Thank you for your prayers and faithful support!

                                                                       

Serving for His Glory,

                                                                       

                                                                        Marc, Charin, Nancy, Ben, Esther and Hannah Patton

English Camp in Esztergom

English Camp in Esztergom

Baptismal Service Tata

Baptismal Service Tata

Baptismal Service Tata

New building in Tata

New building in Tata