Our prayer night last Friday was a really good experience to our students. Our goal with this event was to teach them how crucial prayer is in Jesus’ followers’ life. As we were together in His name we were praying for campuses of Budapest, for high schools, and for students, high school students by name. I’m always encouraged when I see how important prayer is in young believers' life, based on personal conviction from the Bible.

I still teach YTL (our Bible based drug and AIDS prevention program) in high schools in the mornings. This gives me good opportunities to get to know more teenagers. Lots of them are willing to talk about spiritual topics as well. Every afternoon I have Bible study groups with these boys and now I arrived to the point when I have to reorganize my schedule to be more effective with my groups. This is a nice problem.

Virag has the same challenge with the girls as well. The good thing is that we have a great staff team and some mature college student disciples who can take part in this work.  

Patrik’s study is going very well in Shasta Bible College. He is over the first test season with pretty good results. He still enjoys the school and is happy with his new friends in the dormitory.

       One thing we notice with youth is that the standard for holiness is becoming more and more blurred. We are talking about those students who strive to walk with God. They are so powerfully influenced by the spirit of our times, that their criteria to make their choices, especially those that are relational choices, is not solely based on God's standard. Their eyes are blurred. The focus is off. Their terms of holiness are getting lower and lower. They are so strongly influenced by the "emotionalism" and individualism of the day that God's Word is so often not taken into account.
Whatever we understood so far, and whatever we know the Bible teaches, we want to share by word and by striving to be an example among them, so that maybe we will be able to help some!

So, that is why we have the PURPLE DAY every winter. A day to try to set it straight. It is a day devoted to talking about dating, sex, marriage, character, holiness, roles, boundaries, principles, blessings for a whole day with students. We talk to them through talks, through seminars, through panels, and small groups. And at the end of the day, each student will be hosted by a family for dinner, and a family room, in a home, through a relaxed conversation.

We had 8 high school students out of the more than 120 who came to our home for dinner on February 11^th and talked about their personal struggles, hopes, dreams and questions. Virag cooked for them and we enjoyed our time with them so much. Please pray with us, that the blurred image of God could become a little clearer for many today, as we teach the Bible to them on this particular area of their lives!!

Just another blessed day:

Last Wednesday was a sunny fall day here in Budapest, more and more reddish and brownish leaves are covering the city like a nicely worked out patchwork blanket. I was walking to the subway station on Andrassy Avenue. I had a little smile on my face as I enjoyed the sunbeams on my forehead. A conversation came to my mind that I had in Kölcsey high school with kids in class. Ethnic tolerance and racism was the topic that I was teaching them. This is a very sensitive topic today in Hungary, because of a lot of conflicts between Gypsies and Hungarians. This very tense conversation gave me a good opportunity to share Mt7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you”. They listened very carefully and I saw on their faces, that they got the point. I’m just praying for those 23 students of the class that they would not just start to apply Christian ethics in their life, but that they would find the real source of this golden rule: Jesus Christ.

        When I arrived to the subway station I still had 30 minutes to get to downtown to meet with Dani to continue our last week talking when I shared my personal testimony and the gospel with him. I knew Dani from another high school, but two years ago when I met him for the first time he was not very open to talk about God. I couldn’t figure out what pulled him closer to God but a week before when I met him after two years he was very different. He declared boldly that he is not a Christian but he would like to know more about it.

         I arrived first to the Burger King next to the Central Market Hall so I bought two hot chocolate and Dani arrived in that moment. We sat down and I asked him about our last week’s conversation. It was obvious that he understood and he was thinking about it during the week. When I asked Dani about the decision part, he interrupted me and he said that he can’t wait to receive Christ! I was little surprised because his words were abrupt and filled with emotions! So, just do it, I encouraged him. After we finished our hot drink we walked down to the Danube riverbank and we prayed together. He just made the most important decision in his life! Immediately he started to ask questions, about what will be happening now? How can he be sure that Jesus is in his life, because he doesn’t feel anything different? He had to leave quickly so, I had just a little time to answer. This week we will meet again and we can continue. Please pray for Dani, that he would keep walking with the Lord for the rest of his life.

       We have to be thankful to God for everything, for good and bad. But days like this are such blessings in my life and I’m very thankful for that! The icing on the cake, when I arrived home and I checked my Facebook, I had a “thank you it was a cool class” with five other “Likes” from the class where I had been teaching on that day. God is good! All the time!

The Burger King in the downtown

The fall in Hungary is one of the prettiest season and also the busiest. School starts, and our ministry is focusing on new students who we met during the summer camp and who we know from high schools. It’s amazing that the doors are still open.  Teenagers in Hungary are so open to the gospel and as we talk to them personally we experience, that they want to know God more and more. Csaba already has 8 boys in his Bible study group. Together with our team we challenged more than 100 teenagers to be involved in our movement. Please pray that most of them will get involved in our discipleship program and Bible studies!

The disciple chain is longer and... Sisi is the next chain-link.
She came to Speak Out this summer and after the camp she decided to give her life to Christ. One of our volunteers began follow-up with her through the summer and now she participates in one of our Bible study groups. She is very enthusiastic, ready to follow Christ and share her faith. Her mother showed up two weeks ago at our fall retreat and last week she also came to our high school weekly meeting. Virag got to talk to her and we really hope that she can share the Gospel with her soon.
So here is the chain: Virag lead Mari who leads Lilla and Lilla leads Sisi. It is a privilege to see how God is working in the students’ heart, changing their lives for His glory. Praise God because He is the One who draws people to Himself. Our prayer is that very soon we will see the next chain-link, the one who becomes a Christian because of hearing the Gospel from Sisi.

Please pray for our new believer high school students who are going to start follow up in these weeks!

“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.”  (Col.1:28)

This is a short video about our first weekly meeting in September. That was a silly and funny time!

(When students say FAIK, that means YTL – Youth at the Threshold of Life. That is the name of Hungarian Campus Crusade for Christ)

Budapest Airport: last moments before Patrik's flight

Our older son, Patrik left to college in the middle of August. He is a freshman at Shasta Bible Collage in Redding, California. God really worked in miraculous ways to provide scholarship and everything that he needed to start this new adventure.  The financial part, logistic part was not sure till summer but in the last moment everything came together. We are very thankful to God! So far Patrik likes the school very much and the transition to the other side of the Earth was very smooth. We miss him very much but it helps that we can Skype with him every week, so we don’t feel him being far from us.

What a joy it is to share with you some details regarding our Speak Out summer English camp!
You can see short videos on this blog site about this blessed summer. We spent four weeks on the beautiful Lake Balaton in south-western Hungary where a multi-project evangelistic outreach took place. In addition to the camp itself there were three smaller projects to Siofok (another Hungarian city), Romania and Albania! Csaba led the mission team to Albania. They took part in a discipleship camp with the Albanian Campus Crusade, and after that they helped in Tirana for an Evangelistic Outreach.

Here are the statistics from the camp:

American participants: 28
Hungarian participants: 79
Other nationalities (German, South African, Macedonian): 6
Hungarian Campers: 330
Approached with the Gospel: 2728
Total # heard the Gospel: 1764
Indicated decision for Christ: 97
Follow-up Bible study participants: 77

On the first week of Speak Out in July we had not only trainings, and logistic stuff but we spent wonderful times in prayers and worship as well. I always love to worship our God in different languages with brothers and sisters from other countries. A little taste of Heaven :)

The Americans arrived

This short video shows the first moments after when Americans arrived to Keszthely to the English camp. We are very thankful for their great ministry among Hungarian teenagers in July, in Hungary!

Albania 2011

God really blessed our summer! Here is a short video about our Albanian project. It was super cool! I will publish more about this summer soon!

We appreciate it if you keep praying for Virag’s mom. We spent a good time with her last weekend. She is in good spirit. She finished chemo in May but needs more medical therapy for the spreading bond cancer.

Summer has begun here in Hungary, and it looks like these months will be a very active period as always. Speak Out English camp, is going to start next week ( www.speakout.hu/staff ) and next month Csaba will go to Albania with Hungarian student leaders to be part of the Albanian Campus Crusade summer project.

We appreciate your prayers for these events. We will have great opportunities to share the gospel to Hungarian and Albanian teenagers.

·         Praise the Lord for these great opportunities
·         Pray that God would use us in their life
·         Pray that lot of them would receive Christ as their personal savior
·         Pray for our disciples who are serving with us during this summer
·         Pray for a safe trip to Albania

We are back from the States where we had a great time meeting friends and ministry partners. Virag and I celebrated our 20^th anniversary in the sunny California. Wow, time is flying, and we just met for the first time yesterday J