Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to take a minute to say "boldog karacsonyt kivannok!" (I wish you a merry Christmas!). Thank you so much for all of your prayers and well-wishes this holiday season. It really means a lot to know that I can join all of my friends and family members back home and abroad in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the hope of all creation!

Here in Hungary, things are not so very different than back home in the states at this time of the year. Christmas trees, decorations and nativity scenes abound. There are plenty of English language holiday music classics to be heard. We even have snow, though that has been melting the past day or so. Christmas here is basically a three-day event, lasting from the 24th through the 26th. During this time, most businesses are closed (including the transportation systems) so that people can spend time with their families.

In the church family that I am a part of here, we will have one service the evening of Christmas Eve, and one service Christmas morning. I expect there to be a lot of carol singing and times for sharing how God has blessed us over the past year (and hopefully a meal or two!).

In my last post, I think I mentioned something about all of the parents who are expecting children to arrive in the coming months. About a week ago, my friend Zsolti's wife gave birth to a little girl named Dorottya. Praise God for that birth, too!

Well, another month has passed here in Nyirtelek, and today I can honestly say that I'm feeling more at home here. The language is still coming gradually and I feel like I'm becoming more and more a part of the village community where I work. It's really a great feeling to be invited into people's homes and to recognize everyone else. I'm learning more and more of the family ties that everyone seems to have, as most people in Gorogszallas seem to be related by blood or marriage. Also, many of the children easily recognize me now and come up to me and start jabbering away in Hungarian, to which I can just nod and smile.

Yet, everything might not be as rosy as we wish it was. The children's house or preschool, as I've been calling it, is at best underused. Two mothers or fathers bringing in their children during a 7 hour day is typical, more than 5 kids at a time is unheard of. Yesterday, there was a meeting between the paid workers at the children's house, the pastor and a social worker from church, and a woman who I believe was from the local Office of Social Services. I believe they were talking about how to make the program more attractive to the community, but the only thing I'm sure of is that, yet again, tensions arose on the subject of Hungarian children compared with Roma (Gypsy) children. As I have seen, the numbers of both ethnic groups in the building have been similar (if not, more Gypsy children have made use of the facility), and there are equal numbers of Gypsy and Hungarian staffers. But aside from the resentment that naturally arises out of this issue, the fact remains that the community is not really making ample use of the facility.

A pediatrician also came for part of the day to be available to answer questions for the parents in the community free of charge and to examine their children if they would like. However, he ended up just sitting there and talking with the staffers for a few hours because no one came. He spoke English and voiced some of his frustrations to me, telling me he was hurt and did not know what to do. He had been visiting this community every once in a while for the past 15 years and still the people would not come to him. He asked me if I had any advice for him, because, even though I may not have much experience maybe I studied this in school. I felt clueless at the moment and lightheartedly suggested that he might go into the peoples' homes and drink a lot of palinka (Hungarian home-brewed, fruit-based liquor) with them. But later, I also had to think quite hard about this question. Right now, to much of the community I'm a funny foreigner (who's probably rich) who can speak a few words of Hungarian and understands only if one speaks very slowly and uses simple words. But what would I have to do to really gain their trust?

I think I would need to become one of them. I can't change my skin color, it's true, but I could live with them. I could speak their language. I could live in a house like theirs, if I had a family and children I could send them to the same school as their children. I could work alongside them, sharing my strengths as well as exposing my weaknesses. It's even possible to take share their poverty, though, how difficult it would be to cut the ties that would enable me to regain my relative wealth! I've heard about Christians who, a long time ago, sold themselves into slavery in order to share the Gospel with slaves and others who joined a leper colony, sentencing themselves to the same fate as the lepers, in order to share the love of Jesus Christ with others. What am I willing to do for Christ, or more importantly, am I fearlessly loving God and following Him in my everyday life? This is the question I find myself asking now.

p.s. Thanksgiving was great! I spent it with friends in Budapest, complete with the traditional turkey and all the trimmings. Also, thank you for your continued prayers and support, I can't tell you how much I appreciate them! And a random weird fact: there are more pregnant women in my congregation here and in Gorogszallas than I thought possible. Seriously, I think I can count at least 6 or 7 off the top of my head. Praise God for baby Mozses (Moses) who was born to Barna and Teri Adam last Thursday! (I got to hold him today, I know you're jealous :) ).

A New Opportunity (Update following original post)

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who was in prayer concerning the religion class that Peter and I hoped to start in a local school. Peter heard back from the principal last week and we have the green light! We'll be introducing this class to the 5th-8th grade students tomorrow at noon in the town of Rakamaz. We really don't quite know what to expect, what their maturity level will be or what will catch their interest. So, we're just praying that the Holy Spirit will use us somehow to reach out to these kids!

Update: Well, we just got back from Rakamaz! When we got there, they had all of the media equipment set up and ready to go, which was great. There were around 20 chairs set up for the kids, so I was expecting a smaller crowd. But when the bell rang, kids started pouring out of the classrooms carrying their chairs. I'd guess the group continued to grow until there was over 200! This was a mandatory assembly, but still, the large audience was encouraging.
Misi, the pastor of our church in Nyirtelek, gave us a nice introduction and Peter launched into the PowerPoint presentation.

He introduced the program as KEBI, which when translated stands for Christian Ethics and Bible Study. He talked about typical preconceived notions about Christianity (cold and judgmental, uncomfortable, boring, only for old people), and contrasted that with the reality, which is completely opposite. Peter said that the Bible, while very old, is very relevant to life today and contains all sorts of stories that we can relate to. Next, we both talked about how we became Christians and how this has impacted our lives (Peter translated for me). We then called a volunteer up and talked about how God can help us because he cares about us and knows what's best for us. I offered our volunteer some tea from a thermos, but before he drank it Peter warned him not to. I then pulled a dirty sock out of the thermos, to thunderous groans from the audience. Next, we offered him a sandwich. He was much more cautious this time, and deservedly so, because when we took off the top piece of bread there was what looked like a used piece of toilet paper (hey, we had to meet the kids at their maturity level, right? ;) ). Finally, we said that all we had left was a bag of trash. The kid didn't want it, but Peter convinced him to look through it, where he found a fresh, full package of gum. We all applauded for the volunteer and then sang a couple of songs with the kids: the "Halleluah" song where one part of the group stands up for the "Hallelu"s and the other stands up for "Praise ye the Lord" ("Jezus dicserd"), and I introduced "I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N". It was a lot of fun!

I thought I had been prepared for whatever would happen afterwards, whether most of the kids would just have been bored and would be happy to be finished with the assembly, or whether they would have some good questions. But I didn't expect to be simply MOBBED by kids asking me all sorts of questions about America and how old I am and if I knew Michael Jackson. In addition, they all wanted to shake my hand and get my autograph! Talk about unreal! Peter and I had prayed that God would be there and would give us confidence and would work in the kids hearts, but I hadn't expected this at all! It was clear that they were just excited to meet an America and to hear my fumbling Hungarian, but if that gets them to hear the Gospel in the coming weeks and months, then that's great! Thanks again for all of your prayers and support!

Back to Nyirtelek from Budapest...

Ok, this should be postdated a week or so, but I kept on forgetting to post this. Ah well...

People keep telling me to talk more in this language, but too often I give up before I even start by assuming that I won't know key words or that I'll just end up wasting their time and find myself in some awkward situation where I'm stumbling over words and tenses while the native speaker simply twiddles their thumbs and waits for the American to finally spit it out. Or I convince myself that I have nothing worthwhile to say.

Well, today I took the train back from Budapest, where I had spent the weekend with the Otternesses and saw other volunteers who are living in the city. It had been a good time and it felt great to be among people whose situations were similar to mine. For the first part of the train ride, I was alone in my cabin. But when we reached Debrecen (it's a big city south of Nyiregyhaza and definitely out of the way, I still have no idea how we got there, I thought I had bought a train ticket directly to Nyiregyhaza), another young guy joined me in my cabin. He seemed friendly, but I quickly told him that I was a foreigner and that my Hungarian was not very good (as he could obviously tell). Then I went back to reading my book.

Yet, something seemed to be pushing me to talk to him. The old excuses quickly came to mind, but the feeling wouldn't go away. New excuses cropped up: he's busy reading the paper, he's listening to music, he probably won't want to be bothered. But something else urged me, "Just ask how long it will be 'til we reach Nyiregyhaza." "I don't know how to say it grammatically correct!" I responded. A weak argument, I know. My eyes flitted back down to the book I was reading and landed on the title of the next chapter: "The Question Nobody Is Asking". Hmm. Maybe this wasn't a perfectly corresponding sign to my current circumstance, but it was close enough to convince me that God was pushing me to throw aside my self-doubt and take another step towards becoming the courageous man He's calling me to be. I stuttered and stammered my way through "Hany ora Nyiregyhaza-ig?", and he smiled, took a moment to digest what I had tried to say, and we started communicating!

The rest of the train ride was very fun! The guy turned out to be a college student in Nyiregyhaza. His name was Zoltan. His parents lived in Debrecen, an older sister worked at some sort of Christian mission in Budapest, and an older brother volunteered in Austria with youth and evidently had "a long beard and hair like Jesus". He himself was hoping to make big bucks working abroad in the insurance business. He and his girlfriend had also gotten engaged recently! I searched for the word for "Congratulations" in the dictionary and discovered that it was "Gratulalok"; it's always nice when English and Hungarian words are relatively similar!

We were chatting away when he suddenly pointed out the window and said that we were in Nyiregyhaza. I had been expecting the bigger buildings that I had seen on previous visits closer to the center of the city, so I probably would have been confused if Zoltan hadn't let me know that we had arrived. We got off the train and I immediately realized that I hadn't been in this part of the city at all before. But Zoltan asked me if I was heading for the bus station and told me that his place was right next to it, so he would walk me there. Phew! It ended up not to be so far away, so when we got there I said thanks and goodbye to my train friend, puzzled over bus schedules in Hungarian with unfamiliar place names for a while, asked a guy which bus headed to Nyirtelek and ended up boarding the bus with around 40 high school students who were headed home after the school day.

I've got to say that God is good, not only in the big things like salvation and purpose-giving, but also in the smaller, more mundane things, like helping us to get up the courage to speak and to find the way home through an unfamiliar place. He wants us to live our entire lives with Him, looking to Him for everything and trusting that we will find what we need in Him!

The past couple of weeks...

Hello! Here's a quick update on things that I've been doing for the past couple of weeks:
I believe my visa situation is finally settled. It took four trips to the immigration office, but Pastor Misi tells me that that is to be expected. Additional taxes and paperwork had to be paid and gathered, and the last obstacle was to obtain a copy of the deed to the house I'm staying in with Zsuzsikaneni (Aunt Suzy). It turned out that her sister-in-law who lives in former Yugoslavia still owned part of the house, but that Zsuzsika had gotten a judge to grant her full control over it; however, the deed hadn't been modified to include this information. Once that was done and everything was in order, I was good to go. One side note: I was beginning to think that one particular man at the immigration office had something against me, because he kept telling us that we needed more documents and that my documentation wasn't right yet. But when all was said and done and I was signing the last of the forms, he told Misi and I that he thought it was great that I am here in Hungary and he hoped that my work with the Gypsies would go well! That experience was very encouraging, and sort of had a "don't judge a book by its cover" moral attached.
I've also been working at a site in the village of Gorogszallas which will eventually be a preschool. The building had been open to the community, but it was in quite bad shape. The church I work with applied for a grant from the "New Hungary" organization and is using the money they received to renovate the building. Both Gypsy and Hungarian people are contributing to the building process. Late last week we invited the members of the community in to answer some of their questions and discuss the use of the updated facilities. One possible issue of contention is that the building had once been used for parties celebrating Gypsy heritage, which included a lot of dancing and celebration, but also a lot of smoking and drinking and roughhousing. Obviously, a preschool is not a good place for events like this to continue in the same way they did before, so some new arrangements must be made. During the community meeting, the discussion on this topic actually got quite heated between a leader of the Gypsy community and a leader of the Hungarian community. It seems like they both want to work together, and they recognized that in earlier generations both groups worked well together, but it seems that grudges have arisen. It was really my first time seeing this level of distrust between the two different groups.
This past weekend, I spent two days with a chapter of a Hungarian environmental group catching and tagging birds at a nearby national park. Camping was very fun, the people were great, and it was really just a nice change of pace.
My tasks for the future are kind of up in the air at the moment. It looks like I will have the opportunity to help out at the new preschool when it is completed and work with the Gypsy and Hungarian children. I may also have the opportunity to work with Peter, a seminary student working at the church with me, as he teaches religion in a local school a couple of times a week. Both tasks sound very exciting and promising!

Finally in Nyirtelek

Hello everyone!

I've finally arrived in Nyírtelek where I will be working with the congregation at Filadelfia Evangélikus Egyházközség (Filadelfia Lutheran Church of Nyírtelek). I have moved in with an elderly member of the congregation who is very kind and is already helping me improve my Hungarian language skills. Give me a few weeks and I'll probably be speaking coherent sentences! I'm very excited about the various ministries that this church is a part of and I'm eager to do whatever I can to help and learn from my brothers and sisters in Christ here in Hungary!

For the past few weeks, I've been getting ahold of some of the basics of the Hungarian language and culture and making new friends with my fellow volunteers from Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, North America, Germany, France, Denmark, and Italy who are now scattered across Hungary and Ukraine. It was a great couple of weeks and it was sad to say goodbye, but our paths will cross at various seminars throughout the year.

Thank you for all of the prayers and well-wishes, it has been great receive the frequent reminders of your love and support as