We had hoped that some others in our congregation who had not yet taken the step of baptism would also want to be baptized. One young woman who believed at our English camp this summer was entirely new to the idea of baptism and didn’t feel ready. However, after seeing Hannah do it, she came up to Sanyi (our pastor) after the service and asked when our next baptismal service was going to be! We are planning to have a joint baptismal service with the Free Methodist church in Budapest, who do not have their own baptismal font.

Hannah wrote and gave her testimony (with the help of Eszti, who translated for her). Here is the text of her testimony:

While we were in America, I believed in God just because my parents did. But when we came to Hungary I started struggling in my faith. I asked questions, prayed, and read my Bible a lot. I got what my parents call an assurance problem. But God helped me through it and comforted me when I really needed it. Now I’m excited to be giving my life to Jesus. I believe that he died for my sins and rose again. And I trust that he’ll be with me my whole life, through thick and thin, carrying me on.

Hannah and Matthew with their friend Sarah Wray who came from the U.S. to volunteer at camp.

We held two separate camps for the different age groups, a children’s camp and a teen camp. Hannah and Matthew were again involved in the children’s camp. Of course, they don’t need to learn any English, but they applied themselves to learning some new Hungarian words while the other kids were learning them in English! As usual, we had songs, games, and lots of conversation groups which allowed kids to develop their English while also asking important questions about life and about God. The Gospel was clearly presented to the young people during the camp, and opportunity was given for them to respond. We know of one young woman who gave her life to the Lord for the first time. Others may have responded that we don’t know about. While the number of students who attended the camps was lower than we had hoped, it’s still exciting to see new believers coming into the kingdom of God.

Hannah and Matthew were part of the parents' night performance at the end of camp.

We are planning to hold follow-up retreats for the students who came to camp during the year. Our first retreat is this coming Saturday, August 20. This also happens to be the national Hungarian holiday, St. Stephen’s Day. The day is always marked by a spectacular fireworks display in downtown Budapest over the Danube River. We hope that it will be a significant day for the young people attending the retreat also. Some of our Hungarian co-workers came to the Lord through retreats following previous English camps and have good memories of them. Two of them, Sanyi and Rupi, were actually the ones who decided to revive the retreat tradition this year. We’re looking forward to what the Lord is going to do through them.

To commemorate that historic day, we gathered on a hill in a public park in Budapest to hold an Easter sunrise service. We started at 5:00 am. It was the third year our church has held such a service. Interestingly (and quite unexpectedly), we were joined by a group of worshippers from another church at around 5:25, the official time of sunrise. We welcomed them to join us, and took turns singing songs from our song book and from theirs. While this meant that our worship time lasted much longer than we intended, we were able to worship with other believers.

Our Easter services were preceded by a special service on Good Friday in our new, completely unfinished building. It was exciting to be able to sing praise to God in this place even though it will be many months before it’s ready for use as a regular worship facility. We are excited about how God has provided this building for a price that an architect from Ireland called a miracle. We hope to get many years of use from this building, for the glory of God.

If you would like to see a blog about our new building and how to be involved in the renovation project, you can follow this link.

One of the biggest emphases was that it starts with fervent prayer. Of course we all believe that prayer is essential to the work of ministry. But we were reminded by OMS leadership that fervent prayer is key to receiving the promises of God. We are in the process of looking for fervent prayer warriors to join us in this task.

We also examined our current strategies and how intentional we are about preaching the Gospel, helping new believers grow in their faith, and teaching them to share the Good News with others. I was excited when I saw that many of the things we’ve done in the past were good ministries, but some of them had been neglected for the last several years. I believe we can see God work through these ministries again, with greater results and greater effectiveness. All in all, we had a very beneficial and uplifting time in Spain.

Our kids had a lot of fun meeting other OMS missionary kids from Europe. Some people came to the conference for the express purpose of watching our kids while we sat in meetings all day. The kids played games, did crafts, had their own age-appropriate Bible studies, and really had a lot of fun. They were hoping we could do this every year. While there was talk of doing more meetings in the future, it’s unlikely that this will become an annual event.

That was my first question after coming out of the bathroom at the Burger King just down the street from our office. We had gone there for lunch after church on a Sunday afternoon. Within seconds I realized that we had been robbed. While I was in the bathroom with Matthew, Tricia had taken our trays up to the garbage can to throw away our trash and get ready to leave. She didn’t notice when she went back to the table that my jacket, which had been on the other side of the table from her, had vanished along with the single man who had been sitting by himself at the table next to us.

A family at another nearby table happened to speak English and heard the commotion as we conducted a harried search of the area around our table and in the bathroom to verify that my jacket was indeed gone. They immediately went to some restaurant employees to tell them we had been robbed. The restaurant called the police, informed us that unfortunately the restaurant’s security cameras were not recording anything, and that there was little else they could do.

The rest of the day was spent with me going to the police station to file a report, Tricia canceling our credit cards, and figuring out how to proceed. One thing I had liked about that jacket was the number of zippered pockets which could hold a lot of small items. That advantage quickly turned into a drawback as I gradually realized everything that had been stolen: my wallet, credit cards, passport, cell phone, apartment keys, office keys, spare key for the OMS van, sunglasses, blue tooth headset, and bus pass (with an almost brand new monthly pass worth almost $50). We also had to get the locks on our apartment changed. Not only did the thief make off with our keys, but my passport contained an address card with our current address (Hungarian law requires foreigners living there with a residence permit to carry this card at all times). We were afraid that we could end up getting robbed again.

We were thankful that I hadn’t been driving our car that day because of car trouble. We had the OMS van, which was parked by the office a couple of blocks away. There was no way for the thief to identify the van. However, if he had stolen my car keys, he would have also had my garage door opener which was attached to the key ring, as well as our address. We didn’t have to worry about that one.

Two weeks later, I had replaced the passport and already received my new debit card in the mail. But replacing my New York driver’s license was turning into a huge headache. I had heard about other people who lost their wallet or had it stolen here and who later got it back along with some of their important documents. I prayed that I would get my driver’s license back even as I began the process of replacing it.

Then we got a call from a friend of ours who was our neighbor at our old apartment here. She said that someone had contacted our former landlady that they had found my wallet and keys. She gave us the phone number of the guy, and I called him to set up a meeting to get my things back. I was also a little suspicious, so I consulted some people and took our Hungarian pastor with me. It turns out that this guy was a street sweeper, and said he found my wallet on the street with the keys inside of it. Apparently the thief had put everything he didn’t want back in the wallet along with all of the keys and thrown it on the street the next district over from the Burger King. The street sweeper had seen my old address written inside my old bus pass (the passport with the address card were gone), so he put a letter in the mailbox at our old apartment. I was very happy to find that my driver’s license was in the wallet. It was also a relief to get back the van key, office keys, and our apartment keys. While we changed the lock on our door, the returned set also had keys to the front gate and the front door of the building. So we once again have two full sets of keys, which is a good thing for us.

We learned a lot from this experience, not the least of which is just how careful you have to be in a public place in Budapest. We had always known this from our first trip here, and thought we were pretty careful. It turns out we weren’t careful enough. But we’re thankful that we didn’t end up losing more than we did, and that we were able to recover several of the more important items that were lost.

After a couple months’ worth of searching, I finally found and purchased a car on Friday. It’s a 2000 Opel Zafira, which is kind of like a mini minivan. Alternatively, you could think of it as a station wagon with an extra row of fold-down seats in the back. We’re quite excited, and it’s supposed to be ready for us to take possession of in the next two or three days. We’re thankful that we found one in good condition that was in our price range, and with fairly low mileage on it.

We’re thankful for the many activities that the kids are involved in, including a Christmas play that is being put on by a homeschool group we have found here. Hannah and Matthew both have parts in it and have been working hard. Hannah is also involved in a gymnastics class where she has been making friends with other Hungarian girls.

We’re thankful that we found an excellent Hungarian tutor for the kids (and Tricia!). They really enjoy the lessons and are learning a lot from them. The tutor’s name is Ági, and she was recommended to us by another missionary that we know here.

I’m also thankful that today I managed to deliver a sermon in Hungarian. It wasn’t my first sermon in Hungarian, but it was the first time I had preached in Hungarian without having a Hungarian go over the manuscript to correct my errors. In spite of that, it seemed to go well, and I had a lot of positive feedback from the Hungarian members of the church. Attendance seems to be up also, another reason to be thankful.

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever” (Psalm 136:1).

The last time I went to the St. Stephen’s Day fireworks in 2006 with Hannah and another missionary friend who brought his son with him, we ended up running for cover five minutes after the show started when a huge storm (a supercell, actually) arrived right over downtown Budapest at that very moment. Hundreds up people were injured as a result of that event, and a few people died. Hannah apparently has gotten over the sheer terror of that experience, because she was jumping up and down at the prospect of taking in the fireworks today! I have also read that they now have a loudspeaker system in place to warn the public if there is a storm approaching. If there is any sign of a storm, we’ll be coming home early. However, the forecast is for beautiful weather all day today. Right now it’s a pleasant 24 degrees Celsius (75 F), with clear, blue skies. So we’re looking forward to a nice show tonight!

Our kids loved the camp and loved making new friends. Hannah made fast friends with two girls from the younger camp. Later, it turned out that one of the girls lives in Budapest, actually lives in the same district as we do, and in fact lives about a five-minute walk from our apartment! Considering that we live in a city of two million people, this seems nothing short of remarkable to us and is a huge answer to prayer. Hannah was especially hit hard by leaving all of her friends in Fillmore, NY, so we very much wanted her to find a friend for her quickly. That we were able to find one who lives so close and knows at least some English is a great blessing. We have already been invited by the family to go over for a visit today. The girl’s parents are very friendly. They don’t speak much English themselves, but they seem eager to be friends with us. We praise God for this answer!

Attendance at camp seemed a bit low this year, though we’re not sure why. Nevertheless, there was a very good atmosphere (in spite of the sometimes unbearable heat!), and relationships were made or deepened. We have heard initial reports of a couple of campers who came to the Lord for the first time, and we know that others were challenged in their thinking about God, while others were deepened in their knowledge of Him. The conversation group that I was involved in had three staff people but only two campers! But the two campers were college-aged, had quite good English, and participated very thoughtfully in the conversations. Both of them had been to previous camps and wanted to come back. We discussed many important questions related to God, the meaning of life, and moral truths. Our group translator, Saci (pronounced “shot-see”) has been with OMS in the English camps and at our church in Budapest for many years. She has a strong testimony and loves to share about the Lord with the students.

So we are very glad that we participated in camp. I hope to have a video blog about our camp experience soon. We are also in the middle of trying to finish getting our apartment together so that we can get back to living a normal life (as opposed to life with boxes, suitcases, and other items strewn about our home!).

Hannah and Matthew have actually remembered quite a lot from when we lived here before. Last week we went to a little ice cream parlor on the corner down by our old apartment (which is about four or five blocks from our new place). They both remembered the place, and in fact Hannah even remembered one time when I took her to the parking lot right across from the ice cream place to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. I was surprised that she remembered that. As we were eating ice cream, I asked the kids if they felt like they were in a foreign country yet. Of course they asked what foreign meant, so I explained it was a country other than your own. They both said no. They seem to feel right at home, which is great at least for now. We’ll see how it goes as things progress. Hannah misses all of her friends from back home, although she’s actually been able to communicate with some of them through email and VoIP phone.

For me this move has been quite a smooth one. We already have our internet hooked up in our apartment. I ordered it on Friday and it was installed on Monday even though they told me the average wait time was 9 days. What a contrast to the first time we came in 2002. Back then we had to wait three months to get a phone line just so we could have dial-up internet access to do email. For the first three months I took the tram to the nearest mall to use their internet cafe. Now within a week we have wireless broadband internet in our home. Amazing! Wireless internet use has really exploded here. I can see three or four other wireless networks in range here, and I’ve seen several others at different times.

I have been asked how our support has been doing since we had our last couple of meetings before we left. The answer to that is that it hasn’t really changed. We are still at about 93% funded. However, we are very excited at how the Lord provided for us leaving from the States. We received a large donation several months ago from Canada, but because of the processing time for Canadian gifts it only came through last month as we were leaving. The amount was just enough to cover our airfare and extra baggage costs. So we praise the Lord for that! For those who might be interested in helping with our support, you can donate online by following the link on the sidebar.

Next week we go to English camp in Vác (pronouned “vats”). Hannah is extra excited because she’s actually old enough to be a camper herself, not that she really needs to learn English. But she has been particularly affected by not having friends her age yet, so I think camp will be really good for her. Tricia will probably be spending a lot of her time following Jonathan around and keeping him out of trouble. She’ll have the company of another missionary mom here who’s in the same boat. I will have to come back for a meeting of the Wesleyan Alliance theological school, so there will not be much time to rest.

English Camp starts about a week and a half after we arrive. We’re a little up in the air as to how much we’ll be able to participate as a family, but at least I’ll be taking Hannah and Matthew for parts of it. Tricia will be continuing to set up our new apartment during at least part of the time. The camps are in Vác again this year, which is about 45 minutes north of Budapest by car. On my most recent trip to Hungary I discovered that there is a new fast train to Vác that only takes 25 minutes.

The kids are getting more excited about returning to Hungary by the minute. I’m looking forward to seeing how I can fit back into the team which has changed from when we were there before. There is lots of work to be done, and I’m excited about doing my part.