Magyar Mullets January 2012 Newsletter

 Dear Friends and Family,

   We write this month’s newsletter with great joy.  We are glad to be in service to our Lord here in Hungary.  We praise God that we are in good health, we are fully supported, and we feel God’s hand on us in our lives and labor.  God has given us entry into more lives through four different English outreach groups we’re leading.  The Alpha course starts up again in February, and on top of that we’ve had several sunny days this winter.  While it seems the favorable exchange rate was short-lived, we are grateful for co-laborers who can come when needed.

   The Orchard EFC sent 11 members on a work team to labor during a lull in the ministry activities in the building.  They had four and half  work days in which to make a mess and clean it up again.  We appropriated a space under the coffee house floor for the use of our ever-expanding youth groups.  They worked through connections with a Hungarian company to cut a beautiful hole through the floor for the stairs.  They built twelve insulated walls between pillars, rerouted 50’ of sewer pipe, replaced an archaic electrical panel in our office upstairs, put in walls and doors for a new meeting room and did whatever I asked of them— including tasting stomach strengthener and eating pork fat on bread with raw onion.  My number one concern, in memory of Géza bácsi, is always balancing the health and strength of the labor force God entrusts to me with an appropriate amount of culture acquisition.  It’s a delicate balance.

   One of the greatest contributions they made to our ministry was in the example they set in obedience.  Their obedience to come during cold, overcast January, not exactly the high season, to labor in a cellar, for ministries that will take place long after they are gone, was a noteworthy sacrifice.  They even took time out to share personally with some of my English discussion group members who mistakenly showed up a week early for class. Their labor gained a hearing for me to share the gospel with Hungarians who are invariably bewildered by the presence of tourists wearing dust masks and wielding hammer drills and grinders.  They were a huge encouragement to me personally and to the continuing work in which we’re involved.

   

 Many of you have probably followed the media about Hungary in recent months. I was recently encouraged to read among several other things in their new constitution the following sentences:  

·         We recognize the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood.

·         We have an abiding need for spiritual and intellectual renewal.

Pray for Hungary.

Praise be to God,

Brad and Kari