It's Busy in Hungary, too!

We had a busy month!
Here are Hannah and Daniel having fun!

Hannah taking photos at one of our conferences.

Daniel made his own arrows and is practicing throwing them. What form!

Here's the Butcher....

....The Baker....

....And three old ladies on a bench (Sorry no candlestick makers here.)

We just had a woman's conference.
The speaker, in the middle of the photo, is from Pennsylvania.

There wer over 400 hungarian women here for the conference!

We had a three-day summer camp training weekend a few weeks ago with over 100 volunteers being trained!

WOL Elet Szava participated in the traditional May Day celebrations in our village of Toalmas.

It was a great day of fun, food and ministry for all.

There was a little clowning around.
This is an Albanian friend and intern at WOL Elet Szava.
We call him Sam because we can not pronounce his real name: Ksenafo Akulli.

Isn't she cute! She is and little Gypsy girl who was shy around the camera.

The Gypsy men were not shy.
The one to Dan's left kept asking Dan to buy him a beer.

Gypsies A poor persecuted people without a homeland

Gypsies are a very close knit, loving, friendly, and proud people group.

Gypsies, or Roma as they are referred to in Hungary, and most of Europe, are over 10% of the Hungarian population and in many villages are over 20%.
They are believed to have migrated out of the untouchable caste in India around 1000 A.D.

Because their appearance and culture differed from those around them, Roma were considered outsiders and suffered extensive prejudice, a problem that sadly continues to the present day throughout Europe.

Most Gypsies do not move around any more but live in poor homes in the smaller villages.
Dan visits with some in our village and they welcome him into their homes, are very friendly, and offer him drinks. They enjoy laughing at his attempts at Hungarian. The family, neighbors, and friends gather as this crazy American comes to visit.
Below is a standard Gypsy house with a two-seater outhouse directly behind our house.

Most of the Gypsy families do not have any indoor plumbing and use outhouses even in the freezing Hungarian winters. They use firewood for heating and cut it with a hand bow saw. Very difficult work indeed! Maybe one in ten Gypsy families have a car but public transportation is very reliable.

They live off the land raising pigs, chickens, turkey, etc...

Here they are butchering a hog across from our backyard.

Several Gypsy families have horses to do a little subsistence farming the old-fashioned way.

It's a daily sight to see farmers on their wagons going to and from the fields.

This is one of the very poor Gypsy homes.

The kids love to play soccer with Daniel or whatever they can get him to play. They enjoy just trying to speak English with us.

This wonderful Roma couple invited Daniel and Dan into their home and fed them raw pig skin just carved off the pig! Yum!

Gypsies are a subset of the Hungarian culture that very few reach-out to. They desperately need to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ!

At First You Don't See Them...

“A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.”- K.P. Yohannan

At first you don't see them. They blend in with their surroundings. Deep down, you don't want to see them. They make you feel uncomfortable, uneasy, maybe even convicted. You may not want to see them, but they are everywhere. Budapest, like many large cities, has a large homeless population.

In Hungary, materialism was able to do in 10 years what Communism was not able to do in 40 years. During Communism, despite atheism being the law of the land, any and all people of faith were harassed, threatened, and even imprisoned. Ironically, people clung to their faith in the God of the Bible. With the fall of Communism in 1989 and the rapid influx of materialism, true faith in the God of the Bible has rapidly decreased, while the numbers of "casualties" increase.

2.5 % ~ Number of Evangelical Christians. Less than the percentage of Christians in Iraq!

2,500 ~ Number of villages without any Gospel influence.

20% ~ Number of Hungarian men who are alcoholics.

950,00~ Number of children living in homes without both parents.

Top 5 ~ Number of ranking for abortions, among the highest in the world!.

Top 5 ~ Number of ranking for suicides, again, the highest in the world.

#1 ~Number of rating for worst economy in the European Union

#1~ Number of rating for Budapest being known as the pornography capital of the world.

Hungary is in a cultural and spiritual decline.

There is hope! God loves Hungary. He sent His son to die for the people here.

It's time the Church stops preaching the Gospel to itself and begins sharing the greatest news ever heard with those who need to hear it most!

Recently, our open air team was doing a Gospel presentation on the streets of Budapest. A large, middle-aged man wearing a thick gold chain came up to them. Our team was afraid he was coming to beat them up. But, instead, he began to weep. He began to share his story, explaining how he made large sums of money, yet wasted it all on expensive cars and wicked living. He went through several failed marriages, and now he was without hope. In addition to this, his two children are living with their mother in Hungary, and this man says she is a witch, deeply involved in the occult. He is afraid for his children. He did not make a decision for Christ at that point, but he did take tracts to give to his children and their mother. He drove away in a very expensive black Mercedes. Pray for us as we follow up with this man. We believe he has an “appointment with eternity.” Pray for God to do His work in the hearts of the lost! Pray for us to be His bold, faithful, obedient messengers!