Quotes from the Cutie Pie

Here are some of the cute things Eszti said recently.

I stand in the kitchen, preparing something, she runs to me and says:
"Mommy, I grew up!"

She is talking to Grandpa and tells him that she is going to "Auchan" (a big shopping mall close by). My Dad asks back:
"What are you going to do in Auchan?"
"I am going to study." says Eszti
"What are you going to study?" asks Grandpa.
"The Bible" was her response. :-)

Eszti calls her little boyfriend on the phone:
"Hi Alika (the nickname of her friend), I am here with daddy and mommy in the living room and I love you very much!"

Mommy: "What is your name?"
Answer: "Eszti"
Mommy: "How old are you?"
Eszti: "Twenty-two" (My sister is 22 by the way.)
Mommy: "Eszti, how old is Grandma?"
Eszti: "Twenty-two." (Grandma is very happy about that answer.)
Mommy: "And where do you live?"
Eszti: "At Torokbalint (the city where we live) in the other house."

We pray before going to sleep. Eszti closes her eyes and prays too:
"My God, bless our day. Bless the playground, the slide, the children. Amen."

Mommy's last question for today: "How can kids be so cute?!"

:-)

My creative brother

Lajos, a pastor we have been working with, called me last week and asked me if I could make a poster for a Friday afternoon teenager club. So I talked to my brother who is really gifted in web design and together we have created this poster. I am so proud of my brother. Don't you think it looks great? He is also the one who took the picture that is in the background.

Our Email Update - August

Dear Friends,

As summer winds down and we prepare for an action-packed autumn here in Hungary, we took some time to reflect on the highlights of our summer.

Here are a few of them:

English Camps
Recently John started helping out with a church in Bicske and had a great time working with the pastor planning and organizing an evangelistic English language camp. And since the team of American teachers was able to stay for a whole month, they were able to serve in 3 other camps too! Eszti, having learned "Jesus Loves Me" from one of the teachers, now calls the song, "Chelsea's song." :-)

Our Neighbor's Spiritual Journey
After coming to our grill party, our neighbor, Margit, asked to come with us to church. Having never been prayed for in person, she came away with a lot of questions like, "How do you pray," "How do you read the Bible," and "Do you really hear from God?" As a consequence, Zsofi has been regularly going over to talk with her, pray with her, and help her take the next steps in her journey with God!

Grandpa Wilson's Visit
One of the biggest highlights of our summer was an unexpected visit from John's dad. Perhaps feeling sorry for John, who opted to skip the Seres (Zsofi's family) vacation in order to get some work done on our flat, he decided to fly over for some father/son bonding time involving power-tools. :-) By the end of his stay, an awful lot of progress was made in the flat, and he was proud to have mastered the complex public transit system here in Budapest!

Brief Break on the Beach
Last but not least, we were able to spend a few relaxing days at a Wellness Hotel on the bank of the Danube River while participating in UWM's regional conference. And though the Danube wasn't so "blue," the swimming pool sure was!

We hope you've had a great summer too and would love to hear what some of your highlights were.

With our love,

John & Zsofi

Newest picture of baby Wilson!!!

Isn’t that a cute little baby? :-) What do you think is it going to be a girl or a boy? We still don't know so we are counting the guesses. :-)

Camp Update

This week we are at a Children’s camp with the group of teachers I was telling you about in the previous post. This is Eszti’s first camp experience by the way, and she is loving it. Today when I went to pick her up at the toddler’s group, she said she wanted to stay with the children instead. :-)

The camp is going really well. It is an English-Bible Camp and there are a lot of kids who have never been to church before. They are having a lot of fun, the teachers are wonderful, and John and I are blessed by working together with such a good team.

The camp will end on Sunday with a church service. The kids will perform skits, then the teachers will give their testimonies, and after that John will give the sermon (with me translating for him). We are inviting the parents of the campers to the service and for many of them it will be the first time coming to a church, so it is a pretty exciting opportunity. If you would like to, please take a minute and pray for the rest of the camp as well as the Sunday service. Thank you!

 

Having lunch break with the teachers

Ladies, how do you like this picture? :-) Men at work.

One of our young campers working on an art project.

Everybody needs a good friend. :-) 

Summer Adventures

This is a picture of a group of young people, who came on a short-term mission trip to Hungary to serve in 4 different summer camps. John has been helping organizing 3 of these camps and we had the pleasure to get to know this group. Some of them stayed with us this last weekend and I am really glad they could come and serve Hungarian local churches through these camps. It is great to see these young people so willing to be used by God and who are searching His guidance to know how to use their talents for the glory of God. If you have a minute would you please pray, that they will have a great time here in Hungary, that God would use them and shape them through the process.

Their names are: Tim, Christianna, Amy, Sharon, Chelsea, Adrienne.

Thank you!   

Our Email Update - June 2008

Dear Friends,

    Before jumping into all that is happening this summer, we wanted to say thank you for such an amazing response to our email update last month! Whereas our ministry account was in some trouble at the beginning of May, people began praying and we were shocked at how many people made special contributions to our ministry. Consequently, though we will need some monthly commitments to keep it stable, as of today we currently have a surplus in our account! Thank you so much for your special one-time contributions as well as your faithful monthly support! We are truly blessed by you!

Children's Day at the Playground

     Working together with the housing association in Tukorhegy, we helped plan and organize a community-wide event at the playground for Children's Day. Our goal was to develop relationships and serve the community, and it turned out amazingly well! Complete with face-painting, music, carnival-style game booths, a sidewalk chalk drawing contest, and many other fun things for the kids to do, so many people came out that the playground was barely able to hold everyone.

Our Neighbor

     Two weeks ago we hosted a grill party for those who might be interested in helping out with the church plant in Tukorhegy, and God put it on our hearts to invite one of our neighbors. Margit is a really sweet, single young lady, and we have gotten to know her better this past year.

     In short, she came to the grill party, met quite a few other Christians, and decided to come to church with us for the first time this Sunday! We are really excited about what God is doing in her heart and ask you to keep her in your prayers, that she might come to know God's love and mercy.

Summer Plans

     John is helping organize three English summer camps, where students will be able to study English as well as hear about Christianity. These camps are wonderful opportunities to introduce Christ's love, form friendships, and have a lasting impact in young people's lives (Zsofi became a Christian through one such camp 15 years ago). Please pray for these camps as well as for all the preparation that goes into it.

With our love,
John & Zsofi

Father's Day thoughts from Eszti

Here you can see the gift that I made (with some help from mommy) for Daddy. For me he is the best Daddy in the whole world because he is so big and strong and smart and he loves me so much. He always shares his food with me and even gives me yummy things that mommy would not. He takes me out on special daddy-daughter dates and shows me things I have never seen before. He loves to hold me and kiss me and make me laugh.

I love you Daddy! 

Children's Day

In Hungary the last Sunday of May is Children's Day. It is a day when kids can do all kinds of fun stuff. Our church planting team organized together with a housing association a Children's Day festival in our area. It turned out to be a great event. We had wonderful weather and were pleased to see how many children came. They had so much fun playing games, listening to a concert, getting their faces painted, goofing around with a clown etc. At the end of the day I was totally exhausted, my whole body ached but I was thankful that I could be a part of this event. Seeing so many kids being blessed was a joy and seeing what a great job our team has done made me feel proud to be part of it. Here some pictures from the day:  

Preparation work before the kids came

And they came, and played and played and played some more...

    A drawing contest                        

Heidi, Kati and little Sari (isn't she cute with her little basket? :-)

Heidi and me doing some of face painting

Szozo was the clown, he was really funny

Alpha course finished

A closing update on the Alpha course. We have finished our 20 week course not so long ago. The final session of Alpha is a Celebration Meal where the guests can share there experiences, testimonies from our time together. It was very encouraging to hear the stories of those who were strengthened in their walk with Christ or even started it at some point during the course. An extra bonus to our involvement beside the relationships that were formed and the opportunities we had to minister was the much practice we got in giving a public speech. John was the funniest speaker of all. He had a great mix of being serious at times and also to lighten the atmosphere with jokes. (I am sure you know what I mean if you have ever spent more than an hour with him :-). All together it was a great experience and we are planning with a little team to possibly start an other course in our neighborhood this coming fall. We would appreciate your prayers about that. Thanks for being part in our journey. 

John, me and Jon, the pastor who organized the first Alpha ESOL course in Hungary.