Sunday, January 18, 2009

Where do I go from here??

This ones for You Jen, I know you liked the last one...


Well, since my last post, the fall 08 semester has finished, I graduated from the internship program, I spent Christmas in England, and now I am back here at the school. For the next couple of weeks we will serve at a conference, prepare for a wedding, and get the school ready for yet another school semester. Tomorrow marks one year since I came to Hungary as an intern, it has seriously flown by so fast!! I am encouraged looking back and considering everything that God has done this last year and seeing how much he has done. He is so faithful! I love that we have a God that we can trust in, and has proven it already, I never would have imagined to be where I am an have the opportunity to have the privledge of leading missions trips and dicipling girls over-seeing an area of the school. It has been crazy!

The question lately, has been, so what now? My time here is officially over on the 11th of February. My heart has been with Split, Croatia since i first went there in 2006. I honestly don't know if that is where God would have me serve him long-term, but I also don't see why I shouldn't head in that direction and trust that if God does not want me there he is able to close that door... Thats the beauty of trusting in God, If we are truly seeking his will, why would he let us go outside of it? He is capable of keeping me in his will, but i also have to walk in faithfulness and make decisions.
So I will go and visit Croatia in February, and pray more about all that there.
I will then go back to the school in Hungary and help out where ever I can until April. Two of my good friends are getting married in England and I am hoping to go to their wedding. After the wedding I would fly from England back to Portland. Thats where I will be for a while, working, possible taking some college classes, i would love to learn English as a second language so I would be able to teach it to others in a foreign country. I also want to take art and photography classes. There is so much that I still need to figure out, but i just need to take it one day at a time...


Please Pray for direction regarding the future and where to serve,
my financial situation here and the hopes of going to croatia before I leave,
To continue to trust in the Lord and his guidance...
We had a great Christmas party that was loaded with tons of baked goods and decorations, and even a visit from good ol' Santa Claus for fun.


Thursday, October 23, 2008

Buda and Pest

Please be praying for my time here and please pray for the people of Budapest!!! God is really growing me and showing me more of himself and what it means to truely know him! Its crazy how his desire is for us to know him and him us, above everything else!


I dont know if you can tell, but that says LOVE, it was pretty cool we were up at the ciitidella, a huge monument in budapest and we were sharing the gospel up there...and taking lots of pictures...

Lots of ridiculous moments with the team...


This was at the Homeless shelter that we got to work at for two days, we did a lot of deep cleaning for them that they are usually not able to do. We also each shared a 5 minute devo with the homeless people. I shared on Habakkuk 3:17-19...
"Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yeild no food,
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
and there be no herd in the stalls-
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord my God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deers feet.
And he will make me walk on my high hills."


This is the apartment building we got to stay in. It was soooo beautiful, it was seriously like a movie


There is the famous suitcase... we lugged that thing around with us everywhere and it was soo heavy...
Our team, minus Joe, he's taking the picture.


10-Day Outreach

The most recent thing to write about would be my trip to Budapest. I will start blogging about the most important events that have already happened while being in Hungary, that I never got to share later, but for now, Budapest.
Every Semester as an intern we are required to lead an outreach team somewhere in Europe. Last semester as most of you know I lead a team to Split, Croatia. This semester I lead a team a little more Locally to Budapest the capital of Hungary. We started off at 13:37pm Friday, October 17th from the Vaja, Train station. It was all going fine,
we found a random empty cart on the train that looked like it was an old jail cell and so we decided to have a mini dance party inside, and then we got settled in our seats. We had this Huge suitcase that was completely full of hats and scarves and jackets and shoes for the homeless in Budapest, but we had to lug this thing everywhere and it took up a whole seat on the train. We didn't know that we had to switch trains in sarboguard so all the sudden we hear the conductor guy yelling something to us and I was like, umm I think we need to get off! And he started yelling, "Go, Go, faster, its leaving!" So we started scrambling with all of our huge luggage and I was trying to get off the train with the huge suitcase but it was like two big steps down so i jumped down and pulled the suitcase down, and accidentally slammed Joe's toe, but then we all took off running towards the next train and another guy...not mentioning any names... was lagging...and we were like "come on!" but we couldn't figure out why he was taking so long then we finally got on the train, which after all that running didn't leave for another 15 minutes..duhhh...haha, but then we relized that guy was in the bathroom and he had been in there a really long time, but we didn't think too much about it. But later we found out during the running from train to train he had pooped his pants!!! hahahahahaha...we were laughing soooo hard... hahahah... but yeah, thats how our trip started out!
The first night we were there we helped out with the Youth Group at Calvary Chapel Budapest. It was really cool to worship with them and play crazy games and the five of us from my team shared our testimonies and why we came to Hungary. It was a blessing for us...i hope it was for them too...
During the time there we did a lot of street evangelism, which is interesting with a group of four english speakers and one Ukrainian speaker, in a Hungarian speaking city. But we got around and were able to find a lot of people surprisingly that knew how to speak English. We had hand made these Gospel cards that had Romans 8:13 on them in Hungarian

Mert minden, a ki segitsegul hivja az Ur nevet, megtartatik.

Romabeliekhez 10:13


and we handed them out to homeless people along with sandwiches and fruit. There are sooo many homeless in Budapest. It breaks my heart. Every underground metro station is filled with homeless, laying on the ground, curled up in the corner, or just grouped up conversing with others. Its a bit like Portland but a lot worse.
There was one night where we went down into the metro area and we gave this really cute old man a sandwich and an apple and a scripture card, and we said to him "Isten Algon" which means, God bless you, and he got a big, toothless smile and repeated it back to us and put his hands up in the air, but then he looked at the apple in his hands and then he looked directly at me and made the saddest face I have ever seen and he put both hands to his chest and then he pointed to his mouth, and he got tears in his eyes. I didnt understand what was going on, but he kept doing the same motions and I started crying and didnt know how to help him, but then Joe realized that he was upset because he couldnt eat the apple because he had no teeth... so we gave him a little orange and then after we left joe decided to buy him a soft pastry, so he took that back to him and he was very grateful.
I think the reason that I became so upset wasnt because he didnt have any teeth, but the whole situation hit me at that moment. There were so many of these men in these horrible situations, and they literally have nothing. In our lives when things go bad or we are going thru trials we have Jesus to look to and the Holy Spirit to comfort us, but I can not imagine going thru life without that, especially in their situation. I wanted to help hem so bad, but I cant. I want to shake them and say "dont you understand!??, its so easy, Jesus made it so easy for us, all you have to do is belive! I want them to know that there is someone who promises to be with them ALWAYS and will never leave them and will comfort them..."

We did a lot of street evangelism this week. And at the end of the week we had a outreach re-cap thing and I was talking to the team and I really encouraged them to not feel discouraged or beat down because of rejection. There were some many times when we were witnessing that people got super defensive and treated us poorly because they realized what we were sharing about. But I told them to not feel like they came out here for nothing, we cannot save them, the only thing we can do is get the gospel out there and plant seeds, we can inform people but it is up to the Holy Spirit to convict and save. And we dont always see fruit right away. Even though its thru seeing he fruit that gets us all excited and pumped up to go out again, its not what we are to expect. Who knows, some of these people may choose christ years from now when someone else talks to them and for some reason it will click that time and everything will come together, or a card that we passed out could be found in a desperate hour and they could call upon the Lord. So we know that the Lords word is living and it will continue to work even after we left.

--Hero square--