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Written by Sytka
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There are no translations available.
Május 12-én, egy szép szombati napon, inárcsi központunk adott otthont jubileumi rendezvényünknek, ahol a Kelet-Európa Misszió húsz éves fennállásának alkalmából istentisztelettel egybekötött hálaadó napot tartottunk.
Két évtized eseményeit egyetlen nap pár órája alatt visszaadni lehetetlen vállalkozás. Felidézni a múlt néhány epizódját, megemlékezni a fontosabb történésekről, visszahozni valamit azokból az érzésekből, melyeket az előző 20 évben átéltünk, inkább ígérkezik megvalósítható koncepciónak egy jubileumi napon.
Erre tettünk kísérletet május 12-én, ahol több mint százötven vendégünkkel együtt örültünk annak, hogy Isten munkálkodott az elmúlt időszakban. A hálaadó istentiszteleten Eelco de Boer, a Kelet-Európa Misszió nemzetközi igazgatója hirdette az Igét, a dicsőítést a kárpátaljai Amaro Del vezette, de a nap során bizonyságot tettek missziós élményeikről többen is a jelenlévők közül. Így például Fekete Imre, a magyarországi misszió elnöke, illetve a misszióval együtt dolgozó testvéreink meséltek arról, Isten milyen munkákban és miként érint meg embereket, hogyan változtat a nyomorúságban élők helyzetén, kilátástalannak tűnő körülményein.
A beszámolókból a jelenlévők betekintést nyerhettek abba, hogy Isten szolgálata milyen széles lehetőségeket biztosít azoknak, akik hajlandók odaszánni magukat a munkára. Az evangélizáció terepe lehet a lepramisszió, a szegény családok támogatása, a gyermekek szponzorálása épp úgy, mint amikor afgán menekülteknek teszünk bizonyságot hitünkről, albán idősekkel beszélünk a megváltásról vagy kárpátaljai cigánymisszióban veszünk részt. Az aratnivaló sok, a mezők változatosak, a feladatok különböző készségeket igényelnek. Csak rajtunk múlik, hogy Istentől kapott tehetségünket mikor kezdjük el használni és mire fordítjuk azt.
A jubileumi nap, bár a múlt eseményeire koncentrálva igyekezett hálaadásra ösztönözni, mégis előremutató célzatú volt. Ahogy Isten megáldotta azokat a szolgálatokat, melyeket az elmúlt évtizedekben a misszió keretein belül végeztünk, jó reménységgel nézünk az elkövetkezendők felé is. Bár a jövő részleteit nem láthatjuk pontosan, abban mégis biztosak lehetünk, hogy Isten nem hagy magunkra bennünket.
A jubileumi napon készült fényképekből válogattunk, a galériát megtekintheted ide kattintva! |
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Written by Sytka
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 2012 marks the 20th anniversary of the Eastern-European Mission in Hungary! For this occasion you are invited to join us at our mission centre in Inarcs for a day of celebration!
How did Eastern-European Mission start in Hungary? What were the main events of the past two decades? What do the various colleagues and volunteers from Hungary and abroad say about all this? How can you join the ministry? What is the best method for proclaiming the Gospel? What are this year’s mission opportunities?
If you would like to know the answers to the above questions, if you’ve served with us before or if you’d like to join us in the future or even if you’d just be happy to have a chat with our staff, you’re very welcome to join us on Saturday, May 12th for our Jubilee Mission Day in our mission centre in Inarcs. There’ll be a church service to thank God for all He’s done: the worship will be lead by Amaro Del and the Word will be preached by Eelco de Boer, the International Director of Eastern-European Mission.
Every participant will be invited to join us for lunch and for this reason you’re asked to register your attendance with us until the 1st of May 2012 by
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Written by Sytka
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While distributing Christmas gifts around the country, we didn’t just visit children but also a prison in eastern Hungary’s biggest city, Debrecen. After the Christmas programme the team also made time to engage the inmates in personal conversations.
The mission group left Odorheiu Secuiesc in Romania at 5 am to travel back home to Hungary after a short mission trip. On the way back they stopped in Debrecen, near the Romanian-Hungarian border to minister to the inmates. Barna Meszaros, the prison chaplain organised and prepared this ministry for the group. Barna serves in the prison for eleven years now and is very committed. He has experienced firsthand how inmates change completely and become a new person once they become Christians, even if they’ve spent many years behind bars.
One of the team members told us that “the grey-white, dim building felt like heaven after we started singing, with Tibor Virag, the singer from Amaro Del, leading us.” The music filled the corridors, the rooms and hopefully also the hearts of the inmates. This set the tone for a Gospel presentation which was followed by an extended time of personal conversations with the inmates – women and men separately. The team members couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesus’ words:
„I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Mt 25:36)
The visit proved to be very refreshing for the inmates. They were also grateful for the Christmas gift that each of them received from the Eastern-European Mission. Of course the gifts included a bible – since it’s God’s love and His Word that has the power to permanently change people’s lives.
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Written by Sytka
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The distribution of gift boxes within Hungary and across the borders caused a whole range of emotions: they ranged from wide smiles all the way to tears of joy on the faces of some of them. Many children living in deep poverty were greatly blessed to receive Christmas gifts, most of the times the only one they received this Christmas.
More than 1.500 children received Christmas gifts packed in shoe boxes and sent to them by children from more developed countries. This project, which is going on for many years now, mainly targets families whose living conditions are far below the average.
The gifts reached the children in one of two ways: either through evangelistic events or by visiting the families in their homes.
It is typical for children to express their emotions freely and honestly and this happened very powerfully almost each time a gift was handed over. For example, little David in Ukraine jumped up and down when he saw the contents of his box, containing sweets, various toys and school supplies. A little girl, Angela, who recently went through a heart surgery and since then is under regular medical care, reacted in a similar way. Her parents could only dream about getting her a Christmas gift but with God’s blessing this became reality – a great relief for the parents. Also Richard and Attila were very touched, their father even burst into tears when he saw the gifts given to his sons. From their last money he bought a Christmas tree and decorated it believing he won’t be able to place any gifts underneath – but God had better plans for them.
Our colleague Barna Luczi in Transylvania (Romania) used Christmas Eve to visit poor families and surprise the children with a shoe box gift. Those poor families and children who attend his church already received the gifts at the church service in the afternoon. Barna reports: “it is hard to describe the joy of everyone, even the parents. It was a great distraction for them from their difficult circumstances they have to face every day of the year.”
100 school children received shoe box gifts in Szenttamás in the region of Vojvodina, Serbia. Our volunteer Péter Miklósváry said that “the children were so happy that you could have thought they won the lottery or something”. Sparkling eyes, happy faces and joyful moments followed the distribution of the gifts. It was a blessed event even though the local school did not allow the event to take place. The children and parents had to go to a private house in groups of fifty to hear the Gospel proclaimed and receive their boxes.
There’s no greater joy than giving presents to children in need at Christmas time, is there?
Have a look at our photo gallery about the Christmas gift distribution |
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Written by Sytka
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“The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow.” (Ps 146:9)
Young men and teenagers are hiding in the bushes. They all came a long way to get to Subotica (in Serbia, near the Hungarian border): some came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh or even Libya and Somalia. They are refugees who came to Europe in hope of a better future.
“By now when I get there, they don’t run away but rather run towards me” says Tibor Varga from the Serbian Eastern European Mission, who visits the refugees regularly for the past two months. The outskirts of Subotica are mostly made up of agricultural fields, small wooden patches and bushes. In large parts it’s an abandoned area at this time of the year which currently serves as a hiding place for a couple hundred refugees. It’s a group of mostly males but there are also a few women and even children. There’s also a family with a pregnant mother. Will the child be born under such circumstances, under the cold winter sky?
The refugees would have all the reason to be fearful but there’s no sign of depression among them. They live in the freezing cold in small huts which have been built by them and which are time and again burned down by the local police. The authorities are hard-handed towards the refugees to make them understand that they are not welcomed there: quite a few times they’ve been beaten, imprisoned and robbed of the little money they had. But even apart from the aggressiveness of the police, they face enough problems on their own: no food, freezing temperatures and even a contagious skin disease that started spreading among them. Tibor told us how one of the boys had contracted it and how the skin on his body looked horrible, full of blotches up to his fingers. He was able to get him to a doctor but since about 17-20 people sleep cramped into a little hut, the disease can spread further easily.
Paradoxically though, the refugees still seem happy. They say that conditions are even worse where they come from. One said it’s not uncommon in Afghanistan to have people break into homes, kill the father, rape the mother, kidnap the children and burn the house afterwards. The man reported how two weeks after such an incident he found his father’s body at a river – with his throat slit. One can only imagine how desperate people must be to flee from Somalia to Sudan, that is to flee from cruelty to famine. The cruelty of the Serbian policemen seems more bearable compared to the circumstances in their homelands.
The authorities’ defence is that they don’t know what to do with the refugees. The country has enough challenges on its own which they can’t solve so why should they add other countries’ problems to their own? So their solution to the situation is trying to force the refugees to move on to somewhere else. All the beatings, humiliation and fires send the message “Go away!” So the refugees try to move on by clinging on trucks from underneath or simply trying to cross the border to Hungary by foot through a forest. All they want is to get into the European Union but the border guards usually catch them with their infrared cameras and deport them back to Serbia straight away. Then the whole thing starts over again.
The team from the Eastern European Mission’s centre in Inarcs, Hungary recently went along with Tibor Varga to visit the people who are rejected by all. We’ve distributed food, blankets, personal hygiene products and a huge amount of second-hand jackets (formerly used by prisoners). We were surprised to see that quite a number of the refugees speak a little English and are happy to have a brief chat. They claim to be Muslims but are open to the gospel: Tibor has already witnessed to them and distributed a few bibles in English. “Giving them food also helps in keeping them from being forced to steal. We can only do a small thing but it still saves their lives. It seems that out here no one cares if someone dies as the conditions are so harsh” says Tibor and goes on to tell us how they developed a good method to distribute food to a large group of people. “One time, in the beginning, when we just started bringing them food and there were several hundred people here, they literally raided our car and looted it. They didn’t want to harm us but were simply desperate to all get some food to be able to survive. Then we remembered how Jesus fed the five thousand by having them sit in groups before giving them food. The next time around we used the same method and it worked! We told them that everyone would get food but they needed to sit down in groups and if any of them would stand up, we would immediately leave and not give them anything. People were very disciplined and this also helped in developing a good relationship between the local pastor and the refugees.
However, the future still looks rather bleak. The refugees don’t want to and won’t be able to stay permanently in the outskirts of Subotica. Only God knows where they will head to, when they’ll leave and what will happen to them – and He’s also their only real hope. There’s no one, no matter how far away they’ve come from, who can’t get close to Him and one thing is for sure: we’ll never have to flee from Him.
For additional pictures from our visit, please visit our gallery! |
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