Jesus Festival

What an exciting weekend Debrecen had! Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings seven Debrecen churches organized an evangelistic outreach that was held in the main square downtown in front of the Big Church. The crowds increased every night until there were several hundred. The most wonderful part was the many who came forward for salvation! Praise the Lord!
The combined worship teams of the churches provided wonderful music that could be heard up and down the square. Lots of people walking by and people waiting for the trams could hear the music and the gospel. Saturday's forecast was for rain in the evening. Everyone had been praying for good weather for the meetings and when the dark clouds started gathering, we prayed and trusted God. The rain held off, and we heard later that the rest of Hungary experienced strong thunderstorms and hailstorms. Only Debrecen was spared the bad weather!
Also Saturday evening, there was some sort of mix-up in the scheduling of the events in the main square. A radio station had a stage set up opposite the Jesus Festival stage, with both groups scheduled to begin at 5 pm. The organizers of the two groups met and agreed that the evangelistic meetings would last from 5 until 6:30 and then the radio station could have the square. There was only a little disturbance of our meetings when the radio station people started testing their microphones, but otherwise the situation benefited the Gospel. People who came to see the radio station's program heard the Gospel while they were waiting! The service had to be rushed just a little, but we finished in time. Right at 6:30, the other group began their program with their music.
Sunday morning the presence of God was powerful also at the Shalom Open Bible Church here in Debrecen where several more came forward for salvation and others were healed and filled with the Holy Spirit. What a great weekend! We are so excited that INSTE is available now in Hungarian to train these new believers.

Thank You, Intercessors!

I (Nancy) am reminded today of Anna who was one of the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Anna (as described in Luke 2:36-38) was an elderly widow who never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Anna obviously loved God and worshiped him with her whole heart, but I wonder, what did she pray for? She probably prayed that the Lord would send the promised Messiah, but did she also pray for revival among her people? Did she pray for her family, the priests and her country? Whatever she prayed, she got to see the answer to all her prayers when she saw Jesus being carried into the temple by his parents. How she gave thanks to God!

We want to give a special thank you to all of you who pray like Anna prayed. Thank you that you include us and our ministry in Hungary and the Hungarian people in your prayers. May God allow you to see the answer to your prayers.

Happy Birthday Hungary, and Mike!

August 20 is St. Steven's Day here in Hungary. There are huge celebrations in honor of the founding of Hungary in AD 1000 by King Steven. August 20 also happens to be Mike's birthday, so we celebrated by taking the day off work--not hard since hardly anyone else was working either!
We watched part of the huge Flower Carnival parade here in Debrecen. The traditional floats, all covered with flowers, are fun to see including this one of Süsü, a favorite children's character. We learned about Süsü in our last language classes when we watched (and tried to understand) a short video clip featuring the dragon.

The parade included lots of bands and dancers from near and far. These little girls were so cute, and very talented, too.

One reason the parade lasts two or three hours is that there are long gaps between entries. The crowd sometimes wanders into the street to wait for the next float. We were a little too impatient, though, and went home to watch the rest of the parade on TV!
We then went back to join the crowds at the Great Woods Park and downtown.

Mike decided that for his birthday dinner he wanted an American hot dog. The hot dogs we got from this stand really did taste like American hot dogs!
Happy birthday, Mike! And happy birthday Hungary!

We won a prize!

We won a prize at the the intensive language course farewell dinner last Friday! Here's the story. Our teacher Tünde heard that there was going to be a folk song singing contest and talked our class into entering as a group. We chose a song on Friday, practiced together for a few minutes on Monday and Tuesday and Tuesday evening competed. It was too short notice to learn the song well, so we decided just to sing one verse with the men stomping their feet at the appropriate place.
On Tuesday evening, we learned that there were seven solo competitors and two other groups. We were the first group to sing. We were nervous, but we wanted to make Tünde proud of us, so we did our short little song the best we could. Each of the other two groups did four songs apiece and added harmony and a round. We were glad when the contest was over that Tünde was indeed proud of us.
On Friday evening, the winners of the contest were announced. Each first-place solo contestants sang one of their songs for the audience. They then announced that in the group category, there were two groups that were so good that they tied for first place! Wow! After those two groups sang, our group was called up and awarded third prize! Tünde was again proud of us--and we won a book, a certificate and chocolate bars!

Our brave singing class: (l-r) Keisuke Kawamura, Tünde Nagy (our teacher), Andrea Ancarney Carteny, Nancy Juntunen, Mike Juntunen, Ania Ciesok, Beata Drzazga, Sylwia Jedlak

What did you say?

The last few days our DVD player was having problems and not playing the DVDs correctly. It was an inexpensive one we bought a year and a half ago and the one-year guarantee ran out so it decided it was time to stop working. We decided yesterday to buy a new one so we could continue to watch Hungarian movies and practice our listening skills. We didn't want to just throw the old one in the trash, so we took it with us to the store to see if they would dispose of it for us. We went to the information counter and tried to explain in our best Hungarian that we just wanted this one disposed of and we wanted to buy a new one. At first she didn't quite understand us, but in a short time she figured out what we wanted and directed us to the service center.

At the service center we were able to communicate our desires right away to the clerk and she took the old DVD player to be thrown away. We then proceeded into the store to select a new player. Once we decided what we wanted, a clerk came and told us that he would give us a paper for a two-year guarantee for that model. We took this paper to the front to pay for the player, and then took the player, the receipt of payment and the paper for the two-year guarantee back to the service center to have them stamp all the papers to validate the guarantee. We talked with the same clerk we had just seen previously, and when she finished stamping the papers and gave them back to us, she said something to us that we didn't quite understand but assumed it had to do with the guarantee because I heard her use that word.

We took our new player and left and I (Mike) started thinking about what she said because it didn't sound like Hungarian. We have gotten used to the fact that when we try to order something at a restaurant or speak with clerks in a store in Hungarian, they will respond in English. This, however, definitely was not English and it wasn't Hungarian. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that the clerk said, "Zwei jahr garantie." She told us that it was a two-year guarantee in GERMAN!

Please, we're confused enough as it is. Don't throw in another language!

Tanner's House

Last week we toured a living history museum here in Debrecen with our language class. The demonstrations began with a group of young people demonstrating combat with weapons from the 1100's. Then we learned a little bit about the traditional crafts of soap-making (used to be made from animal fats, but now from plant oils), embroidery (all done by hand! amazing!), and himzes, a sort of applique on felt clothing (beautiful!). We also got to try our hand at a little himzes on a bookmark. Needless to say, it's much harder than it looks.

Better Day Today

Thank you to everyone who prayed for our language learning today. Classes went much better for us. It's amazing what some good sleep and a better attitude can do! God is good. Just six more days of this intensive course remain, and we are already planning how to continue our language learning when the course is finished. We are looking for kind, patient native Hungarian speakers to be "conversation partners" with us for the next few months. Please pray we can find some good helpers.

Language school blues

We are in the middle of our third week of intensive Hungarian language classes. It seems to have gotten a little harder this week. Perhaps it's because we are tired. Perhaps it's because we changed teachers and it is harder for us to understand the new ones. Perhaps our brains are getting overloaded. Whatever the cause, we know we need to lean more on the Lord right now. Please pray for us!