Chili and Cornbread

There are some American comfort foods that I (Nancy) miss sometimes, and cornbread is one of them.  So, today I baked myself some cornbread to go with chili.  It wasn't until recently that I figured out where to find the cornmeal in the store.  I don't often bake cornbread anyway, so I wasn't missing it until the past few months.  Then, at a church function, someone served cornmeal mush (polenta), and it got me thinking about cornbread.  I didn't have a right-sized square pan, so I baked it in a large pie pan.  It tasted so good.

Some days I run out of ideas for this blog.  Is there anything you would like to read about here?  Any questions about Hungary, our ministry, or us?  Let me know.

Lunch with Desző

Yesterday we enjoyed lunch with our friend Desző from Tomor.  (He actually lives next to Tomor in the village of Kupa.)  Desző has committed to spending three months here in Debrecen learning about the ministry by shadowing the pastors of the Open Bible Church here, studying with the INSTE group, and dedicating time to Bible study and prayer.  He is seeking the Lord's plan for when he finishes his three months here.  He will most likely return to his hometown and evangelize there in the hopes of establishing a church in the area.  Please pray for Desző as he learns here and pray for his wife and two children who are awaiting his return to Kupa.

By the way, we had simple meal of American bean soup and corn bread.  Desző said it was different, but good.  What a kind, polite man.

It's INSTE Group Meeting Time

A Ház (The House) INSTE group

It's Monday evening and time for the INSTE group meeting at The House church here in Debrecen.  This is the international church that welcomed us with open arms when we first arrived in Hungary.  We attended their Saturday evening services to enjoy worship in English until we understood enough Hungarian to participate in the Open Bible Church services.  We have maintained a relationship with these wonderful people since then.  Just recently, they started an INSTE group in Hungarian and asked Mike to lead it.  He will be training one of the members to lead the group when we return to the US for itineration in the summer.  Have a good time in class tonight, friends!

Unified Prayer Week

A few of the intercessors at Tuesday night's meeting

This week is a week of prayer and praise for eight churches here in Debrecen. We are meeting in a different church each night, praising the Lord together and interceding for the needs of our families, churches, city and nation.  We know that when we pray together, God hears and answers our prayers.

Tickets Bought

We just bought airline tickets to arrive back in Iowa on June 14.  We searched online for the most economical (cheapest) tickets and were dismayed to see how expensive most of the tickets were.  We did, however, find some tickets to fly on LOT Polish Airlines.  We were a little hesitant to buy those since we flew the same airline once before and, even though it turned out okay, it was on an older, not so comfortable airplane.  We also had misread the schedule and instead of a two-hour layover in Warsaw, we had a 14-hour layover.  This time, however, we carefully read the schedule, decided the connections were reasonable and booked the flight.  We were willing to put up with an older airplane since the tickets were just over half the cost of the next cheapest.  Later, as we were printing out the confirmation, we noticed that the designated airplane is the Dreamliner Boeing 787.  This is the new airplane that has been in the news a lot lately because of problems with its batteries.  But, on the bright side, it's a new plane.

We are going to be back in the US for six months to a year, visiting churches, reporting on what God is doing in Hungary and raising funds to return to Hungary.  We plan to attend Open Bible National Convention in June. Then, according to our current schedule, we will be in the Mountain Plains Region (Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming) in September and October and in Southeast Region (Florida and Georgia) in November and December.  We plan to see as many of our friends as possible when we're back.

It Works!

We were very thankful to receive a donation to buy a much-needed laptop for the INSTE office.  A couple of weeks ago we were able to buy a nice new one at a local store.  Since we plan to turn the INSTE office over to Hungarians one day, we bought a Hungarian computer, that is, one with a Hungarian keyboard.  It turned out that the Microsoft Office program that came with the computer did not have everything thing we needed to run the INSTE programs, so we looked around for what we needed.  It was quite frustrating, since it appeared that the necessary programs would cost over half of what we paid for the computer itself!  At this point, we stopped, laid hands on the computer, dedicated it to the Lord, asked for his blessing on it, and requested help in finding all that we needed.  After many trips to different stores, searches online, and asking advice from several people, Mike was able to find a downloadable Microsoft Office online for a reasonable price.
Then he loaded the INSTE database onto the new computer.  It worked fine until it came to the reports.  They would not work.  As he tried to find the source of the problem, he remembered that in Europe, numbers are written differently than in America.  Here, instead of a decimal point, a comma is used to separate whole numbers and tenths.  Hundreds and thousands are separated by a space, not a comma.  Mike reasoned that since the INSTE database was written in America and we were trying to run it on a European computer, the difference in how numbers are written could be the problem.  But neither of us knows how to change a computer program.
But, Mike has a language conversation partner that he meets with every week who is a programmer.  During their meeting today, Mike asked Balazs about the situation.  Balazs said the comma and decimal point difference was probably the problem and that he would be happy to look at it.  They stopped at the INSTE office at the end of their time together and Mike showed him the problem.  It took Balazs just a couple of minutes to fix it.  Wow!  We thanked Balazs profusely and paid him in cookies.  Praise God for the way he has answered our prayers!

New Conversation Partner

I (Nancy) have a new conversation partner.  Enikő and I have met only three times so far, but we are having a good time together.  Having a conversation partner is a big help in learning to speak Hungarian well.  We take half an hour to speak Hungarian and half an hour to speak English.  That way, each of us gets to practice speaking for an extended time. With my other Hungarian friends, I tend to listen more and just speak a sentence or two here or there.  Enikő and I correct each other as we speak so we can learn as we go. We were having such a good time together today, I forgot to take a picture of her.  I'll try to remember next time.

Another Step Forward

Sunday Mike presented Sandor Bereczki and Mihály Gulyás with their Level 2 INSTE Leader certificates.  These two men are the first people trained to lead Level 2 groups in Hungarian.  What an historic moment!  They will be starting a pilot group later this month, ironing out the rough places in the materials and procedures in the new program while training some leaders of Open Bible Churches here in Hungary.  Please pray for God's blessing on these men and on their group.