The Christmas Season Begins

The closest we've been to a white Christmas was a Christmas Eve dusting of snow we experienced in Alabama one year. Even last year with our first Christmas in Budapest, there was no snow. A very unusual thing we're told. This picture shows a recent snow we had in Budapest and maybe we'll wake up to a white Christmas this year. Hope your Christmas season is filled with the joy and hope you have in Christ Jesus!

A Time To Sing

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart,
I want to see You
I want to see You.

Olivia and Meredith had a wonderful opportunity, recently at church, to share in worship by singing the song, "Open the Eyes of My Heart." They were asked by one of the worship leaders to sing something during the offertory time. It was really good timing for them to sing since they had just returned from the states with new music in hand. While there, they spent some time with Jan Fincher, their former music teacher. She helped the girls pick out several selections that they could use in ministry here in Budapest. We were so proud of Olivia and Meredith and they seemed to enjoy serving the Lord in this way. Curt and Shay are wondering where they got their musical talent! It wasn't from us!

Friends

Being in Budapest gives us so many opportunties to meet some terrific people. Our view of the world has definitely expanded and that's been a good thing. There are believers all over the world in missionary service and they're not all Americans! A revelation for us! :-) Here we are with the Randimbiarison family--Jeannot, Julianna and their daughter, Tina. They serve with Pioneers. Jeannot is originally from Madagascar and Julianna is Hungarian. We have been so privileged to get to know them better and to serve with them. Their hearts are full of the love of Christ and love for His people.

Seated to Curt's left is Jarko and Elena Jurik. They are missionaries to Serbia and are very involved with our home church in Decatur (First Bible Church www.fbc.org) in church planting opportunities. Curt has visited Jarko and Elena in Serbia several times and have gotten to see their work first hand. Serbia is a very dark place, spiritually, and the Juriks are giving their life and energy to bring the gospel here.

We were able to spend some time with these two families during a conference held in a local hotel in Budapest.

Please continue to pray to the Lord of the harvest that He will raise up missionaries from all nations and to all nations.

Another Holiday In Hungary

We are constantly confused about the holidays here in Hungary. We just don't know when they happen! Well, maybe we know the main date of the holidays but we still don't understand the system of when people attach extra days on to the holiday. For example, today is All Saints Day in Hungary. It's a national holiday! Everything is closed. We did see that Burger King opened a little later than usual. But most all things were closed. Since the holiday fell on a Tuesday, a lot of Hungarians took yesterday off from work. They will work this coming Saturday in order to have the 4 day weekend. Makes sense. We would probably do the same thing in the states. But in talking with some Hungarians at BSF this morning, we were told that next year might be totally different. This holiday will fall on a Wednesday and they thought that most Hungarians would just be off on Wednesday--not any other day. So it makes for interesting decisions concerning the BSF class calendar. Do we meet or do we not meet? We just decided that we would continue class and did decide to meet today on the national holiday. We had a remarkably good turnout so it was a good decision. We'll probably just have to take the calendar year by year and try to figure out when these holidays will affect BSF. The next big holiday is Christmas and we'll be off from BSF during that time. Then there's another national holiday on March 15. We'll just have to wait and see how that affects our class!