Modern Missionary Efforts to Hungarian Jews
Photo credit: Ron Lindman/ CC-BY-SA-30
In our last update, I shared with you the tumultuous history of Hungarian Jews. While their history has been plagued by anti-Semitic persecution, their spiritual future is looking brighter as missionary work among Hungarian Jews is increasing. In the mid-1800s there was extensive and fruitful work among Jews throughout Central Europe, including Hungary. The Holocaust brought this great spiritual awakening promptly to an end. It was not until the 1990s that concentrated efforts were made to reach Hungarian Jews again. Jews for Jesus began working in Hungary only four short years ago, in 2011. As you can see, the work among Hungarian Jews is only just beginning. In our last update, we asked you to pray for the volunteers of Jews for Jesus as they engaged in a large evangelistic campaign in Budapest. In the course of that work, over 300,000 gospel tracts were handed to individuals, they were able to establish almost 600 contacts for follow up, and 62 people accepted Christ as their savior! Two testimonies were particularly amazing to me. First, a 93 year old Jewess who survived the Holocaust (though all of her immediate family died) accepted Jesus as her Messiah for the first time. Second, an anti-Semitic man yelled at one of the volunteers that he hated Jews. The volunteer called back, asking if he hated Jesus too. That made the man pause, and he and the volunteer talked, ending with the anti-Semitic man accepting the Jew, Jesus, as his Lord! While Jenn and I do not work with Hungarian Jews, we like to learn about and pray for the other ministries taking place in Hungary, such as that conducted by Jews for Jesus. Among other things, it is a great reminder as to one of the reasons we are here. Because of the presence of the International Christian School of Budapest, where Jenn and I teach, missionaries who have school-aged children are able to stay in Hungary longer and conduct their ministries with less stress because they know their children are getting a solid education. This makes their ministries more effective. In this way, we are supporting the many ministries to Hungarians and other Central Europeans, in addition to our direct ministry to the students under our care. Thank you for joining us in prayer for ministry to third-culture kids and the other important ministries within Hungary! Don't forget to like us on facebook! You can help spread the word about serving TCKs right from your inbox!
Pray With Us
Whew. Dave wrapped up the course work for his master's program, a Master of Art in Religion, last week. It was a lot of work! Thank you for praying for him and our family! School beings in less than two weeks and at currently Dave has not received his physical textbooks or electronic access codes for digital textbooks. These new textbooks were purchased following the Social Studies curriculum review last year and are absolutely necessary for his classes. It is hard for him to prepare his new curriculum without them. Please pray with us for a efficient and speedy delivery of the physical textbooks and patience and success for people at ICSB attempting to get the access codes.
