Flexibility at its finest

Szia! (a greeting and farewell in Hungarian)

Our first week here has been quite stretching already, but God is good. In our original plan for our time in Hungary, we would have been staying in or near the orphanage in Miskolcs and a majority of our time was going to be spending time with them and sharing Christ's love with them. Instead, we've found ourselves formally teaching English in a classroom setting, both last week and this coming week. Last week the five of us were together teaching 5th-8th graders in Mikepercs some simple English but this coming week Kat, Malerie, and Elyse will be travelling with Trudy Chun to Debrecen to a Secondary school to teach conversational English to High School-aged girls. Tyler and James, along with Russell Chun, will be teaching English to a group of 5th graders, along with Physical Education. Around 3 in the afternoon, Monday-Friday, we'll be reconvening to prep for and teach at the kick-off week for Russell's After School program here in Mikeperc.

In Mikeperc, the younger generation has no desire to even step in to a church, just because of some remnant feelings from Communism which really discourages them to be involved in religion. Russell's vision for the primary students in Mikeperc is to hold fun programs inside the church that will open up their hearts and minds to hear about Christ and hopefully make them feel welcome in the church.

At the After School program, a few of the Handful will be out in the town center with Russell, inviting the students to join us at the church building to participate in fun activities, games, eating junkfood, etc. During this time, we'll be performing a five-part skit, narrated in Hungarian, to convey a redemptive story and open them up to hearing about Christ. This also gives Russell the opportunity to make connections with kids in the village so that he can recruit them to his sports ministry and see what other ministry needs the village has.

Our hope for this After School program is that it will break down some walls between the Hungarians and Romas, but we're not even sure that the church leaders will allow the Roma children to be inside the church walls. Be praying that God will speak to the hearts of the church leaders and that the Romas will feel welcomed into the church.