Virág's Book

Virág's book is out. It has been three years of writing (last 6 months of real intense work). I am so happy I got be a part of fulfilling my wife's dream. The book is great. We'll start selling it tomorrow. Please, pray that it's message gets to a lot of people. The title is: Like the children

Peti

Reviving the Campus Ministries in Europe - article

I have written an article for the Mission Minutes recently and wanted to post it on my blog.

As disciples we are aging (that is very natural), people graduate from College and go on with life, get married, have children etc. This process in the European churches this left us with none or very small Campus ministries. And while on one hand it is encouraging to see the maturity and stability that comes from older Christians and Christian families the lack of young people in our churches are alarming!
Last spring Shawn and Lena Wooten suggested for me and my wife to go back and focus our efforts on strengthening and converting young people in our church. I got convinced that this is what our church needs to have a bright future. Most of the children in Budapest are under 6 years old. In ten, fifteen years from now they will be looking at our youth and campus ministries for help in becoming Christians.

So last September we started a Campus Bible Talk with two full time students. We went on Campus, shared with a lot of people, organized Bible Talks and apologetics presentations on hot topics, like the Da Vinci Code, the question of origin and the reliability of the Bible. After studying with about 40 students in June we finally saw the first baptism, Gábor, an engineering student. He is 207 cm tall and started attending our Bible Discussions in January as an atheist. It took him three months and a lot of reading to gain faith in Jesus being the Son of God.

Our Bible Talk on a Retreat at the CountrysideThe turning point in my faith was the in July 2007 International Campus Ministries Conference that was held in Boston. Seeing about a thousand young people being zealous for God gave me faith and a vision. With God we can do great things. We will find open college students in European Universities and we will see them do great things for God. After a great summer we started out with renewed effort as the schools opened again. This fall God brought another engineering student, Oliver to salvation. He has spent most of the summer hanging out with us and after being Buddhist for five years he learned to appreciate that God is very personal and that we can have a relationship with Him. A month ago Oliver invited his friend, David to be at his baptism. David was very open to see the relationships and our “living faith” as he commented and started studying the Bible. We’ve just studied about salvation and he wants to become a Christian. Now we have two women (both freshmen) studying the Bible one of them will be baptized this Sunday. I look forward to seeing more and more young people decide to follow Jesus and devote their lives to spreading the gospel.
Another exciting thing is to see leaders across Europe get excited about restarting or reviving Campus ministries. I am very excited about my relationships with these ministers, Christoph Muller in Zurich, Vangjel Kojku in Tirana, Gyuri Orsós in Bucharest and Ronny Yttrehus in Bergen. When we meet at the Evangelsit training we share what we do and gain faith and ideas to keep building a great movement of youth for God. I see the day when there is a Bible Talk of true disciples of Jesus on every major university in Europe.

Peti Szabad
Budapest, Hungary

LA trip

This is the Anaheim Conference Center where we had the 2008 International Leadership Conference for our churches. Lots of encouragement and inspiration. The theme was: "For All Generations". Our movement has gone through some challenges and the need to take the gospel to younger generations is greater than ever. It was inspiring to hear how different churches around the world are working on getting young people converted and raising up a new generation of leaders besides the ones that we already have. I was inspired to return home with great faith and excitement about the future of our movement. We have gone through some tough times but have not lost our faith and vision. I am reminded on the Scripture in Hebrews:





Hebrews 10:38-39 (NIV)



But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.




What we have gone through and where we are heading (in my perspective) is incredibly inspiring. I can't wait to see what God has in store for us.





Not to mention worshiping together with over 5,000 people. As you can see we did not get a good seat. :-) But the singing was awesome Brian Craig rules. I will be translating some of the songs we sang so we can sing them at our services in Budapest.





Also, the preaching was great. So many inspiring stories, lots more zeal and a definite focus on seeking ans saving lost people. It built my faith tremendously.






After the conference was over Virág and I spent a few days celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Amade Nyirak took us all over LA the first day and we had a great time at Newport Beach, Universal Studios City Walk, downtown LA and Santa Monica. Wow.



Then we went just the two of us to San Diego for two days. We've had to go and visit Sea World once we are there. Living in a landlocked country gives you zero opportunity to see dolphins or whales up close. Not to mention them performing. Also driving down the Pacific Coast Highway was a breathtaking experience. Southern California is beautiful. We were really grateful to God to be able to do something like that. We were only dreaming about this being possible.




But is has been great to be back in Budapest. We missed our children, the church and home sweet home.

International Leadership Conference

In the last three days Virág and I together with Gyuri and Ani had a chance to be at the ILC here in LA. Let me tell you, it has been an incredibly inspiring conference. It was great to see hundreds of leaders gather from all over the world in unity. The preching was faithbuilding and visionary. The classes were instructive and encouraging. But the best was the fellowship of Christian leaders. We are tired but are filled with love and encouragement. God has worked powerfully throughout this time and we are grateful to the IMS (International Missions Society) that we had a chance to be here.
We will stay in LA for another four days to celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. It is even blowaway to write it down. Virág and I will be here in LA with Gyuri, Ani and Amade Nyirák (a Hungarian brother in the LA church) today and tomorrow we will go to San Diego and spend two days there. Then on Saturday we will hang out with Tomi and Samy Kukta.
God has been good to us. I look forward to these few days of fun and relaxation.
Please, pray for us and our children whom we left with my Mom in Budapest and miss very much.

I am getting ready for this year's International Leadership Conference that will be held in LA. I look forward to meeting brothers and sisters that are very close to me but live in other countries. First of all we will fly together with Gyuri and Ani who have just moved to Bucharest to lead the church there a month ago. I miss them a ton. I also look forward to seeing Mike and Laura Fix again from New Hampshire. And we are scheduled to meet with Randy and Kay McKean. The McKeans were leading the Boston church for years and have been instrumental in starting the European mission work.

The conference itself seems to be a promising one. Not to mention the meeting of the Delegates for United Cooperation. I feel privileged to work on seeing our churches come together to evangelize the world. We do need each other.

Please, pray for us, our trip and our time in LA to be productive and useful.

p.s. On personal note, Virág and I will be celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary on October 11th. So we will stay four day in California to be together and have a special time.

Missing my wife

My wife, Virág (on the picture) left town for three days. She is visiting her parents on the countryside of Hungary. Her Mom came earlier this year and helped us with cleaning our apartment (she stayed for a week and I haven't seen anyone work as hard as she did), so now it was our turn to help.

I have to tell you. I appreciate my wife so much. It's been two and a half days with the kids (don't laugh to hard!) and I can't seem to keep the apartment clean, the laundry washed but the kids are happy. And that is what matters. And I am grateful for my wife - I mean a lot.

She is coming home tomorrow and the kids and I are making brownies to surprise her. She really like brownies.

I have also grown for my respect for single parents. So if you're one, you are my hero. I can do this for three days, but for years that seems to be quite overwhelming.

That's it for now. The Patriots are 3:0 so far. Go PATs!

My picture

Hi,

This is me. We were at Cape Cod visiting some great friends the Tranchells.

I have my Boston Red socks hat on that is quite worn by now.

Peti

My First Entry to the Blog

Hi all,

This is my first entry to my blog. To be honest to any blog. I am not a blogger or hasn't been one up until now. And I'm not sure what will come out of this attempt either.
I wanted to start this blog because I was inspired by John Hoyt (a fellow minister with whom I went to school) who recently has moved to Santiago, Chile to lead the church there. (Thanks, John)
I am a Christian minister serving in the Budapest Church of Christ and helping oter Internatonal Churches of Christ in Eastern Europe. I thought that through this I will be able to communicate and encourage more people than through visits, e-mails or phone calls.
So, please, pray for me and for this effort to serve God.

Peti