February 22, 2006

Dear Friends and Family,

With the coming of February we reached the half-way point of our 11 months here. It seems like we have been here a long time and yet we know that much of what we came to do will come to fruition in the remaining five months of our stay.

January, with both the Seminary and the Retreat center in recess, was a time of slower pace for us. Of course as the pace slowed down our bodies knew it was a good time to get sick. So January, in the end, was a month of winter thrills and chills. Between flus, we went downhill and cross country skiing, sledding in the neighborhood, ice skating on Lake Balaton (which froze completely across; something that happens only once every five years or so), and drank lots of hot chocolate! We took part in a backyard pig butchering, which is still a fairly common practice here. Tammy compiled information packets on the Retreat Center for our friends around Europe by way of publicity. I preached once and visited a couple of schools. Tammy and Erica were guest speakers at a High School English class and Tammy has started meeting with the granddaughter of a local retired pastor to help her with English. Both Tammy and I noted how much we enjoyed being in the school classrooms, and how we have missed it this year. Tammy and the girls also began knitting baby blankets for orphan children in Romania.

With the coming of spring the Retreat Center will reopen. Now we are fully trained to be of real assistance- we hope. Our tasks here mostly focus around helping in the kitchen, assisting Zsuzsa, the Center Director, with child care so she can attend to the Retreat Center responsibilities, greeting and assisting visitors, fielding nighttime problems and working on painting projects within the house.

Besides the work here at the Retreat Center, I will again be teaching at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Papa. At the request of the Chair of Missiology, I will be participating in three classes this semester; “Church and Religious English”, “Internet and Missions”, and “Youth Missions Seminar”. The English course is a continuation of our class from last semester. The Missions Chair is leading the “Internet and Missions” class and I am acting as a resource for their projects.

In the “Youth Missions Seminar” I will be leading 15 students in the review of a youth missions training manual in Hungarian that I compiled and left here 12 years ago. The students will read discuss and evaluate this resource for its current relevancy. They will also generate and look for additional materials on the topic of youth outreach. These youth mission materials will then be moved to the web for greater access by Hungarian youth leaders. The most remarkable thing about this seminar is that 13 years ago when I proposed such a seminar at the Reformed Seminary in Budapest, it was turned down. It wasn’t the right time. Clearly youth mission is important here and the future Hungarian pastors are looking for resources. I am hopeful that these materials, placed in the hands of a new generation of pastors, will help their ministries thrive as they seek to reach out in the name of Christ to the youth of today.

We thank you for your faithful support and encouragement. Please keep the following things in your prayers during our remaining months here: the ministry in the Retreat Center, our family and the seminary courses.

Warmly,

All the Auses