As many of you know, our family departed June 5th for Let’s Start Talking work in Miskolc, Hungary. We’ve been here about a week so we want to give you a window into the good things we’ve been experiencing.
This is the first time our family has served as the actual LST team with no other LST workers at all. Because we did not have another team to serve at this site (it was our family or nothing!) we decided to give it a try. Actually, one of the great things about making this commitment is that it has subsequently allowed a follow-up team to come and serve after we leave. So with our three weeks and the two weeks of the LST follow up team from Washington, the Readers here will have five weeks of conversation practice and exposure to God’s written and living Word.
This means we’ve ended our first week with a lot more actual Reading hours than is typical for us. We are currently working with 27 Readers. Leslee has 15 that she works with primarily in the morning hours and Craig has 12 he meets with primarily in the afternoon hours. Leslee joins us all for lunch and then we slap high-five and tag-team with the kids.
Of course we are both still involved in the mentoring of projects/teams at several other sites around the world. So, when we are not meeting with Readers we steal away hours to communicate via e-mail with these exciting works as well.
The boys are doing great. It’s always interesting to see how they adapt to new places (this is our first time to be in Hungary), and it would be inaccurate to say that they don’t deal with some level of culture shock. Still at the end of this first week they are doing great. No TV in our tiny one bedroom apartment (the boys sleep in the living room) means lots of reading, listening to stories on cd, and exploring the city. Joshua is helping Leslee with a couple of Readers. Matthew has the desire to do so as well but we have yet to find someone on his age level to serve.
The work in Hungary is hard, no doubt about it. The church hosting this project consists of about 5 Christians and a few visitors. They currently meet in the living room of the apartment we are staying at. By having Matthew and Andrew participate in the children’s class on Sundays we have tripled the size of their children’s ministry! It’s an honor to serve such a group, and it’s good for our family to experience church life outside of the 4,000 member family we are regularly part of back home.
We’ll send more details next week. For now, know that God is at work in Miskolc, Hungary (and thankfully we get to be a small part of that work!).
With care,
Craig, Leslee, Joshua, Matthew, and Andrew
(p.s. the pictures above (from top to bottom) are 1) our family headed for Hungary, 2) the Information Meeting where we met Readers for the first time, and 3) the boys at work at our work site (we are currently connducting Reading sessions at the food court of a local mall!).