Day 4 - Back To Budapest - Now The Fun Begins!

I'll flesh out my exciting trip from Romania to Hungary later, but I just wanted to get a quick blog up before I hit the Hungarian hay!  I actually don't start until later tomorrow, but I think 6 hours of driving a less than spunky stick shift on a windy, mountainous, two lane highway kind of sapped me.

So - I got back into Budapest about 3:30.  I was able to stop at the Spar thats actually IN the airport - crazy - and pick up something to eat so when I got to Jodi's I just jumped in the shower and got ready for the evening.

I met the group that I was going with at the hotel, which is only about a 5 minute walk from Jodi's (well, 15 if you stop at the Cafe for a latte on the way :) around 5.  It was a new dorm we were at tonight - one of the dorms for the technical university.

We have a guy who does buying for JC Penney and so he gave a business talk.  

We played some games.  

We had giant Hungarian pizza :) 

And we got to hang out and talk with a lot of pretty neat Hungarian students who actually wanted to stand around and talk to a bunch of weird Americans...

And here's the cool part.  So - they had some problems from this university getting the authorization to do the event this evening.  It ended up that they got the authorization at the end of last week and so they brought in fliers for them to hang up which, they forgot to do.  And then this afternoon - FEK found out the dorm forgot to put the fliers out so they just put out an email blast like a few hours before the event and then had some of our group go around to rooms to invite students.  We actually had about 25 - 30 students that showed up - which is better than some other dorms I've been at where we've advertised.  So - that was pretty awesome.

But the really cool of the cool part is that one of the girls who is in the dorm actually just became a believer and has started getting involved with FEK a little.  But she didn't know the event was happening tonight until she came home and heard some other students talking about the group giving out pizza tonight and she thought "pizza?  I wonder if thats FEK?"  How hilarious that free pizza is synonymous with FEK :)  So then, she was out in the hall and saw one of our guys and ended up going around inviting students with him.  She came down to the event and somehow I thought she looked familiar but just thought - it must be deja vu or something.

After the meeting she came up kind of shyly and asked me if I remembered her.  I looked and I told her she looked familiar but I couldn't remember.... Turns out - she had come to Thanksgiving last year! :)  She went on and on about how special that time was and that was right before she gave her life to Jesus and she was at that point where she was asking questions and Thanksgiving had been a special part of her coming to know Jesus.  Isn't that AWESOME! :)  And what an awesome year for this to happen with all of you connected to it!!! :)

She's at your far left looking at this picture... blue shirt and big untraditional Hungarian toothy smile :)

Her name is Agnes (its actually pronounced Ag-nish).  She's an absolute sweetie and I invited her again this year and she almost started crying.  She was so excited.  She stood for a while talking to me and my friend Leslie (who is also doing Thanksgiving) and she ended up saying - "I do have one thing that I have to ask you..."  She ended up telling us that she has a hard time talking to people about her faith and she feels so badly about it.  That she tends to hang out with her FEK friends so much that she doesn't know that many people in her new dorm so when she found out about the event she wanted to ask people to come, but she doesn't really know people.  Leslie and I just encouraged her a little to, first of all not feel badly or guilty when she doesn't share her faith, but to just pray for opportunities and the courage to do so when and where God opens a door.  And second - I did encourage her to take small steps to just become friends with people in her dorm - starting by inviting a few girls for Thanksgiving.  SO - I already have a little growing list - but its a great guest list and I'm so happy that we can use this just to reach out to other girls!

Theres also another girl, Blanca, that just came up and started talking to me this evening - I'm planning on sending her an invite to Thanksgiving as well.  

SO  - if you think of it - please pray for Agnes that we can just love on her and encourage her and that she'd grow.  And pray that she makes some new friends who will come to Thanksgiving as well - and that even Blanca will come and will connect with Agnes.  Funny how God works....!

And the one answer to prayer for me is that - I think I'd mentioned that I brought a ton of my old suits and stuff with me that I don't wear anymore but are still really good "business" clothes.  I figured that I'd give them to girls who are going to be starting out in the work world - however, the only girls I'm connected with really right now are long out of college or still in high school. Guess what - Agnes is in her last year of her masters so - she's moving out into the work world soon!  Someone for my clothes!:)  

Thanks for your prayers!  I'm at the Corvinus University English classes tomorrow morning and we have the university outreach tomorrow night.  You can pray for those things as well!

Happy Tuesday - completed here!