Retsag for easter:

This past easter weekend, we along with the OVM trailer, Joska and Sandi headed off to Retsag. Which is 2 hours north of Budapest. We spent the weekend playing chess, serving coffee, selling books and inviting the towns people out to a concert on the monday night.We worked alongisde with a chruch from a smaller town called Kemence. Kemence is a town of 300 people and the church there (agape church) has about 30 people. There hope is to have a church plant in Retsag which is a "city" of 3000, personally i dont consider a city to be that few people but they call it one, anyways there are no evangelical churchs in this town and their hope is to have a church plant here soon. So the plan was to set up the trailer build relationships with those who came out and get them out to the concert on Monday, we played alot of chess and went for many walks handing out invites and praying for the town. I can now add chess to my new found abilties, although it is something i defiantly need a whole lot more practice on, since I got humilated by children of all ages and simply avoided any player that came within 5 years of me! The scary thing is that even the kids here are chess masters, oh well call it a learning expereince! The pastor of the Kemence church took Lynnette and I up to the village, we got to spend time in his flat which is the ground floor of the local school but in a building that was built in the 1700s as a castle. Pretty neat to be inside something of that age. We got a tour of there newly renovated church which was also a sight to see, the woodwork inside was quite neat! It was so encouraging to see such an alive and active church in such a small community. A church of 30 looking to plant a church in surronding "cities" imagine what all could happen if all churches became so active! The weekend ended with a concert from the Kemence worship band at the Retsag community theater. About 80 people came out, pray that Robbie and Aniko who are the couple that will be leading the church would make many connections in town and a church would be formed. Every night the local teenagers all would come out, apaerntly the trailer was parked in their usual partying spot, but they stayed and played chess and you could really see the possibilties there would be for a youth program in town, they were basically searching for things to do. They said that all they did was walk around town all night, there is nowhere for them to go! Did I mention that Lynnette and I slept in the trailer! We were awoken every night to all sort of sounds, one morning even we woke up at around 4 am and heard two older women walking back and forth beside the trailer, now first of all kinda strange at 4 am that two older women would be out but also they were carrying buckets and putting them down what sounded like right beside the trailer, (we could hear the clanking of the handles if u wondered how we knew this). We were half expecting them to start washing the trailer but off they went for more, we asked the locals what this could be and no one could come up with an answer, just that they may have been waking out to the grave yard with stuff! Retsag was formerly a huge military barracks town and as you can see we came across some of the old towers and stuff. We also got our first ride in the famous eastern european car... the LADA, complete with cushy chairs and a animal antler for a gear shift. It may be an old tank but we found out that they can still fly! The roads in that area werent exactly smooth and we were travlleing right alongside the slovakian border and I couldnt help but think "oh well if we crash here it'll make for a pretty cool story, I can just see the headlines, "missionaries attempt to run border in LADA although attempt failed when car split in two due to exccesive speed". Lynnette later told me we were only travelling at 110 km but that LADA was shaking so hard it sure felt like a whole lot faster. All in all it was a really good weekend, even if at times we struggled with the language with the chess and with the lack of sleep, we enjoyed it and look forward to the next outreach!