List All News Items
« Previous | Next »

Thanks for Praying

January 31, 2005

Dear Prayer Partners,

I thank you for praying for our trip to Hungary and Austria.  As always, we came away with more encouragement and inspiration than we contributed.  I spoke at a Youth For Christ staff conference in Hungary and at a castle in Austria affiliated with IFES, the international version of InterVarsity.  Both venues had people from Eastern Europe, and we heard some amazing stories.

After the fall of Communism, economies collapsed.  One young man we met, from Ukraine, started selling newspapers in the afternoon after school, for both his parents lost their jobs.  He was very proud when, after two weeks, he had earned enough money to bring a loaf of bread to his family, to keep them from starving.

Most of those we met from Ukraine, Latvia, and such countries were raised by atheists, and converted as teenagers.  Sergey, for instance, converted when he was 12.  He would tell his parents he was going to the outhouse (no indoor bathrooms, of course) and climb over the fence to pray with his Christian neighbors.  Faith was truly a subversive act.  Sergey now heads up a national prayer ministry, which links thousands of Eastern Europeans  by email.  Peter, from Hungary, would help Westerners smuggle in Bibles in black plastic bags, which his parents would surreptitiously distribute.

Oleg, from Moldova, says that Protestants recently voted for communists in the last election because the church has become so complacent; they want to restore the purity that the church had when it was suffering.

One day in Budapest we visited the House of Terror, a controversial, state-of-the-art museum which documents the sad 20th-century history of Hungary, which was caught between Nazi and Soviet powers.  The people here have a tradition of being conquered: by Attila the Hun, the Mongols, the Muslims, and then the Nazis and the Russians.  Thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.  Then, when the Russian army advanced, the Hungarians fled West to try to reach American troops.  The museum occupies the site of the Nazi SS forces and also the Russian KGB.  Dungeons and torture rooms are preserved intact, and the listening machines and propaganda characteristic of totalitarianism are carefully displayed.

After a fractious election in the US, and unremitting bad news from Iraq, it was good to be reminded that some people in the world really do value freedom and democracy.  I watched John Kerry’s concession speech in which he said the great thing about our country is that the next morning after the election, we’re all still Americans.  After spending several hours in the House of Terror, that lesson sank in deep.

I had some wonderful experiences in Europe.  The first night, after going to bed early, I got up at 3:30 am and didn’t know what else to do, so I went jogging on glistening cobblestone streets lit by gas lamps.  It was magical, and even more so when the sun came up.  Our hotel was on Castle Hill overlooking old Budapest and the Danube River, and I used a whole roll of film recording the sunrise.

The Youth For Christ conference included staff from Egypt, Cyprus, and Lebanon as well as Europe, which made for some lively discussion.  In Europe, the threat of Islam is, in some ways, more intense than in the US, because European countries have a large Muslim minority, as well as a history of conflict and conquest.

Schloss Mittersill, the castle in Austria, offers short-term theological education to Europeans, and even has a degree program certified by the University of South Africa.  Carl Armerding, brother of Hudson Armerding (former president of Wheaton College) heads up the academic program, and they have an impressive staff.  I read recently that 1.2 billion Christians in the world are led by pastors who have less than two weeks (yes, weeks) of Bible or theological training.  Places like the Schloss are trying to meet that need, and their community of multi-national staff seem dedicated and form a true community.  Every mountain in Austria has a cross atop it, the tallest building in every village is a church, and you see shrines by the side of the road.  Yet church attendance there, as in most of Europe, is way less than 10 percent of the population.

We had one day of skiing in Austria (Colorado snow is better, Austrian food is better), one day of cross-country on impeccably groomed trails, and on our last night heard a Mozart concert in the chapel of an old castle.  Ah, Europe.  You can’t beat it.

Now it’s back to my book on prayer.  For that, I could really use some prayer!