Hitchman News December 2021

Autumn Progress and Spring Hope

Ministry Update

As in many countries, the COVID restrictions have loosened within Hungary. There was, however, a threat of a 4th wave as we approached the ‘flu season’. With this in mind, and given Lainey hadn’t seen her parents in over 2 years, we made the decision that Lainey would go back and visit her parents and Roy would hold down the fort in Hungary and keep ministry things going. Unfortunately, the visit back didn’t go as planned. A few days into Lainey’s visit a dear cousin suddenly died and Lainey had a funeral to attend. Lainey was close to this cousin so being able to attend the funeral, along with her family, was a blessing, even though it was such a sad time. That wasn’t the end of the difficulties though. Shortly after returning to Hungary Lainey became ill and tested positive for Covid. We’re pleased to report that she has now made a full recovery and we are both back to our normal ministry schedule.

Counselling provides many wonderful opportunities to disciple those that God brings across our path. Over the past few months, we have had quite a few of these opportunities from being able to teach a couple how to pray for the first time, so that they could draw closer to God and closer together by praying together, to teaching younger couples many biblical principles as they have prepared for marriage. We would like to ask you to continue to pray for the crisis couples we work with, that God will bring breakthrough into their lives. On the singles side of things please pray for the translation of the ‘Life for Singles! Discipleship course into French and for the Polish and German translations as they get put into a printable format.

Over the summer some progress was made with the planned ministry centre, however, we were let down by a local builder at the last minute. The building has now had its first fix of electrics and plumbing, however, the state of the walls has stopped us progressing to tiling the floors, painting the walls and finishing the electrical installation and the plumbing. We feel that with the way COVID restrictions are at the moment we are in a better position to receive work teams this next year. There is a wide variety of tasks that need completing that require a range of skills from trained tradesmen through no training in the trades. If you are able to make a mud ball and throw it at a wall we could use your … errr … skills too. Please contact us if you feel the Lord prompting you to help us get this much-needed facility up and running.

With the COVID restrictions lifting, we have been able to attend church in the city again. This in itself has led to ministry opportunities, one of which is a marriage week presentation as part of a city-wide program.

As ever, we very much appreciate your prayers as we go further into winter here.

Prayer

We have received the InDesign files for the German Life for Singles manuals. The next steps will be generating the print-ready pdf files, editing the covers, adding the ISBN numbers and submitting them for publishing. Please pray that this process goes smoothly.

This season brings us the opportunity to reach out to a number of young adults and international students who will be around during Christmas. Some live in this area but others are unable to travel back to their families because of Covid travel restrictions. Please pray that relationships develop and that we are able to build a discipling ministry.

Christmas and the months following it can be particularly difficult for many couples. Please pray for marriages in general and in particular those couples whose relationships are feeling the stress of the season. Pray also for us as we endeavour to walk alongside several couples that are in crisis.

We deeply appreciate all the love and support that you have given us in this last year. We know that we would not be able to do what we have been called to do without your partnership. We pray that you will have an incredibly blessed Christmas and wonderful new year!