I can’t believe it, but it’s been two years since I started my job working at One Collective. Over these last two years, some of the incredible things that have happened are:
11 people are currently housed and off the streets
At the end 2022/beginning of 2023 the city set aside $940,000 to be put towards a solution to more effectively address homelessness because of our draft proposal they saw
Relationships and collaboration between organizations and caseworkers have grown
17 organizations participate in collaborative casework meetings
The friendships and relationships with my friends who experience homelessness have grown deeper and more Touch Barriers have been broken (see my newsletter The Touch Barrier)
The City of Elgin and other partners have been open to our ideas
Our proposal for an overnight winter shelter to be open every night from December through the end of March was approved
This August marked a significant milestone for us. We have officially been American Baptist missionaries for 10 years! This gave us an opportunity to pause and look back, remembering the winding trail that brought us to this point. And since we work in 5-year cycles at International Ministries, it lets us set a goal for the future, welcoming the next five, maybe ten years in Hungary.
We love it here, and we hope to be able to continue our work for a long time.
Our first Hungarian prayer card, picture looking over foggy November day in Budapest. The girls were so little!
To commemorate the occasion, we hosted our first ever Stanton Virtual Mission Moment, a Zoom gathering inviting our entire Missionary Partnership Network! Over the 10 years our network has grown, encompassing not just the Great Rivers Region of American Baptist Churches (Missouri and Illinois), but reaching beyond, into the Central Region (Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas), Rocky Mountain (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico) and Indiana and Kentucky. We also have individual donors all across the USA—and a few in Europe.
Pretty perky for 2am! We had a great time seeing our dear friends and partners.
The Zoom Mission Moment was wonderful. We had over 50 participants who watched a video we created and asked thoughtful questions. If you would like to view the video we created, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/SmXAqpXGwq8?si=F-x-9LppWb1lQfIK
As we told the participants, if you or your church group would like to have a more intimate conversation with us, we would love to meet with you on Zoom. We are 7 hours ahead of Central Time, so morning meetings like Sunday school classes work best for us. But we’re flexible! The Mission Moment Zoom was at 2am our time to accommodate Wednesday evening services in the States.
Our dear friend Andi carries in our 10-year cake, complete with the traditional Hungarian “firework” candle!
After the Zoom, we felt we weren’t quite done celebrating. We had a party for our Hungarian friends, the locals we serve who have helped us survive these years living and working cross-culturally!
We received so many lovely bouquets, kind messages and gifts.
We look into the future with optimism and hope. We would love to stay here for 10 more years—by that time all three of our girls will be finished with high school and well into adulthood.
Serving 10 more years isn’t possible without YOU! Thank you again for sending us, and we extend the invitation to you to join us for 10 more years in Hungary.
