Teréz recently celebrated her 80th birthday. She suffered a nasty fall several months ago and fractured some vertebrates in her back, and she hasn’t fully recovered. Now she has pneumonia. Today I told her we have 500+ friends who would pray for her! She loved the idea. Please take a moment to pray for our dear “aunt” Teri.
We visited Teri at Christmas time. This was the first time I had seen her since before Covid. Her dear husband, Antál, died in the first Covid wave. She misses him terribly. Please pray for her loneliness, too.
Teri, like most ladies, loves Larry. Every time he goes to Serbia, he visits her. You may remember Larry’s story from a while ago of cutting trees in Teri’s yard, and afterward she cooked him a completely home-grown meal–then cleaned his muddy boots.
Since we’ve known Teri for many years, she has welcomed special guests, like our area director, Charles Jones. She always asks when Larry is coming back to Serbia.
Teri really misses fellowship with her friends and church family. Since her fall in the autumn, she hasn’t been able to attend church. Please pray for her comfort during her time of recovery.
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.
We have returned to Illinois for our summer home assignment. We are so excited to be home, but nervous, too. Travel can be difficult. Please pray for us!
This is the end of our second 5-year term of service with International Ministries, so we will attend the Conference for Missionaries (known as CFM or “Sea-Foam”) in July. The conference gives us a time of renewal, and we look forward to the next five years in Hungary.
Thank you so much for making this possible!
We reflect with joy over the friendships we’ve made during our 10 years with International Ministries. Your prayers, ongoing support, and project donations have touched countless lives with the love of Jesus.
We are currently 77% of our personal support goal. This is the ongoing support that “keeps the lights on.” While one-time donations are vital to our ministries in the schools in Hungary and communities in Serbia, the ongoing support—pledged monthly, quarterly, or annually—is the key to our presence here in Central Europe.
If you’ve never partnered with us in ongoing support, could we ask you to join us now? Even small amounts given monthly sustain our ministry over the years. If you do give regularly, we would like to ask you to prayerfully consider an increase in your support.
Évzáró: School’s Out for Summer!
My friend and English teacher Csilla leads the 8th grade class into the graduation ceremony
We have completed our 9th school year in Hungary—time flies! I had the privilege of watching these students grow from children into young adults. Thank you for sending us to share God’s love and the English language with them.
One of my 1st-graders drew this—I think it’s pretty good!
Larry loves to visit his Serbian friends
Larry has made several trips to Serbia so far this year, taking firewood, Easter packets (food and hygiene supplies), and his love.
May God continue to richly bless us as we continue sharing his abundant life!
We were honored to join Hungarian Baptist Aid for their 25th Anniversary Jubilee in Budapest on December 2nd, and Larry and I were especially honored to be recipients of their presidential service award!
HBA President Béla Szilágyi and Hungarian Baptist Union President János Papp presented us with the awards—we are the first internationals to be given these awards since they started giving them 10 years ago!
Larry’s is the Cserepka János Award, in memory of a Hungarian Baptist missionary to Bolivia in the last century. Mine is the Presidential Recognition Award. We both received the beautiful glass award, and one will come home with us at Christmas to be placed in my aunt Aldine’s curio cabinet that now lives at Pate Chapel Church. Wouldn’t she be proud? And Larry’s grandma Ruth who supported missionaries her whole life? What an honor to get to do these things!
Our dear partners in ministry celebrated with a beautiful event at one of the large arenas, and it was three concerts, a mission report, and a renewal service all in one! Staff and students from their 50 schools came together to celebrate. Every school was given a banner to hold up during shout-out roll call.
The teachers from our school in Téglás are on the left (somehow Elizabeth scored front row seats!) and on the right you can see my colleagues from the high school in Debrecen where I teach once a week.
With our awards we were given beautiful coffee table books commemorating HBA’s 25 years of service. Truly mission-minded, HBA has sent relief and teams around the world in addition to the educational and healthcare services they provide in Hungary. A beautiful part of the evening was the touching tribute to former president Sándor Szenczy who passed away this year. He and Elizabeth and I all share the same birthday, and he was the catalyst of her decision to have HBA take over the management of the Téglás school AND to pursue her Master of Diviniy.
We are grateful for his life’s work, and for the opportunity to be part of the work that continues. Thank you for your prayer and financial support that keeps us here!
