New friends

To live in Budapest and serve God as Merrill and I are doing is such a privilege.  In this privilege, we get to meet people that are ordinary people, but their desire is to serve God and by doing this, they are truly extra ordinary people.  On Tuesday, we met Gordon and Merilee Whitney from Dallas, TX.  Gordon is a doctor and was invited to Budapest to attend the international tropical diseases specialist meeting.  His wife, who is a nurse, came with him.  They know Phyllis and Andy which is how they found out about the library.  They had contacted the Anderson's and let them know that they were coming to Budapest.  Unfortunately, Phyllis and Andy had already headed back to the U.S., but the Whitneys wanted to see the library, so they contacted us and they came to visit the library.

The Whitneys are part of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, that is a large mission organization.  They serve in a large clinic in Dallas that provides care for the mission organization and Gordon has become a tropical disease specialist because of the work he does with a mission organization.  We hope to visit Gordon and Merilee in Dallas the next time we are there to visit our family.  Small world, indeed.

We also met a Hungarian woman, Andrea, who is part of the Wycliffe organization as well.  Andrea has served in Nepal and is acquainted with friends of Gordon and Merilee's, who have also served in Nepal with Wycliffe Bible Translators.  It was the first time Merilee and Andrea had met and they agreed to meet at the library.  It was good to be able to acquaint Andrea with the library, since she lives in Budapest.  Andrea shared with me information about 2 more Christian publishing companies here in Hungary and shared the name of another American who preaches here in Budapest.  I was happy to know about more Christian publishing houses because our goal to increase the number of Hungarian books that we offer in the library.  Now I have to have help to translate titles to see if there are books that we want to add.

One more bit of evidence of God's working in our lives here is meeting a young couple who had been recommended to us to help in marketing.  This occurred on Friday when Merrill attended a seminar at one of the Hungarian churches.  He arrived a little early for the event and began visiting with a young man, who was there.  It turns out that this is the husband of the young woman that had been recommended to us to help in the marketing.  Merrill met his wife after the seminar and on Sunday, we all sat down together to discuss some of the visions we have and what we need help with to see those goals accomplished.

I am happy to report that we are making significant progress in the cataloging of several hundred books.  We received in the last week another 95 books.  I am thankful for my assistant who works diligently and efficiently to get the cataloging moving ahead.