May Update 2013

Greetings from Hungary!  We’re delighted to give you another update on what the Lord is doing here in Eastern Europe.
  

Joseph and Christopher

Family: In May, we celebrated Christopher's eighth birthday. We also continued to make preparations to return to the US this summer for our first stateside family furlough. All the preparations continue to go well, by the grace of God.  Praise the Lord!

At the time of this newsletter, we have less than 23 days remaining until our departure.  Please pray that everything we need to do before our return will be fully accomplished. Please pray that the Lord will provide the many things we need, in order to make this furlough possible, as well as the necessary finances.

"Elizabeth"

Ministry:   Since our last update, Elizabeth continues going to the hospital for chemotherapy treatment.  Although she has pain, she says with tears of joy, "The Lord has changed my way of thinking.  I have joy, love, peace, and faith.  I pray every day, and I am helping people wherever I go. Thank you, Jesus!" Please continue to pray for her complete healing and for her financial blessing.

Through Elizabeth, Len has gotten to know an older lady named Aunty Elizabeth, who is Elizabeth's friend, whom she met at the hospital.  Aunty Elizabeth also has cancer, is around seventy-three years old, and has been Elizabeth's roommate a couple times.  They are always in the same ward at the hospital during their chemotherapy treatments, and they love each other as sisters in the Lord.  However, it has been very difficult for Elizabeth to watch Aunty Elizabeth's condition deteriorate over the past few weeks.  At the end of April, when Len visited her, she felt that she was near death.  She said, "I am not worthy to have the Lord come to my house, but if He just says the word, I will be healed."

Meanwhile, Gábor is fully recovered from his kidney surgery, and he has been back to work since mid-April.  Praise the Lord!  Thank you for praying for him.

The family at Gábor's house before the church service

He is now working in Germany for his two-week trial period, in order to see if this is suitable for him. If all goes well, he plans to return there in June for longer term employment.

He has been sharing the Lord with another man, also named Gábor, whom he has worked with from time to time.   That man has begun to attend the new church in Tököl, which was started in Gábor's home.  He is bringing his wife and daughter to church and they are open to the gospel.  He sees the difference between the way Gábor leads his life and the way others do.  He wants the peace of God that he sees in Gábor.  His wife even told him, "Whenever you work with Gábor, you are peaceful, and you seem like a man who has no problems."  According to Gábor, they are ready to repent and give their lives to Jesus.  Praise the Lord!  Pray that they will do so soon.

Len preaching with Gábor as translator

We were invited to a Sunday service at the newly planted, Baptist church in Tököl at the end of April, where we ministered as a family.  It was so encouraging to see Gábor's youngest son, Bendi, worshiping the Lord passionately with his eyes closed and hands uplifted to God.

Our children sang a special worship song in Hungarian, then Len preached, and Gábor translated for him. It was Gábor's first time translating, and the Lord helped him to do a great job! The message and ministry were well received.  After the Sunday meeting, Gábor said it was a "magnificent evening."

Many people in the church stood to repent and seek the Lord for holiness in their lives.  They asked the Lord to purify them with His holy fire, and we even had the opportunity to pray for several of them personally, as well as minister to them.  It was a wonderful time! Some of the people who asked for prayer were three youths, named David (Gábor's oldest son), Reka ("RAY-ka"), and Anita.  Several adults came forward for prayer, including a man named Paul, a woman named Andi, and a man named Joseph.  Please pray for the Lord to continue the good work He started in them and the others who came forward on that evening.

More photos.  

Gábor with his oldest son, David

At that meeting, a sister named Kati shared a testimony.  This lady is about fifty-five years old. She said that four years ago, she was having headaches, so she saw a doctor, who performed a CT scan.  He said she had a one-centimeter tumor in her brain, and that she should not worry, since it was not harming anything.  She returned to see him a year later for follow up.  The second CT Scan revealed the tumor had tripled in size to three centimeters in diameter.  But again the doctor told Kati not to worry about it.  She returned again the next time, and the CT scan showed that the tumor had grown much larger.  He said it could cause blindness, due to its proximity to her optic nerves, and that they should operate.  That was around January 2013.

However, the doctor warned her that nine patients in one hundred die from this surgery.  She reasoned that if God had allowed her to live this long, it was enough, and she was ready to meet Him. But following a subsequent blood test, the doctor said he would not be able to perform the surgery at that time, due to conflicting factors in her body.  So she prayed, and the church prayed for her.  She returned to the doctor at the end of April for another CT scan, which revealed that the tumor is completely gone!  The Lord has supernaturally healed her!  Praise the Lord!  Our God is Healer.

We also received an email from a friend of a Hungarian lady named Zsuzsa ("Suzanna"), for whom we had prayed a week earlier, when she came to our home to buy something.  While she was at our home, she complained of back problems, specifically that she had degenerate discs in her spine.  We prayed for healing, especially for the Lord to create new discs.  Here is the testimony that her friend, Éva ("Eve"), wrote to me: "Zsuzsa called me and asked me to write a short message to you. She was really thankful for the prayer. After a week she feels much better, and she has less pain. She did not take her medicine for a week now, and the severe pain did not come back. She thinks God healed her. She also feels that her pelvis changed its position.”

Zsuzsa's friend, Éva continued: “The doctors told her when she was a teenager that her spine wouldn't move at the age of forty. She is passed forty and her spine still moves, which she said is also a miracle. If I remember right, there is some problem with the fluid between the vertebrae.” Praise the Lord for what He has done for Zsuzsa!

From time to time, people who read Len's blogs contact him.  He recently received the following request from a pastor in Kenya: "Dear servants of God,  I would love to learn more from you about Gifts of the spirit and fruits of the Spirit."  After Len sent him some related articles in answer to his request, he wrote us the following very kind note of thanks:

"Dear Brother Leonard, I found you through your blog and felt the need to contact you about Gifts and fruits which are completely difficult to differentiate -- even myself as a Pastor for seven years. Very recently I had been asking myself a lot of questions about this. So when I found  you through your website, I did not hesitate to contact you, my brother, about this. It is a journey, and we have to help one another, as we walk together to the Kingdom of God. Thank you for sending me the related ones. I will be studying all of them, and hear what the Lord is speaking through His word to me. I am leading a local church here in Kenya and serving mostly in the rural homes, reaching people there with the gospel of Jesus Christ; so what you shared with me will be a blessing to all who will receive from me, as well. In Christ love, Pastor William."

He later wrote that he had spoken to his wife about us, and said, "As I told you already, your ministry will be of great help for the growth of our ministry here. I have been involved in teaching church planting, and teaching elders, as well as all the laborers in the kingdom of God. Me being one of your students will be a blessing to us." He said he would share with his church on Sunday everything Len had taught him. Praise the Lord for what this pastor is doing in Kenya and for the small way we were able to assist him.

Last month another reader from Germany, named Christian, wrote, "Dear Len, I love your articles about obedience." And just recently in May he wrote, "Your articles are a great encouragement for me for holiness." Any good fruit in us comes from the Lord, not from ourselves, so He deserves all the praise. Thank the Lord for every life that has been changed.

The Lord recently led Len to write an article about The Holy Trinity, and afterward he received a comment from a reader in Singapore, named Roy.  Roy has been a believer for twenty years, and wrote: "Len, thank you again for your article. It's quite coincidental that on Saturday, I had to draft a short [email] reply to a young believer about the Trinity. This young believer didn't know how to respond to a criticism from a Muslim, on how Christians could believe in the Trinity, and at the same time, believe that God is One."

Our God is amazing! He alone deserves the glory and the honor and the praise.  Where there is a need in one part of the kingdom, He meets the need through a member of the Body in another part of the kingdom.  Please pray that the Lord continues to use Len's blogs to develop disciples of Christ and leaders throughout the world.

Some of the quotes in this newsletter have been edited and paraphrased from the original sources for clarity.

Administrative Needs:  Our current bookkeeper, Emily, has notified us that her services to this ministry will end next January.  We really appreciate her giving us this notice, since it can take a long time to find the right person for this volunteer position.  Since this is a role that requires a high level of trust and integrity, we are prayerfully seeking the right person to fill it, whom the Lord has chosen. 

The position involves entering data pertaining to gifts into a user-friendly, accounting software, called QuickBooks, and printing out receipts to mail to our partners.  It also involves balancing the account, as well as generating monthly and annual reports, and sending annual giving summaries to our partners. If you or someone you know would be interested, please contact us.  The start date would be January 2, 2014, but we would like to identify the right person as soon as possible.

Resources:  This month we would also like to encourage you to read the messages called, Striving to Enter the Kingdom of God, The Holy Trinity, Something is Going on in 2013, and The Dangers of Disobedience.

As always, Len's entire collection of most popular blogs are at "Writing for the Master".  We welcome your comments on this newsletter, so feel free to leave those below.

In closing, we have much to praise God for, and many opportunities for you to join us in prayer.

Praise the Lord with us for the many answers to prayer:

"Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness." (Ps 115:1)

1. For healing Zsuzsa's spine.
2. For the repentance of the believers at the Baptist church in Tököl.
3. For Elizabeth's spiritual growth.
4. For healing Kati from a brain tumor.
5. For helping us with all our preparations for US furlough.

Next steps and prayer needs:

1. For the Lord to help us with all the preparatory tasks that we still need to accomplish in the next 20 days, including the final sale of our van on May 31.
2. For the Lord to provide all that we need to make our Stateside furlough possible.
3. For the Lord to give us safe travels back to the States.
4. For the Lord to reveal Himself to all the non-believers in Hungary, whom we have touched.
5. For the Lord to give us wisdom and understanding to know His will in each situation we go through. 
6. For Erzsébet ("Elizabeth") to be completely healed of cancer, and her son István ("Steven") to be saved.
7. For the Lord to further expand the awareness of this ministry throughout the US, Europe, and England, and raise up many new partners.
8. For the Lord to continue to multiply disciples through Dávid V. and the others in his church. 
9. For the Lord to provide a new bookkeeper in time for next January, who will be faithful, reliable, and trustworthy, as Emily has been. 
10. For our financial blessing. 

Thank you so much for your partnership in this ministry.

with love from all of us,

The Lacroixs

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