lovehelpteach

The testimony of one Hungarian as she watched the RBI become a reality. RBI will hold their sixth week of intensives in September of 2014.

By: Kató Fellegi

We started our long journey. I drove. I have driven the road between Budapest and Munkacs so many times. There is a highway to Nyíregyháza and after the highway ends the road becomes a bit more interesting. It takes at least five to six hours to get to Munkacs, but the time does not always pass by the same way. Last spring, thanks to God, it passed by very well. I traveled with eight Americans. Eight pastors. Pastors of souls. They came up with a plan and we helped them make it happen.

Students at RBI during the fifth intensive, March 2014.For a long time I did not really believe that the Roma Bible Institute (RBI) could turn into a reality. It was hard to imagine that there would be enough willing students, that they would have passports, that they really would want to join the RBI, that we would have enough teachers, or even that everything would come together. It is not my mission I thought, so it is not me who has to believe in it. And in the original plan we would run the RBI in Munkacs, but God formed something else, something more. It became international so now three countries would participate, three times 10 pastors. The vision of Craig Hamlin, how I called it, became a reality last Monday. Craig is a Baptist pastor from North Carolina, who got this vision in his heart. He dreamed about it and made it happen. Thanks to God.

So that is how it happened that I spent a wonderful week amoung Ukrainian, Romanian and Eastern-Hungarian Roma pastors and deacons. On Monday, 27 Roma arrived to Seregelyes, where four American Baptist pastors and three interpreters were waiting for them. They walked through the Old Testament in the morning and after a little nap they were taught about how a pastor should behave, how his character should be, how he should divide his time between the church, his family, and God, how he ought to prepare for a sunday service, and how he builds up the church. There were many many useful materials and advice for their everyday life.Kató Fellegi translating Pastor Joel Stevens at the fifth intensive, March 2014.

Students were so enthusiastic. They had many questions, they shared many stories, they opened themselves up, they worshiped together, and also they were touched and even cried sometimes.

We went deep and up to the heights that week. God took this handful of people into his palm and moved them through valleys, flower-filled meadows, running rivers and snowcovered, cold, peaky pikes. Finally we all arrived to a place in our soul, where it was simply good to be, on a peaceful island, where the Hungarian-speaking Roma pastors from three countries were not looking at each other any more, but were shoulder to shoulder looking ahead, looking into the same direction, at the same aim, at the same one and only God.

I beleive what God started he will also finish. I believe that happenings like this encourages us to dare to dream something big, to dare to lean on God and make the very first step like the Israelites did into to the Jordan, because we know the river will split. To participate and to be a colleague of the Creator God in doing miracles is one of the biggest blessing in the world.

This school semester at the Institue was a week long and we will have another two like it left this year. At the end of the third years students will get a diploma.

We said goodbye to the students with Jesus words: „Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19).

Amen!

January 2013