McCartney Family

‘Monthly Updates’ Category

April Ministry Updates

April 6, 2012 by Administrator

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Calvary Chapel Bible College Europe

Beautiful spring greetings from Vajta, Hungary! We gladly welcomed the spring time mild temperatures and blooming brilliance of the spring flowers.

Marriage Conference Dinner

During the month of March we enjoyed a marriage conference held at the school over a four day Hungarian holiday weekend. The special conference was sponsored by the Calvary Chapel Budapest church held on campus of the Bible School in Vajta. We were privileged to hear over eight messages on the specific topic of marriage. During the meals, the students from the college served each couple. The tables were candle lit with flowers. It was such a welcome and refreshing time to be served, and also receive encouragement from each teaching session. Megan assisted in providing childcare to the couples, while Michael enjoyed playing with visiting long-time missionary friends.

Lectures In Ministry Worship

The following week we attended a week long class entitled, Lectures In Ministry. Everyday there were three guest speakers from the States sharing on various Biblical topics. This week of lectures for our family was so spiritually refreshing as it provided an unique classroom setting in which we could hear from the Holy Spirit as we received instruction in God’s Word.

The month of March ended with Sam traveling with a team of eight students from the Bible College to Csantavér, Serbia. The team was led by two Mission Training Program students. The weekend was spent encouraging the youth and assisting the local church with various outreach ministries which included cooking for the poor, visiting the near-by gypsy villages and providing encouragement to the serving pastor and his family. During these outreaches, it was normal for teams to take food on a daily basis to an old gentleman who was very poor living in a home with a dirt floor with no heat or electricity. Sam had the opportunity during previous outreaches to serve this man through taking food and ministered to him through prayer along side of the serving outreach teams. Sam asked the pastor if they were to take food to him. The pastor turned to Sam and reported the news of his passing away just a few weeks earlier. What joy to know that this man is fully in the presents of our Lord! He does not have to deal with no more pain or harsh living conditions, yet to ponder on the fact that the Lord used so many people to minister to this man, our family felt it a privileged to have had the honor of serving him. He was once was lost but now he is found! Thank you for giving us this opportunity.

Also another huge praise from this outreach was that a man handed over the rope he was going to hang himself with to the team after the pastor and team had prayed with him! The team was visiting the gypsy village, and this man told of all his physical pain and his inability to maintain a job to support his family. He had shared that his thoughts of suicide were overcome with the team’s presents and their faithful heartfelt prayers that he felt changed, and described the Holy Spirits presents in his life. He pulled the rope out of his pocket and gave it to the pastor. Please keep this man in prayer. Please continue to pray for breakthroughs and these thoughts of the enemy to be stopped by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hungarian, European Union, Romanian Flags

Thank you for taking the time to read these testimonies, and share in our families’ lives. We are just weeks away now from our 10-day ministry outreach, which is schedule to take place from April 20th through May 1st. We ask for your prayers for the effectiveness of these outreaches and much lasting fruit as the gospel is being shared. The purpose of these outreaches is to apply the practical principles that we are learning in the Missions Training Program as we come along side existing churches and assist them in ministry. Megan will be joining a team of students in Oradea, Romania. The Lord has been preparing Megan for this trip for quite some time. Her love for the Romanian people and language was birthed during our mission trip to Bucharest, Romania last summer. Pray for protection and provision for the team as they travel by train and minister at a local orphanage in Oradea. Sam, Michelle, and Michael will be joining a team in a village just outside of Budapest, Hungary. We will be ministering in the homeless shelter, serving the local church members through practical ministry, and teaching English in the kindergartens schools. We are eager to see what the Lord will do in this outreach and to share with you more testimonies of lives having been changed for Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for your continued prayer and financial support which have made it possible for our family to remain and serve in the mission field. We consider it a privileged to witness first hand changed lives as a result of your ministry partnership. Together, as this missionary journey continues, we are reaching the nations, one soul at a time!

In His love and grace,

Sam, Michelle, Megan and Michael

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Winter Update – Pressing on in 2012!

March 11, 2012 by Administrator

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Michael ( in red) playing tackle football

Greetings from snowy Vajta, Hungary! Thank you so much for all your prayer support, notes of encouragement, and timely gifts as we welcomed in the New Year of 2012. Our family gathered together with the other students and staff from the Bible College on New Year’s Eve for a special time of fellowship, where we played some fun games and enjoyed snacking on some homemade baked goods. As we celebrated the start of a new year of opportunities for ministry in the Lord, we paused to pray and thank God for what He was about to do in each of our lives in the coming year.

In early January, we traveled back to the States for a family emergency in Ohio and got to spend what was

Sam with his sister and brothers

to be our last week with our mom, Ruth. It was a precious time for us to be with our family, to have Mom recognize us, and to know that she was able to enjoy the company of all her kids by her side one last time. It was early in the morning a week later on January 17th that the Lord ushered our Mom into heaven to be at home with Him. During this time we felt the presence of your prayers and wish to thank you for lifting up our family and for all the beautiful cards and emails that you sent to us.

We returned to Vajta, Hungary on February 3rd to begin our second semester in the Missions Training Program (MTP) at the Bible College. We are privileged to be enrolled in some dynamic and foundational courses in evangelism, discipleship, and missions leadership. We are also studying the Pastoral Epistles (I and II Timothy, Titus), continuing our language studies, and learning how to teach English as a second language. Upon completion of this course, we will receive a certified document that will prove to be a valuable tool for us in opening the door to be able to enter the local schools and teach English. Our goal is to establish relationships with the youth, so we can eventually share the gospel with them and get them plugged into church.

Happy Birthday, Michelle!

The second week of February we celebrated Michelle’s birthday! The kids surprised her with an adorable cow cake that they were able to make and decorate with the help of a staff member. The celebration took place in the corner of the coffee shop where our family, the other students, and staff quietly gathered before shouting “SURPRISE!” and then singing, “Happy Birthday”.

On February 10th we assisted our MTP Intern in leading a team of students to Csantavér, Serbia for a weekend outreach. While there, we were

Map of Serbia and surrounding countries

able to reunite with some friends and also demonstrate some practical ways of ministering to the local families by cutting firewood for them, preparing some meals, and lovingly sharing the gospel. We had an amazing group of students with us who went above and beyond anything that we could have taught them. It was very exciting to watch the unique purpose and plan that the Lord had for each student unfold during this outreach. For example, when one student was sent to meet Michelle at a small house that had a dirt floor, a collapsing roof, and no electricity to minister to an older man, the Lord directed him down into a farmer’s yard just two houses away. The farmer was filled with joy when he saw this young man that was 6’4” tall and built like a football player enter his yard. He waved him over and began speaking to him in Hungarian. Although the student did not understand Hungarian, he did speak a little Russian, which is very similar to the Serbian dialect. The farmer quickly asked the student in Serbian to help him get a young calf off the barb-wire fencing that he had been tangled up in for hours. Together, they were able to lift the young calf off the barb-wire fencing and untangle him. The farmer was so overjoyed that the Lord had sent the student when he did and that his calf was saved. This was no accident, it was the specific work that the Lord had prepared for this student to walk in (Ephesians 2:10).

Sam sharing with two Hungarian speaking Serbian men in a coffee house

It is our family prayer that you all walk in the specific work that the Lord has prepared for each of you. Stay faithful to your calling and committed to the service where He has you involved. We believe that the Lord has exciting things planned for our family this year and we consider it a privilege to be partnered with you in ministry as we serve in Hungary and the surrounding countries in Europe. Thank you again for your faithful support! Together we can reach the Nations, one soul at a time!

May the Lord continue to richly bless you!
The McCartney Family

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Ministry Opportunities Extended to Serbia: December Update

December 20, 2011 by Administrator

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Dear family and friends,

Ministering with Pastor Tibor's Family

We send our warm greetings as we just finished our first semester of the Missions Training Program (MTP) at Calvary Chapel Bible College Europe (CCBCE) and have one more to go here in Vajta, Hungary. The semester has gone by very quickly and we have just one more to go. God has been teaching us many new things along this journey. Not only has this been a time for us to be refreshed and renewed for the next place the Lord wants us to serve him, but it has also been a time of ministry and service as we participated in a number of outreaches. One of the class requirements here is to join churches on their outreaches and assist with evangelism, discipleship and practical ministry on several weekends, then for 10 days, and finally for 30 days.

Over the past months we have been serving in Serbia. At first, we were just going down on the weekends. Then we went down for a ten-day outreach and had an amazing time. Along the way, however, we had to face a few challenges, including our van, which broke down during one of our weekend trips and on the very first day of the ten-day outreach. Fortunately, we found a Christian mechanic who was able to complete the repairs before we needed to leave each time. Sam told him, “I think my van likes your garage!”

During the ten-day outreach, the Lord answered our prayers each day by granting us mild temperatures and clear skies. We had a team of 5 with a student named Grati that stayed with us in a one room building with a heating stove on one end and a shower in the corner. The Lord also provided enough scrap fire wood for us to gather to keep the place heated for our entire stay.

Our ministry extended to two gypsy villages that were nearby. The living conditions were atrocious and unfortunately, this reality could not be adequately captured in a photograph. We usually divided into two groups, where Pastor Tibor, Michael and Sam would share the Gospel with the families and Michelle, Megan and Grati would share the Gospel with the kids. They would teach them John 3:16 and some songs in Hungarian, and then sing with them using some hand motions to emphasize some of the important words and concepts in the songs.

On two occasions Sam had the opportunity to minister to some refugees living in the fields behind the warehouses. Sam would go with Pastor Tibor and hand out bread for them to eat. At the first place we stopped, there were about 50 men and they were very appreciative. At the next place we stopped, which wasn’t very far, we thought we would have plenty of bread to hand out, because there appeared to be only a few men there. Suddenly, a line began to form and in just a few minutes there were over 200 men waiting to get some bread! It was like the 5 loaves and two fish where we had enough bread to feed every man! The second time we went to hand out bread, we decided afterwards to spend some time praying for these men while we were gleaning in a corn field. There is one 16-year-old boy who is a Christian from Pakistan that left his family behind and walked for three months all the way to Serbia. He is really trying to get to Hungary, so please pray for him. Many of the men that we met are not able to make it into Hungary’s refugee camp, where we ministered this past summer, because they do not have the proper paperwork. As a result, many of the refugees do not have any warm clothes and are walking around in their bare feet. We also met some men from Somalia who had their wives with them. These men were told to either fight or they would be killed, so they fled with their families.

While Pastor Tibor and Sam were visiting these refugees, his wife Mercedes and Michelle were visiting some of the poor families in the area. These families were so poor that you would typically find 6-8 of them living in a single room no bigger than an average sized bedroom in the United States. Over the years, the church has been helping these families by giving them wood-burning stoves that they could use to cook their food and to heat their homes. Michelle also went with Megan and Grati to deliver some meals to these families and to share the Gospel. Michelle was able to take the vegetables given to us and prepare some amazing meals for these families that truly fed a lot more than we could imagine!

On the last day of the outreach, we were able to come alongside a team from various churches in Hungary that minister twice a year to the kids in this area. In preparation for the huge Kids Day, they brought clothes, school items, and treats. They also had some prepared games and a Gospel presentation to share with the kids. Megan and Michael were instrumental in helping with the day’s program and in serving the amazing meal that Michelle prepared for over 90 kids! She turned some tomatoes, peppers, and onions along with some ground meat into a delicious sauce over noodles with the kids. Then she took some canned fruits and made some delicious cakes out of the juices for desert. It was really neat to see the faces of many of the same kids that we had visited earlier in the week in their homes now lit up with joy and excitement. It was a wonderful time of smiles and hugs. It is hard to put into words all that happened during the ten-day outreach, but we know that God touched many of the hearts of the people there and ours as well. We have an open door to come back anytime and serve there. The spoken language is Hungarian. The church family there was also very grateful for all the repairs and odd jobs that I was also able to complete during the in-between times. Please keep praying for this church in Cantavir, Serbia and thank you for all your prayers during the outreach, we could definitely feel them!

Bible school is such a huge blessing. We are keeping up with our studies and readings, and the outreaches have given us the opportunity to not only learn, but also experience some new aspects of ministry that has helped to further equip us as we continue to serve in the mission field. Please keep us in prayer as we look forward to the upcoming 30-day outreach, as well as some additional weekend outreach opportunities during this final semester.

Thank your for your continued prayers and support! Together we can continue to reach more kids and share the love of Christ to more families than ever before!

Love In Christ,

Sam, Michelle, Megan and Michael

With Pastor Tibor’s Family

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