The first part of the year

Before all the craziness starts here, I want to send a quick update on the past few months.

Next week, my son Izaac and his fiancee are coming to Hungary. Selah, my daughter is coming home 2 days after them. Then the big day is on May 22nd. Izaac and Elia are getting married. Unfortunately Selah is only coming for 2 weeks and thengoing back to the US to work at Lake Geneva.

We are very excited about the wedding. I’ll some photos afterwards.

This past few months have been eventful. We were busy with ministry at our church: translating, teaching, prayer group and so on. Going to Ukraine once a month was also part of it (Below I have heart breaking stories from people I met in Ukraine). Since Izrael is staying with us since December, I was excited to have him come with me on these mission trips. We had some events with the messianic community also.

So here are some pictures of these events:

This is our prayer group that we lead at Riverside Church. We meet every Monday, praying for our Country, our city, our church and other needs that come up.

Prayer team at our church (10 nations are represented on this photo!)

I'm still translating at Riverside Church Budapest. I had the privilege to translate our youth pastor a couple weeks ago. 

I'm also part of the worship team at Riverside which I really enjoy.

Worship at Riverside Church

I taught a month long course on Prayer. I enjoyed it a lot. On one of the session, I talked about the Prayer of Jabez. I first read about it when we worked for Billy Graham Evangelistic Association a while back. This was one of the free books sent to regular supporters. I still remember reading it back then and having an impact on me.

Teaching at Riverside Church.

On March 14th, we celebrated Pesach at the Messianic congregation. The plan was to have an older messianic jewish couple come from Jerusalem and lead this event, but because of the war, their flight was cancelled.

Instead, God had a better idea. We invited a young rabbi from one of the biggest synagouge in Budapest. We did not know how they would react to an invitation like this. He hesitated some, he asked his leaders at the synagouge who encouraged him and gave him permission to do it. This is such a historic event! To have a jewish leader come into a messianic congregation and lead Pesach.

On top of this, our friend, Yariv from Israel, a messianic jewish minister came and actually they were leading it together.

This was such a powerful event. Again, this is unheard of, it is history in the making.

I was translating part of it at this event also.

Pesach 2026 at the Scottish Mission building where our congregation is meeting regularly.

Yariv speaking about Pesach in the light of the New Testament. The young Rabbi, David sitting at the table and listening to it with open heart.

We had several trips to Ukraine. I post pictures and explain some of it.

With these trips, the purpose was to bring food to people in need. On some of these trips we had the chance to teach leaders, meet with and visit people in their homes.

Some of these visits were shocking as we heard their stories.

There was a house we entered, a one room little house. About 12-15 people were living in this room. The lady in red was telling us a story how her daughter died of pneumonia, because they didn't have money for medicine. She left 4 kids behind, one of them is the one she is holding. We were able to pray with her, comfort her and left some food there.

One room house with 12-15 people living in it

In the picture below, kids are helping Izi to unload the truck. They are orphans. The ukrainian army forced their dad to war. He died in the front line.

Their mom was looking for food in the garbage dump to feed the kids, she found something and drank it. By the end of the day she was dead.

Orphan kids helping Izi unload the van

There was a kid in this art class. He was painting flowers. Black and white flowers. His dad also died in the war. Since then he is depressed and wouldn't leave the house, until he found this art class at the church.

Art class with Nate. Not exactly. But he looks good as a teacher ;)

Guess what's cooking?

Pig intestines. a special meal for our honor.

Bringing wood. Some don't have firewood to heat their houses. One time we went to a place and they couldn't heat their place. By the time we got there with the firewood, the lady had already died.

Our trip in March with Nate (our European leader) and Izi. We were putting food items in bags.

Thank you so much for standing with us in all of this! Praying for us and supporting us financially. Without all of you, we wouldn't be able to do it.

Please pray for some of the next steps for us as we are seeking the Lord in that. Seems like some doors have closed before us in ministry. We still would like to represent Hungary as a spiritual parliament before God, but in a different setup as we have been doing it. We need clear vision how to proceed and which way to go.

Blessings to you all!

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." Num 6-:24-26

Norbert and Leslie