Dear Brothers and Sisters from the New England Churches,

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary. My name is Agnieszka Matyja, I?m Polish. Some of you may know me as Agnes from Europe :). I became disciple in Warsaw, Poland, 10 years ago. Jim and Irene Valente invited me to church, and three weeks later I was baptized.  Two years ago I moved to Budapest, Hungary, to work with Eastern European Administration. In fact, I was helping the churches for about 7 or 8 years, which in EE makes me a grandmother of admin. Because of God's grace and the job He gave me, I am able to travel around and meet disciples from all the countries in Europe. Last year I had a privilege to visit also some of the New England churches and I felt like I was at home. This is truly how I and many disciples from this side of the ocean feel about you.  We owe you our salvation; you are our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

I would like to share with you about some amazing things that God has done among us. There are six churches and two Bible Talk plantings and all together about 450 disciples in Eastern European. It is not a lot, but we are faithful and growing.  Thanks to your love, faith, hope and constant sacrifice through the years we are able to continue our walk with God and bring more people to Christ. We truly appreciate every person who came to be with us and helped us to follow Christ, whether it was for one day or for few years, and every person who sacrificed to make it possible. It means a lot to us. It means eternal life.

As I write, God has done great things for me personally. He found a life companion for me, and after 10 years of being a Christian I will be getting married in September!!! Along with this God blessed me with an incredible friend, my future sister-in-law, who is now studying the Bible and growing in her faith.

As I walk down the streets of Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, Sofia, Tirana, and Zagreb I see more and more disciples sharing their faith and spreading the good news. Recently we also have seen some of us who left the fellowship over the last two years coming back to Christ. In all this to God be the glory!!!

All I want to say is that you've been great examples to us, with your passion for Christ and his mission.  We look up to you. You are our heroes in the faith.

Thank you for everything,
With love,
Your sister in Christ.

If anybody would like to write to me my address is agi@jesus.hu

15 June 2005

Hello and greetings from the Zagreb church of Christ

Dear brothers and sisters in New England,

We are very happy to have this opportunity to thank you for the much needed support you have given the Zagreb, Croatia, church in the past year.   

As you may know, the Zagreb church of Christ began as a mission team from Boston in December 1996 and has now grown to 79 disciples.  We are pleased to see steady growth in the church membership with 6 baptisms in 2004 and 2 baptisms so far in 2005.   

The budget which was allocated to us enables us to help two neighboring churches as well ? Ljubljana, Slovenia (9 disciples), and Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina (7 disciples), through travel expenses and assistance in renting facilities. 

How your support has helped us

Our facility has been very helpful in providing stability to the church.  The largest part of our budget is allocated to our facility which we rent and to which we have access 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.  This year we were able to use funds to buy a carpet, some furniture, and paint so that we were able to make a ?living room? for the disciples.  We are seeing the fruit of this as disciples use the facility for Bible talks (every Monday with 19 in attendance), d-groups, studies, parties and weddings (2 this year).  The space has certainly helped us make more of a family atmosphere.

Support from you has also enabled my wife and I to be on staff (currently we are the only ones receiving a salary from the church).  We have seen a lot of progress in general from the last year in working with our leadership group.  One of our more significant accomplishments was to break down the church into ?sectors of service? including: organization of Sunday services and meetings, children?s ministry, young Christians? ministry, dating and engaged couples ministry, married ministry, admin group, and a media group (taking care of copying sermons on CDs, etc.).  We are now working with leaders to help with discipleship groups.  Women are also a part of the leadership group and participate actively in the operations of the church.  My wife and I are also able to travel by car to Budapest for meetings with other church leaders to get encouraged, get direction and inspiration. 
 
Since we now have 13 children in the church, we have also been able to provide for the children?s ministry.  We have painted the walls in the children?s rooms, bought new carpet and toys.  We also provide snacks for the children during services. 

What could have never been done without the support

Since 85% of our budget comes from special mission?s contribution from the New England churches, we could not have accomplished what we have described above without you.  If our church were to be self supported at the moment, probably at best we could afford two Sunday services a month renting a place for 2 or 3 hours with no rooms for children or any other extra activity.  We are faithful that God will provide in every circumstance, and we are also thankful for how he has provided through you. 

What are the plans for the future?

We are definitely focusing on maturing the disciples, trying to help them use their talents for the Kingdom, as well as new studies and baptisms.  We would like to have a dynamic congregation that reaches out to all of Zagreb as well as the country of Croatia.   

As far as finances go, we would like to have a self-supporting church as much as that is possible.  My wife and I would eventually like to be self-supporting staff members, through a business that we are trying to develop on the side (providing internet solutions to small and medium sized businesses).  We are hopeful that this will be a reality and would like to provide maybe a model for other couples in Croatia in their work for God.

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Again, thanks for your generosity.  We know how much the disciples have sacrificed.  Let us know how we can better communicate to you and to the disciples who have given for us. 

Much love in Christ,
Your brother and sister,
Damir and Andrea Jandriček