As your American Baptist missionaries, we are always looking to build relationships with new churches. So, we were very excited that Larry was invited to speak at the Central Region fall conference near Wichita, Kansas!

Larry told the gathering of pastors and congregants from Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas about our work in Hungary, Serbia and around south central Europe. He told them about our recently increased budget (click here to read a letter from Sharon Koh explaining the increase). And perhaps most powerfully, he reminded them that we are the missionaries of the American Baptist Churches; we aren’t from some other organization, but appointed and commissioned to serve on your behalf.

Larry enjoyed meeting Executive Minister Dr. Gregg Hemmen and his wife, and he was grateful for the very warm welcome he received. Larry noted the beautiful facility, the Cross Wind Conference Center, and what a shame that it’s a little less than 6,000 miles from sunny Téglás!

A special joy of the conference was reconnecting with Pastor John Pattison. I met John when he was the pastor of FBC Greenfield, Illinois. John is now serving at FBC McPherson, Kansas, and shared some great ideas with Larry about worship. We are blessed to reconnect with him in his new location.

Larry was also very grateful to meet Pastor Bill Hendricks. Bill serves as the Director of Interim Ministry for the Region, and he invited Larry to attend his workshop. Larry was so impressed with Bill’s care for churches in transition and really benefitted from hearing his presentation with a baseball analogy for building relationships in churches. You’ll have to ask him about it!

We would like to express a special thanks to Ruth Clark for introducing us to the Region. We sincerely believe that we are supposed to build relationships, in and across Europe and America. We thank you for making these new connections possible!

Another special acquaintance Larry saw was the awesome videographer Francisco Litardo. We met Francisco the first time when he came to Hungary to video me teaching for the World Mission Offering in 2015. That experience helped confirm our call to Hungary. Once again we thank Francisco, this time for the pictures from this conference.

We are looking forward to coming and visiting Central region churches next summer! Be sure to contact us if you’d like us to visit your church. Email stanton@internationalministries.org.

Please remember us and our budget increase as your church is finalizing its budget for the end of the year. A commitment or increased pledge would greatly help us continue serving here in Hungary and Central Europe. Thank you!