{"id":30229,"date":"2023-01-18T10:27:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T18:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=30229"},"modified":"2023-01-18T12:41:08","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T20:41:08","slug":"isten-a-vezetok-banyasza-es-finomitoj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/isten-a-vezetok-banyasza-es-finomitoj\/","title":{"rendered":"Isten a vezet\u0151k b\u00e1ny\u00e1sza \u00e9s finom\u00edt\u00f3j."},"content":{"rendered":"

Isten a vezet\u0151k b\u00e1ny\u00e1sza \u00e9s finom\u00edt\u00f3j.\u00a0 (Hungarian ) God is the miner and Refiner of leaders.<\/p>\n

That is how Imre Balogh translated Camacho’s words for me this morning.\u00a0 He called from Hungary to tell me that he and his newly married wife were expecting a little girl.\u00a0 Imi (his nickname) was my pitcher on the Mikepercs, Mosquitoes baseball team.\u00a0 In our wet little village MOSQUITOES were so plentiful that you could make a pie! So, I named the team after the village bugs.<\/p>\n

Our little league baseball team played on the local soccer field eating ice cream and watermelon after our practice.\u00a0 Our team was mixture of pre-teens of \u201cwhite\u201d Hungarian and \u201cbrown\u201d Hungarians or Roma (for those who are politically correct, or Gypsy for those who want a knife in their guts).<\/p>\n

However, when ice cream is the goal (baseball was secondary), it really didn\u2019t matter what color you were. Your place in line at the ice cream stand is all that mattered. \u00a0When the boys came over after practice, Trudy (my wife) would open all the windows (this was before the invention of AXE deodorant). \u00a0I told Trudy that the boys would bathe in the Spring (not a lot of running water in the village). \u00a0Besides what preteen boy likes to bathe?<\/p>\n

After two years of playing on the soccer field, we entered the Hungarian Little league Tournament and came away as the national champions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While the Mosquitoes continued to grow in number, with a whole host of girls getting into the game.\u00a0 The Mosquitoes grew up to the big boy league and they self identified as Black Sox.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since then, the boys have grown. Before I left Hungary (to take care of in laws in Texas) Most of the boys accepted Christ.\u00a0 In the year AFTER I left Hungary Imi accepted Christ.\u00a0 He said that when I lived in his village, that he did not have to think about believing in God (apparently, I was doing that for him).\u00a0 Now that I was leaving, he decided to make his leap of faith.\u00a0 (Wow, absence does make the heart grow fonder \u2013 although that is not quite what I think it means.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, Imi was calling me as he was driving. Yes, he said, I have a driver\u2019s license and a CAR! \u00a0Imi now works for an EU non-profit ministering to children in an old coal mining town.\u00a0 Many are Roma, but in generational villages, the tensions are much less (not like in Budapest).\u00a0 People are farmers.\u00a0 His baseball program has 80 children (wow).<\/p>\n

Imi also works with GoodSports international and helps teach Ukrainian Refugee children how to play baseball on the weekends. \u00a0There are 204 Ukrainian Roma Refugees (103 Children) in Debrecen, Hungary.\u00a0 Csabi (see below) has a cleft palate and just finished his first surgery.\u00a0 This summer we told them the story of Joseph and how what Satan meant for evil, God reshaped for good.\u00a0 Csabi was escaping a war in Ukraine.\u00a0 He never thought he would come to a place where he would learn baseball and get his cleft palate fixed. God does reshape things for good he believes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been told that working with pre-teens and teens boil down to one thing \u2013 time.\u00a0 For ten years the boys (and girls) were ever present in my life.\u00a0 If you made ten practices, you got a glove of your own.\u00a0 Ten more you got a bat and ball.\u00a0 After that you could join the \u201cCaptains Club \u2013 pizza gathering, served with a side dish of bible study.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let Imi know, but I was informed when he walked on the dark side (drugs, sex and hip\/hop).\u00a0 Goth clothing and weird makeup.\u00a0 Everything he wore was black.<\/p>\n

But then he found the LIGHT.<\/p>\n

Today, 18 January 2023 he wrote on Facebook messenger. \u201cHow does it feel to be a grandpa?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo volt fiam.\u00a0 Good job son.<\/p>\n

Mining takes time, and if you every had teens, it takes a load of patience.\u00a0 But watching boys, change to teens, to men is a God thing.\u00a0 A baseball coach or a coach for Christ?\u00a0 I wasn’t aware I was doing both at the same time.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t looking for gold at the time, but now as I look back, I see the shining of gold in the young men that the Holy Spirit brought to Christ.<\/p>\n

Isten \u00e1ldjon, God keep you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isten a vezet\u0151k b\u00e1ny\u00e1sza \u00e9s finom\u00edt\u00f3j.\u00a0 (Hungarian ) God is the miner and Refiner of leaders. That is how Imre Balogh translated Camacho’s words for me this morning.\u00a0 He called from Hungary to tell me that he and his newly married wife were expecting a little girl.\u00a0 Imi (his nickname) was my pitcher on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30229"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30238,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30229\/revisions\/30238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}