The view from Budapest » General

Technology & Ministry meet in Bangkok

Tom — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:32:49 +0000

I’m currently in Bangkok, Thailand. The main purpose of my trip is to attend the MinistryNet 2011 conference. MinistryNet is a gathering of men and women committed to building spiritual movements using internet-based strategies to reach people with the gospel. Mobile phones, iPads, and social media have fundamentally changed the way we communicate and interact. MinistryNet creates a space for the timeless, unchanging message of Christ to be delivered in fresh, changing ways. You can learn more about the conference herewww.ministrynetconference.com.One of my roles here in Budapest is to give leadership to Internet-based strategies across

the 20 countries of Eastern Europe & Russia. We have almost 20 staff from our area going to the conference to try to find more effective ways to reach people with the gospel in this technological age. In fact, there are already many encouraging things going on across our area. I hope that we all can hear from the Lord and from each other about how we can take advantage of these amazing tools and opportunities to get the gospel to the ends of the earth!!!The particular focus of this conference is “from Decisions to Disciples.” Over the past 5-10 years, we have become very experienced with doing evangelism online and seeing people come to Christ. It is our desire to be more effective with finding ways to disciple these new believers in their faith and see them become multiplying disciples themselves.As you might have heard on the news, the city of Bangkok is in the midst of major flooding. Heavy rains over the past month or more have caused water to continue to rise in the city as the water moves from the north and tries to find its way to the sea in the south. After much prayer and deliberation, the leadership of this conference have decided to go ahead with it. The airport and the hotel where we are going are in high areas and aren’t expected to flood. In addition, the hotel has stocked up food and water and is ready for the unlikely event that flooding reaches the hotel. If it were to flood, they have another hotel about an hour away where they would move us that is totally away from any possibility of flooding. Even our local Thai staff have encouraged us to come despite the challenges.

Please pray

For the almost 200 people attending the conference to have safe travel to Bangkok
from every corner of the globe
That God would meet us in a special way and give us energy and insight in how we can work together to reach everyone with the gospel
That the flooding in Bangkok would recede and that there wouldn’t be any problems that would take our focus off of why we are there.
That those of us attending from Eastern Europe would have good connections with each other and that we would have unique insights into the things that might work in our part of the world.
For Valerie & the kids as they will be without their husband and father for 10 days

Texas High School Football

Tom — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:50:18 +0000

One of the great things about returning to the US this month is that I got to go to my nephew, Hunter’s, high school football game. Abilene High is ranked 9th in the state of Texas and was playing their crosstown rivals, Cooper High School. It is always the biggest game of the year for them and it was fun to be there as a part of it.

They won the game 34-10 and the outcome was never in doubt. Hunter played great and even had a near sack that ended up on the front page of the Sports section in the Abilene paper! Pretty awesome.

There is nothing like Texas High School Football! I just wish the rest of my family could have been here to enjoy it with me.

Click here to see more pictures.

Christmas Morning 2006

Tom — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 10:46:03 +0000

We had another wonderful Christmas morning. Here’s a recap in pictures:

Kids wait “patiently” at the top of the stairs before seeing what Santa brought:

Diving into the presents

Christmas breakfast and the reading of the Christmas story:

Kirby Ann has a breathing treatment. We are so thankful that she is with us and not at the hospital

Update on Day 1 of Surgery

Tom — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:35:13 +0000

Reed’s surgery went very well today. The actual surgery took about 20 minutes and the doctor said that they looked very bad and definately needed to come out.

Since then, he hasn’t been feeling too well. He has been in some pain and has had a lot of nausea and vomiting. Needless to say, the vomiting isn’t very comfortable on his throat. It is night now and the nausea appears to be under control and the pain isn’t terrible right now. Our prayer is that he will be able to sleep well tonight.

Also, the doctor said that if he is doing well that he will be released from the hospital tomorrow. This is much earlier than we expected. We’ll see what the doctor says in the morning as it seems his progress has been slow due to the nausea.

If he is released, then he and Valerie will likely spend 2-3 days in a local hotel so that they can be close if there are any problems. I decided to stay an extra day so I won’t leave until Wednesday night.

Thanks for all your prayers and words of encouragment.

Aggies beat the Horns!!!

Tom — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:56:57 +0000

We invited all the Aggies that we knew in Budapest to come and watch the big game with tu. We had some great food, great fellowship and to top it all off, the Aggies won. I know that my neighbors are wondering what was going on at our house all night with all of the yelling. When they scored the go-ahead touchdown, the place erupted.

What a great night!! We all agreed that this is a new tradition in Budapest!!!

The top of my Thanksgiving list!

Tom — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:37:37 +0000

It’s 5:30pm the night before Thanksgiving. I’m about to send the final copy of a 125 page report to my boss that we’ve been working on for the past week and a half. I’m not coming back to the office until December 4th!!!!! YIPPEE!! I haven’t had a day off to speak of since June so I’m ready for a break.

At the moment, some time off is at the top of my list of things that I’m thankful for. I’m sure tomorrow, I’ll remember to be thankful for more significant things

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Update on Everything

Tom — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:16:02 +0000

Here it is. Almost a month since my last post. I’d like to say it was something spiritual like a blog fast or something, but it was just overwhelming busyness. I jumped into the deep end of the pool with my new job and I haven’t had much time for extras like blogging. For some, blogging is the last thing to go. For me it is one of the first.

Here’s some highlights of the last month:

My Fantasy Football team is 4-0 and leading the league. This is amazing since I haven’t had time for that either. Maybe the reason that I don’t usually do too well in Fantasy Football is that I actually think about it and strategize.
We had a surprise visit from my Dad. There was a technology conference here in Budapest and my dad’s boss was supposed to attend. His boss broke his leg the week before and my dad was willing to jump in at the last second. It was fun to have him here and be in meetings together. My kids had a great time seeing Big Tom. What a treat!
I attended CCC’s Operations Leadership Conference. I joined 90 or so operational leaders from around the world. Campus Crusade is separated into 12 or 13 Areas of Affairs around the world and almost every one of them was represented here in Budapest. My favorite part was listening to the stories of what God is doing around the globe. I also saw a bunch of good friends from Orlando. It was fun to catch up.
I’ve given up on Aggie Football for the year. Trent & I stayed up to watch the Texas Tech game last Saturday. I wish I would have gone to bed 30 seconds earlier. At 12:45am, it looked like we were going to win. By 1am, we had blown it. We’re done even though we are 4-1. I think it would have been easier to get up the next morning if we hadn’t have blown it at the end.

Maybe I’ll get back on the blogging trail, but no promises.

Back to Budapest

Tom — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:06:38 +0000

This is a big week for Campus Crusade here in Budapest. Being a missionary community with a large number of expats, many of our staff are gone for the summer. Some return to the US to see family, fund raising and general R&R. Others are on summer projects out in one of our 19 countries. Others, like me, are mostly in the office, and on a couple of ministry trips.

All that to say tha things are different in the summer and a lot of people are gone. All that changes this week. Everyone is back and the new ministry year gets underway. We have two all day meetings and a golf tournament this week. Next week is an entire week of all day meetings. In that past, I would just need to show up at these meetings and it isn’t too much of a deal. In my new role, I am the coordinator of most of them. This is very different. Today will be a crazy day since I’ve been out of town for a week and I still have to do a ton of work on the first major meeting on Tuesday.

We’ll see if I have time to blog. Don’t be surprised if it is another month before you hear from me.

Site Changes

Tom — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 18:04:55 +0000

I moved my blog to a new hosting provider. I love bluehost.com and have used them for other websites. I’m glad that my contract ran out with my old provider so that I could move my own site to them.

I’ve also moved my blog to the home position of my site. I had big plans to make changes and add features. I guess that will have to come someday in the future. The summer hasn’t had as much down time as I expected. Maybe at Christmas.

Where have you been?

Tom — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 04:01:36 +0000

WOW! Almost a week and a half since my last entry. What a couple of weeks it has been. Work has been really busy and my parents have been here visiting for the past week. We have had a great time. I’ve had to work more than I would have liked, but it has still been good to have them here. The kids have enjoyed their time with Mimi & Big Tom. They played tennis, went to the pool, and we have been playing cards almost every night. We also went out to eat at a couple of our favorite restaurants.

They are here until Monday, but I leave tonight for Singapore. It is the follow-up trip to my last time there in February. Last time we designed software for our ministry to capture measurements from the field. Since then, a company in Singapore has been building the software. Now it is time to learn how to use it. I’ll be trained and get everything setup. Then, when I return to Budapest, we hope to get it ready for 3 of our countries to use in the Fall. It has been fun to work on a project that involves the whole world. I’m really excited about the progress we have made.

Maybe I will have time to post more from Singapore. I’ll still be doing my day job back here in Budapest so maybe not.