Thursday, October 19, 2017

fall 2017 prayer letter

Dear Friends,

 like always, it’s been too long since we’ve updated you all on all that is going on with us & what is happening at Calvary Szeged. I guess the reason for this is that life is happening. 

 As you might know but Odi & I teach English at local schools to supplement out income from our supporting churches. And now that school has started, we’re both super busy with full work loads. In addition to this, I’ve gone back to school to get my masters in Education, so I can secure a long term position at the bilingual High School I work at. I’m taking correspondence courses and it’s a few Fridays & Saturdays a month. It’ll take me 2 years to get my masters, but I think it’ll be worth it.
 In the past, I’ve shared about how scoliosis runs in Odi’s family. It’s something that we began to see in Zara a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the progression of Zara’s spine has gotten worse. In the last 18 months, it’s gone from about 17-20 degrees to 27-30 degrees. Because of this, we’ve sought out a specialist. God has lead us to the best orthopedic doctor in Hungary who deals with kids with scoliosis, he practices in Pécs, about 200km / 125 miles from Szeged. He said that Zara needs to be in a corset to help correct the curvature of her spine. Today we took Zara to Budapest to the place where they make the best corsets in Hungary and Zara gotta scanned (yes, they scanned her body digitally) and they will make her a corset based on that. We were really, really happy with the lead technician who builds these. Everything Odi has read about him has been great. He was so nice & kind with Zara and with us. Zara is actually kind of bummed that she has to wait for 6 weeks for them to make the corset (which will have horses all over it). He also examined Kiera and we all saw the signs of the curvature in her spine. He told us that in his years of experience, in the younger female sibling, there is a 95% chance of the curvature being worse. So now that means we need to get ahead of this and most likely get Kiera in a night time corset as soon as possible to help slow down the curvature of her spine. What we really liked about this guy was his attitude. He was saying that this isn’t the end of the world. Kids can live a full life with a corset. But I think what really impacted me the most was how he talked about not blaming ourselves for this. And this reminded me of a quote I saw recently which said something to the affect of, “it is what it is, but it will be what you make out of it”.  As I write this, I think of friends who have kids suffering with things much worse than this. And I know that, for some reason, God has allowed this to happen with our daughters. While, it is hard, we’re gonna try to not complain but we’re doing to do all that we can to walk with them through this. 
 Now some might think that because we live in Europe that this is all covered by the social medical system here. Well, you’d be wrong. For us to see the specialist this year, we had to go to his private practice, for Zara to see a physical therapist more than the prescribed times, it’s all out of pocket. 
 So please keep us in pray & prayerfully consider supporting us to offset some of these costs. Information will be provided below. 
 We’d really like to make a trip to the States next summer, cause we know it’d be a huge blessing for our family, but right now, it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna happen because of all that’s going on.

 When it comes to the church, I don’t know what to say. Week after week, we’re simply amazed at what God is doing. This month, being the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I’m preaching a series on the 5 solas of the Reformation. And week after week about church has been full! I mean we’ve got so many people coming (from so many nations) and so many kids we’ve been thinking/praying about what to do. Earlier this month, I asked our landlord if there were any available facilities to rent on the property. He said that a 20 square meter (215 square foot) room just opened up. We jumped at the opportunity, cause we need to have the bigger kids meet in a different space so the little kids can be with their moms in the room connected to the church (which we’re gonna stream the service to) which will open up more space in the sanctuary for about 20 more seats. This new room needs some work but we hope to get it ready in the next couple of weeks. These are the problems that pastors love to talk about & we’re really grateful that the church is growing (new students & people coming after listening to us online & on YouTube).

  We’re also excited about our first men’s ministry meeting this month with one of our partner churches here in Szeged. We hope & pray that this will be the first of many men’s gatherings.

 We’ve also got some things planned for the future but until we know more, we’re just gonna ask for prayer.

 which leads me to ask you to pray for the following things..

 - That God would strengthen our family as we are dealing with scoliosis in our daughters.
 - For strength & wisdom for me (Kyle) as I’m doing my masters
 - God’s provision for us with all the medical expenses we have
 - That Zara (and potentially Kiera) would have a good attitude towards her corset & see it as a good thing. Also that she would understand the importance of physical therapy.
 - That God would provide for CC Szeged as we need to get the new kids room set up.

support the work here in Szeged 

we’d like to ask you, if you’re reading this to prayerfully consider joining with us in the work of the Kingdom of God here in Szeged but partnering with us financially.   

so if you'd like to join with us you can send your tax deductible donations through either Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa or Calvary Chapel Vista. 

 here is the info through Calvary Chapel Vista on their website. you can give here (http://www.calvaryvista.com/give-2/) you just need to follow the process and when it asks for the donations put the amount in the "missions" box and in the memo note that it's for "Kyle & Odi Eckhart in Szeged, Hungary". They then will get that to us with our regular monthly support the beginning of each month.

 through Calvary Costa Mesa, you can give here (https://www.easytithe.com/f/?k=9F3RT3FW8ED4E4F3) all you need to do here is go down the scroll down list to my name and the money will be sent to us.

thank you for prayerfully considering this!

 For Jesus’ sake,

 Kyle, Odi, Zara, Kiera