We are sending you this extra update this month to share some plans with you that we have been making and feel God has put on our hearts.These plans have to do with our future as a family in missions for the next season of our lives. We are writing this to you even though the plans are as of yet still in the early brainstoming and praying stage.

We are looking into the possibility of moving to Budapest, Hungary to move the EuroCom office there and to work with YWAM Budapest.

Even though it is early days yet, we are sharing with you to ask you to think and pray with us for this big decision we have to make.

Why Budapest?

Budapest by night

You may be wondering, “Why Budapest?” There is a YWAM presence there in Budapest, plus the Central European office is located there. The director of Central Europe, Carmelita Clarke is my contact with the European Leadership Team now that Jeff Fountain has stepped down as European director.

When I was there in April, there was a real click in my heart with Budapest. When Carmelita invited us to join her team there, I was very open to it.

EuroCom Office

I, Rodney now work 100% for EuroCom – on a European level – even though I am staff here at Heidebeek. When Jeff Fountain was director, I worked in the European office which was located just down the road from Heidebeek. Now that he has stepped down and there is no obvious replacement for him, he asked Carmelita to be EuroCom’s contact person on the European Leadership team. She is, in a very real way, my boss.

For me (and for EuroCom), it would be better for me to be closer to what is going on at a European level. Budapest is also a very international city with easy (and cheap) access by air which makes it easier to organize Europe-wide meetings. It will also make it easier to attract more international staff to come and work with me on the EuroCom team.

What about Jolanda?

Besides being a full-time mom, Jolanda is great at walking out her front door, meeting people and creating ministry opportunities. That’s one of the advantages of living someplace like Budapest. Although, she will be greatly missed here at Heidebeek by the people and ministries in which she is involved.

It will be a fun challenge to find the opportunities in Budapest for us to be involved together in ministry as a family (and I think there will be more of them, too).

Spying out the land

Another reason we are emailing this now is that we are leaving on Saturday, 3 July to take a 2-week “spying out the land” trip with the whole family to Budapest.

A glimpse of the house we will be staying in this Summer

We will be staying in a house built by YWAMers to be used as a YWAM base, which we are very excited about. This house is one of the many options for us for housing in Budapest. There is one disadvantage (or advantage depending on how you look at it): it is located in a village on the outskirts of Budapest, not very close to the YWAM office or other houses.

We will be looking into other options for renting something for ourselves.

We would appreciate your prayers very much in this time. If all goes well, we will look into moving to Budapest sometime later this year for a 6-8 month trial period. If we go for less than 8 months, we can still keep our Dutch insurance and all of the subsidies we receive from the Government.

Be sure and keep an eye on our website and Facebook profile pages for updates while we are there.