March 25, 2014

Festival Outreach in Hungary

By Krisztián Ömböli, Judy Plaatjes/tedNEWS

Budapest,
Hungary: Imagine 350,000 people from around Europe gathering in one place at
one time. Imagine being among them, interacting with them. Perhaps you are the only
Jesus they will ever meet.

Every year, one of the
biggest music festivals in Europe, the Sziget Festival, takes place in Hungary
and last summer, a group of Adventist young people decided to take part in this
event and make a difference. As part of their ‘Festival Outreach’, they
made their presence known as they focused their attention on meeting the
attendees, engaging them in conversation, offering them a place of rest and
refuge and sharing the gospel in practical ways. ‘Tea for the Soul’ was a
place inside the festival where young people could take a rest, drink some tea
and have a conversation with our young volunteers and with each other. Every
day over a hundred people came to talk about life’s big questions, while many

chose to come and have a conversation
during the course of the festival with the main topics of religion, God, faith
and morality being discussed.

Other side-projects also
took place around the ‘social life’ of the festival. Connections were made with
other civil organizations; help was given to those who needed it due to their
excessive alcohol consumption and injured youngsters came to the tent to
receive first aid.

The main goal of the Adventist youth was to make connections with
the young people and maintain these connections with them even after the
festival was over and everyone had returned home. This has proved difficult as
many people came from abroad, but the group feel that God blessed their
Festival Outreach and they look forward to repeating it this year.

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