“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” Ps 111:2
God’s love for the lost took us to places we never imagined to go.
30 years ago God led us to an amazing journey. That journey has not ended and continues to surprise us how much God loves the lost and uses unusual means and incapable people to get the gospel to the lost.
“This program has changed my life. It’s a seed-planting ministry in my country.” – H. from a closed country
In 1994, our country [Hungary] was just at the dawn of it’s newly regained freedom after 45 years of oppressive communism. Our small ministry struggled to find ways to share the gospel in a country where it was punishable for decades to go to church. The leadership of the country was puzzled by the challenges of free travel and free market. The new opportunities came with a lot of danger: crime, prostitution, sex-trafficking, drug-smuggling, a growing AIDS-epidemic and mental-health crisis—were all on the rise. That was the time when Gábor sent a fund-raising proposal to the National Institute of Health. Dr. Dénes Bánhegyi, the National AIDS-coordinator at the time, after receiving our proposal invited our team, lead by Dave Robinson to a special meeting. In that meeting they’ve asked us to develop a program to help young people to live a healthy life and to avoid risky behaviors that could jeopardize their life.
Little did we know the miraculous journey God’s love will lead us on through that first divine appointment…
At that meeting we made it clear that we can’t help young people to live a healthy life (physically, mentally and spiritually) and avoid risky behaviors unless we also share with them how to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Dr. Bánhegyi agreed and supported us to develop ‘Youth at the Threshold of Life’ [YTL] and to host weekend-long symposiums for educators to train them using YTL and to share the gospel with them. This space is not adequate to recite all the miracles of what God did and continues to do through YTL since it’s beginning in 1994! The following list is just a snapshot of God’s amazing work:
- The comprehensive, character- and relationship-building, mental-health development, gospel-centric, 600+ pages-long YTL curriculum had been developed in a record time by our small team.
- In Hungary alone, over 8,000 educators came to one of our 27 YTL symposiums where they all heard a clear gospel-presentation and had been greatly resourced to deal with youth problems.
- 71% of these educators decided to show the Jesus film in their classroom to over 500,000 students in post-communist schools.
- Thousands of students came to saving faith as they have heard the gospel and received a Gospel of Luke in their classroom.
- YTL went to 62 countries across the globe and is widely used even today.
- God is using YTL in a closed country where in the past two years they hosted seven YTL symposiums for educators (online and in-person).
- Last year God opened doors to train educators in Jamaica. Also, YTL is used in Kansas City at Central High School and in The Hope Center (very challenging environments).
- As a result of the continuous innovation of YTL, this year, we created an abbreviated, easy-to-use version, called YTLite.
If you would like to read more about this amazing story, I’m happy to send you a copy of our book The Outrageous Promise.
For more information about YTL, please visit: https://ytl.academy