I am looking forward with great anticipation to visiting Budapest, Hungary next month. I will be gone most of the month of June, and a few days in July. Last year I visited during spring break, which was way too short because it was only a week. So, I’m going to enjoy relaxing with many dear friends including some American missionaries.
I was blessed to have taught in a Hungarian high school in the early 1990s. I taught English and I loved it. I was endorsed by the Pentecostal Holiness Church as what was then known as a tentmaker missionary. I believe the term is now bi-vocational. I taught during the week, and on weekends I helped with a little growing church. We sang on the street on Friday nights and witnessed to passers-by, and then on Sundays we had a church service in a house. We were doing a pioneering work.
When I went back to visit my colleagues last year, who are also dear friends, I didn’t realize how deep our bond of friendship was. Though my visit was short, we reconnected well both when I visited the school, and when we went out to eat, or visited in a friend’s apartment. It was great to reconnect.
As a teacher I had fun visiting a few classes with the new students who weren’t even born when I lived there before. The students still stand up at the beginning of each class and wait to be seated when the teacher tells them to take their seats. When the bell rings at the end of class they wait to be dismissed by the teacher too. The level of respect is quite high and I must say I was spoiled. I was really able to teach back in the day without any distraction.
This journey is not really a missions trip per se, and yet it is a missions trip. Most of my fellow Hungarian associates are nominal Christians, except for one who is born again. I hope to be a witness to them and to have opportunities to share what I believe, which I have done on occasion.
I look forward to visiting my missionary friends at the International Church in town. One of my missionary friends now works in an orphanage. I’m looking forward to seeing the sweet children there.
Please keep me in your prayers. So many Europeans are unsaved. The Hungarian Christian community is in the single digits. Hungary is truly a mission field and I am mindful of that.
God bless you,
Greg
I was blessed to have taught in a Hungarian high school in the early 1990s. I taught English and I loved it. I was endorsed by the Pentecostal Holiness Church as what was then known as a tentmaker missionary. I believe the term is now bi-vocational. I taught during the week, and on weekends I helped with a little growing church. We sang on the street on Friday nights and witnessed to passers-by, and then on Sundays we had a church service in a house. We were doing a pioneering work.
When I went back to visit my colleagues last year, who are also dear friends, I didn’t realize how deep our bond of friendship was. Though my visit was short, we reconnected well both when I visited the school, and when we went out to eat, or visited in a friend’s apartment. It was great to reconnect.
As a teacher I had fun visiting a few classes with the new students who weren’t even born when I lived there before. The students still stand up at the beginning of each class and wait to be seated when the teacher tells them to take their seats. When the bell rings at the end of class they wait to be dismissed by the teacher too. The level of respect is quite high and I must say I was spoiled. I was really able to teach back in the day without any distraction.
This journey is not really a missions trip per se, and yet it is a missions trip. Most of my fellow Hungarian associates are nominal Christians, except for one who is born again. I hope to be a witness to them and to have opportunities to share what I believe, which I have done on occasion.
I look forward to visiting my missionary friends at the International Church in town. One of my missionary friends now works in an orphanage. I’m looking forward to seeing the sweet children there.
Please keep me in your prayers. So many Europeans are unsaved. The Hungarian Christian community is in the single digits. Hungary is truly a mission field and I am mindful of that.
God bless you,
Greg