Dear Special Friends ,
When we visit the US people ask us quite often about our personal lives and what it’s like living in Hungary. We are always thrilled to talk about this. If you have been receiving our letters for any length of time now, we hope you can tell how much we love doing what we do and how much we love living in Budapest.
Our daily lives as missionaries would probably surprise some people. If you spent a few days with us here in Budapest you would see that in many ways our lives are just like yours.
We take our kids to school . . . We call the electrician for a problem in our house . . . We go grocery shopping . . . We take Audrianna, our 17 year old daughter to the dentist . . . And the list could go on and on. So you can see that maybe our lives are not too out of the ordinary from a typical American family. But at the same time so many, many things are different. The electrician who came to our house spoke no English. The dentist has no receptionist and she and her assistant are the only ones in her modern dentist office, yet she is an excellent dentist.
The school Audrianna goes to has students of more than 20 nationalities but the classes are taught in English, plus she is in her third year of Spanish, but there are very few Spanish speakers in Hungary. Things we take for granted in America like paying bills online or with checks are different here. Hungary has no check system so all bills are paid in person at the post office. No bills are ever paid through the mail. So several times a month we go to the Post Office and pay our bills in CASH. Bills such as internet, telephone, electric, trash pick up, etc. It’s time consuming but you get used to it.
Sometimes people want us to be more candid, maybe more transparent. They want to know what is hard for us. Here are just some of the challenges that we face on a personal basis as missionaries. We miss our boys and our daughters in law who live in Orlando. . . This will be even harder when we have grand-kids. We miss our parents who live in Colorado and Florida, but we are thankful that we get to talk to them often by phone or email. We miss American Culture so much. We miss the restaurants (Mexican and BBQ).
We miss going to our Home Church and miss all the friends we have made throughout all these years in America. This is what is hardest for us. But we don’t ever want to sound like we are complaining or want anyone to feel sorry for us. We love what we do and wouldn’t trade our lives for anything as we know this is what God has called us to do. But at the same time we do really miss some things.
Thank you so much for standing with us in all we do here in Eastern Europe. Please know it is never taken for granted.
Thankful to be Serving Him,
Jim and Brenda
PS. As you make your giving plans this year, we would ask you to prayerfully consider increasing your giving to this ministry this year. Thank you so much.