Special News From The Nations of Eastern Europe
August 1, 2013
Dear Special Friends,
Whenever we are back in America and speak at churches, people ask us all the time to not only talk about the ministry we are involved in, but also about our personal lives as missionaries. They want to know what we do on a daily basis and how we live.
In this months special letter to you we want to do something just a little different. This is a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS letter. Often we are asked these questions or questions similar to them regarding living and serving here as missionaries in Budapest, Hungary.
1. How much longer do you see yourselves living in Budapest? When we first came to Budapest back in 1997, we thought we would live here probably about one to three years. Now its fifteen years later and we still have no plans of leaving here anytime soon.
2. What are some of the biggest differences of living in Hungary compared to America? Everything over here seems to take longer. From grocery shopping to paying bills to even getting a plumber to come to the house. Whenever we are back in America, we are always amazed how easy it is to do daily things.
3. Do you miss living in America? Sometimes we do. But we know this is where God has us. Most of the time we love living here and consider it special that we get to serve here.
4. How do your children like living in Budapest? Our youngest daughter, Audrianna, said something not too long ago that showed us how she likes it. She said “she felt so blessed that she is from America and gets to go there sometimes but also gets to live in Hungary.” There have been times they would like to live in America, but for the most part they love living here.
5. You sound like you really like being missionaries, is this really true? It is really true. There have been times over the years where we thought of doing something else but deep down we knew this is what we are called to do. We absolutely love serving the Lord in this part of the world.
6. What is the food like in Hungary and Eastern Europe? We generally like the food here, but we still would much rather have American food. We like the Hungarian Goulash, especially in the winter as it’s nice to have something hot when its freezing outside. They eat a lot of sausage’s, potatoes, Hungarian purple cabbage, chicken paprika, and pork here. Some of it is very strange to us.
7. You work in so many countries in Eastern Europe, do you speak the languages or does everyone know English? We speak quite good Spanish, Ok Russian and OK Hungarian, but there are ELEVEN different languages in the countries we work in. Polish in Poland, Slovak in Slovakia, Albanian in Albania, Romanian in Romania, etc., etc., etc. Most of the key leaders we work with speak some English so we are able to talk to them, but when we minister in the churches, we always have interpreters. This works very well and the people are quite used to this.
8. What do you miss the most or what is the hardest about living in Hungary? For me, Jim, I miss the conveniences of America. It seems so easy to do everything in America. From paying the bills, to shopping, to even having to return something to a store here. Everything takes longer and seems a lot more complicated. Everything about America is service. Most places over here its not that way.
9. What do you do for fun? We like to go to restaurants. We have some favorites. They have ONE MEXICAN restaurant here. We enjoy going there, in fact we went there a couple of weeks ago on Easter Sunday. We also like to travel. It’s so nice because in Europe most things are pretty close so we
are able to travel to places like Vienna, Rome, Venice, and Paris. They do have multiplex theaters here where they show the latest movies from America. Most are already dubbed into Hungarian. But some are in English with Hungarian Subtitles.
10. What about things like FACEBOOK? Is it big in Hungary? Yes FACEBOOK is very big over here. I have “friends” that post messages in, Romanian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Albanian and Bulgarian on my “wall.” Sometimes I can use “goggle translate” to translate them.
11. Is it safe there in Hungary? Is there a lot of crime? It’s very safe here. Violent crime is very rare. Budapest for example is about two and a half million people and the buses, trams and subways are very safe, even at night. They do have petty crime though, pickpockets, stealing purses and such. We travel to other countries all the time. In fact you see people even “hitchhiking” here. Both young people and old people. Rarely do we ever hear of problems.
If you ever have any questions about anything regarding us personally or our ministry don’t ever hesitate to email us. We are always happy to share our lives with people.
In Awe of God’s Faithfulness,
Jim and Brenda
PS. Please enjoy the enclosed profiles about us. From them you may get to know us better.