Mission’s conference
I just returned from a mission’s conference in
Hungary. It was great and refreshing. Getting there was a challenge. We didn’t have the schedule and ended up changing our train tickets 2 times. We decided to go Ukrainian style because it was much cheaper. It meant instead of taking an international train straight through the 26 hours, we took the Ukrainian train to the border and then an electric train to the next border town in Hungary and took the Hungarian train to the capital and then a train to the conference. It took about 36 hours. Changing trains 4 times and lugging the suitcase around was tiring so we opted to return to Ukraine on the International train. But we learned a lot about traveling to Hungary and saw God protecting us along the way.
I was suppose to call the castle after we found out what time we would arrive at the train station so that they could pick us up but we couldn’t get through to them before our train left. We thought, “Okay. 9:00 at night and we can’t get ahold of the people to come get us…we don’t know how to get to the castle but maybe people around there would know where it is…maybe someone on the train will let us use their cell phone to call (our phones were not international phones)”. So we prayed and thanked God for helping us to that point every step of the way and asked Him for his help to get to the castle.
When we boarded the train, we looked for a compartment with no one in it. But they all had people so the last 2 had one girl in one and a man in the other so I picked the one with the girl. I didn’t want to be with the man. But God had other plans. We went to the man’s compartment to see if we could use a cell phone. Unfortunately the number didn’t work so I took a moment to think about what next. About that time the man asked where we were going. The long and the short of it, he worked at the castle and we had our ride to the conference!
Several years ago I went to the conference in Austria. It was about 95 percent international missionaries ( meaning American, English, Australian, etc), but the Hungarian conference was a fairly equal mix. There were church workers from Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Hungary and Serbia along with international missionaries. Two Serbian women befriended me. At first I felt so guilty and felt like I should apologize for us bombing their country to death. So I was rather touched by their loving kindness. One thing I learned about Serbia is that there are Serbians, Hungarian Serbians, Romanian Serbians, etc depending on what country bordered Serbia at one time. The Serbians looked down on the other Serbians of other nationalities so they were persecuted also by them. Anyway there was a large group of loving Christians from there. They were the Hungarian Serbians. It was a pleasure getting to know them.
At first I was disappointed that I didn’t have any American roommates. I just wanted the fellowship. But once I realized that none of my 4 roommates were Americans, I thanked Him for His plan and proceeded to get to know them. My most loving, friendly, joyful roommate was Hungarian and couldn’t speak English. She was one that you just look at and know that you want to get to know her but it was so frustrating because she didn’t know Russian or English. I would have loved to just sit and talk to her. Another roommate was a 17 year old orphan from Romania who is being fostered by an American missionary. She was a sweet girl. The other girl was from Poland. She also was basically an orphan and being taken care of by an American family. They were sweet roommates. Hmmm. It was encouraging that I was not the only person fostering children. I had been beginning to second guess myself.
Hungary is a beautiful country. Our conference was held at a Bible college in a castle. Hungary is more modern than Ukraine. You could tell the difference the minute you crossed the border. It was a refreshing change. Most of the Hungarian people that we met along the way were very kind and friendly.
