missionary stories hungary
DESCRIPTION
The stories you are about to read are true stories. They are from people like you who grew up in towns and neighborhoods like yours and did some of the things that you do. At some point in their lives, each of these people became believers in Jesus Christ.TRANSCRIPT
Stories from
HungaryKiskoros • Budapest • Elek
Hungary
attila Jako
Beatrix Klinger
Erika Szido
EurOPE
Grace Publications6025 Moravia Park Drive
BaLTiMore, MD 21206
Printed in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.a.
Copyright © 2011
Grace Publications is a ministry of
Greater Grace World outreach, inc.
www.ggwo.org
InTrODuCTIOn
These pages contain what we consider to
be good news from afar. The words are written to
take your imagination to nations, to places, and to
homes so that you would understand more about
the reality of what God is doing in His world. Think
about the people as they tell you about the days of
their youth. We believe their stories will stir you to
pray and that the maps and sketches will give you
a sense of where they are from and of what their
countries are like.
The stories you are about to read are true stories.
They are from people like you who grew up in towns
and neighborhoods like yours and did some of the
things that you do. at some point in their lives, each
of these people became believers in Jesus Christ.
each of them recognized their need for His saving
grace and entered into real spiritual relationship
with Him. also, each of these people came to be a
part of the ministry of Greater Grace World outreach,
a church devoted to preaching the Gospel and to
the mission of making disciples of Christ in every
nation.
our prayer is that these series of books on these
amazing people will help you to see the wonderful
work of God. Through the reading of these stories,
you may find yourself wanting to meet people like
these people and to go to new places and be part of
the great adventures of missionary life.
Special thanks to those involved in producing
this publication: Melissa Quickel, for her interviews
and transcriptions; Daniel Dunbar, for putting these
into story form; karen Janssen, for the drawings of
the people and the places; Sue May, for the layout
and design; and for Bruce May, for the printing and
production.
Steve andrulonis
Editor in Chief
Grace Publications
Hungary
HUNGARY
Budapest
Kiskoros •
Elek •
Kiskoros … attila Jako
Budapest … Beatrix Klinger
Elek … Erika Szido
attila’s Home TownKiskoros, Hungary
HUNGARYKiskoros •
7
Kiskoros, Hungary
attila Jako
Growing up in kiskoros, Hungary, attila Jako
was an ordinary Hungarian boy. He went
to school and he had fun playing soccer and riding
bicycles with his many friends. He took some guitar
lessons, liked being a little lazy, and got into trouble
at school every once in a while. He was like other
7-year-old boys, but teachers and other adults
treated him differently. in daycare, teachers slapped
him, and in school, teachers ridiculed and hurt
him. Why? He did not know. He was not the best-
behaved boy, but not so bad that he deserved what
these people did to him.
What attila did not understand was that he was
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mistreated because of his mother’s job. attila’s
mother worked for the Communist Party, which
ruled the country of Hungary. Many of the Hungarian
people did not like the Communist government
and so did not like the people who worked for it.
Because attila’s mother worked for the Communists,
he celebrated the Communist holidays, and his
teachers did not accept him or treat him like the
other students.
even though his family did not go to any church,
11-year-old attila chose to not use God’s name as
9
a swear word and began praying the Lord’s prayer
every night before he went to sleep. He knew very
little about God, but he decided that, even though
it was acceptable and cool to use God’s name as a
curse word, he would not. He knew this was strange,
but he did it anyway.
When he was older, attila spent some time in the
military. one day he overheard a Christian soldier
speaking to another soldier about the Gospel.
although the other soldier was not interested in
hearing about Jesus, attila was, so he asked the
Christian soldier, “Can you tell me?” The Christian
soldier said that Jesus loved attila so much that he
died for him so that attila could have eternal life.
“No one else loves me like that,” thought attila, “so
if this is true, i really want it.” He became a believer.
Do you remember how attila took guitar lessons
when he was a boy? Well, attila and a friend started
playing rock and roll music when he was 14, and now
he was a rock musician with long hair and earrings
and a nickname—The Dope Man—because of his
drug problem. attila believed that God truly loved
him, but when he went to churches, the people did
not accept him as he was. Fortunately, he met a
friend who told him about a church in Budapest and
she gave him a taped message preached by a pastor
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named Tom Schaller. What he heard on the tape
touched him so much that he went to a conference
and met Pastor Schaller.
Pastor Schaller asked attila, “Would you like to
go to Bible college?”
attila thought, “if i go there i will have to take
out my earrings, dress normally, and cut my hair,” so
he asked, “Can i come as i am?”
Pastor Schaller said, “of course! God loves you
just the way you are,” and attila knew right then and
there that he had found his place.
God transformed attila’s life. His nickname
changed from The Dope Man to The Bishop. He
stopped singing songs like Highway to Hell and
began to sing songs about heaven. He went from the
boy that the teachers rejected to become a teacher
at Greater Grace international School, because God
and some Greater Grace believers accepted him just
as he was. “Therefore, accept each other the same
way that Christ accepted you,” (romans 15:7).
HUNGARY
Budapest
Beatrix’s Home TownBudapest, Hungary
13
Budapest
Beatrix Klinger
Have you ever missed out on going
somewhere fun because you got sick?
Have you ever had to sit and watch everyone else
play because you got hurt? if so, you were probably
disappointed and maybe a little angry too, but you
eventually got better and you could go somewhere
or play another time. But what would it be like if you
never felt better or your injury never healed? How
would that feel? imagine that you could see, but
then you couldn’t any more. That’s what happened
to Beatrix kilnger. When she was just a baby in
Budapest, Hungary, the doctors found tumors on
both of her eyes, and when she was 31/2 years old,
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she lost her sight.
Blindness did not stop Beatrix from doing the
things she enjoyed. She made handcrafts. She got
a special drawing board that allowed her to feel the
lines she was drawing. She played with her friends
and went to camp for holidays where there was a
lake to swim in and a nearby town to visit. Beatrix’s
mother hired a tutor to teach her how to read and
write in both english and Hungarian. at school
she heard about the Bible, even though Hungary
was a Communist country and teachers were not
supposed to speak about religious things. in secret,
some of the teachers told students about the Bible
and taught them a few verses and rhymes.
15
Beatrix’s family moved to vienna, austria. She
went to the Catholic church with her family, but
they did not like it much, so they decided instead to
stay home and pray and read the Bible on their own.
Beatrix believed that God existed, but she could not
understand how he could create the entire world
in just three days. She was being taught about
evolution in school and that did not agree with what
the Bible said. She decided that she needed to know
more about God.
one summer when Beatrix was 14, she went
with her family to Budapest. She met some american
missionaries who were teaching people english
from the Bible, and so she took lessons and learned
more english and more about the Bible. She wanted
to find a church where people spoke english, but
she couldn’t, and she began to lose interest in
church. in her teenage years, she drifted away from
God into trouble. Trouble helped Beatrix realize that
she needed to turn back to God and the faith the
american missionaries had shown her.
Back in vienna, Beatrix found work with a
company that dealt with visually impaired and
blind people. The company participated in many
exhibitions and conferences, and one time Beatrix
was asked if she would be willing to have a
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Hungarian lady who was attending the conference
stay with her in her apartment. Beatrix said yes and
spent a day with the lady at the conference, going
from exhibit to exhibit, translating from German into
Hungarian so the lady could understand.
By the end of the day, Beatrix was exhausted.
When the lady went home with Beatrix, she asked
Beatrix if she would like to talk for about five minutes
or so. They ended up talking until 3 o’clock in the
morning about God, the Bible, and the lady’s Greater
Grace church in Budapest and Beatrix promised the
lady she would come to her church whenever she
next went to Budapest.
When Beatrix heard that the Greater Grace
church in Budapest was having a conference, she
wanted to go, but she did not have the money to
pay to register. Her friend, the lady who had stayed
with her in vienna, told Beatrix that she would pay
her conference fee if Beatrix would come. Beatrix
promised to pay her back, and went to Budapest
and found the english-speaking church that she had
looked for back when she was a teenager. She heard
beautiful messages from the Bible from Pastor
Schaller and Pastor Boyce, and she was baptized at
the conference.
Since then, Beatrix has traveled to Baltimore
17
and asia. God has given her the desires of her heart.
Blindness has not stopped her from ministering the
Gospel throughout the world. What the devil meant
for evil, God has meant for good, and although being
sightless is a challenge, Beatrix counts it as part of
the great adventure of her faith.
HUNGARYElek •
Erika’s Home TownElek, Hungary
19
Elek, Hungary
Erika Szido
are you a creative person? Do you like to
design things? erika Szido does. When she
was growing up in the little town of elek, Hungary,
she liked to knit and create things with her hands.
She and her older brother rode their bicycles to
and from school each day while their parents went
to work. erika’s mother worked in a carpet factory
and her father repaired televisions and other
electronic equipment. one of her mother’s friends
had a daughter erika’s age named Gaby. Because
they lived in different cities, Gaby and erika often
spent summer and winter vacations visiting each
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other’s homes. Gaby’s father was a strict Communist
who would not allow any talk of God in his home,
so when Gaby attended the Catholic church with
erika’s family in elek, she was fascinated by the
beautiful pictures of Bible scenes she saw there. on
one of Gaby’s summer visits, the girls were caught
in a rainstorm and erika prayed that God would
stop the rain, and He did. erika was astonished
and thought, “God is really there!” as the two girls
grew older, their visits became fewer, and by the
time they were high school students, they had no
connection, because their lives had taken them in
different directions and different cities. erika did not
go to church very much, but the religious training
she received as a child stayed in her mind and kept
her from getting involved in many of the sinful
things other teenagers were doing. But erika lacked
joy and she felt empty, unloved, and insecure. When
she finished high school, she worked for a year in
an elementary school and decided that she would
never be a teacher. She wanted to go to college
and study her favorite subject, art, so she moved to
Budapest to prepare herself for the entrance exam.
While she was working for an artist and
preparing for the exam, she received news that
her mother was in the hospital with a serious liver
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problem, and it was like the ground had been pulled
out from under erika’s feet. She thought her mother
was going to die and she began to
wonder, “Why i am here on this
big ball of mud? What is the
meaning of my life? Money?
Drugs? Finding a husband
and having a family? Having
a career or a job?” She
realized that none of these
things was lasting, that
they all ended in death,
and she felt depressed
and wished she could
just disappear. She tried
reading her grandmother’s
picture Bible and tried going
to different Catholic churches,
but nothing helped and she
grew angry and bitter, even
though her mother was able to come home from
the hospital. one day she decided to go home to
visit her family in elek, and who should God design
that she meet on the train, but her childhood friend,
Gaby! Gaby was so peaceful and her eyes were so
bright that erika thought, “She must be drunk or
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taking drugs.” Gaby was not drunk or on drugs; she
was filled with the Holy Spirit. She had accepted
Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and she wanted
to share the Gospel with her old friend, erika. She
told erika about God and His love and how His Holy
Spirit could live in her heart. Gaby invited erika to
a concert at her church, and erika agreed to go, but
said she would not become part of that church.
When erika attended the concert, she sensed the
presence of God, and after the pastor preached,
she responded to the invitation to receive Christ in
tears, praying, “Jesus, i want you. i am a big sinner.
Just clean me.” When she left the concert, she knew
she was different, a new creation. She had great
peace and joy in her heart and a tremendous hunger
for God’s Word. She borrowed a Bible and read it to
learn more about the new life she had inside her, and
she started going to church every week. God opened
the door for her to go to the art design college and
study textile design, but she had to agree to also
study to be a teacher before the college would
accept her as a student. While erika was in college,
her mother got brain cancer. Her mother received
Christ as her personal savior before she died and
went home to heaven. after her mother died, erika
tried to speak to her father about God, because he
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had begun making unhealthy decisions. He would
not listen. God led erika to the Greater Grace church
in Budapest where she learned about grace, eternal
security, unconditional love, and forgiveness—
things she had not been taught in her other church.
it was this teaching that gave her grace to creatively
love her father and bring forgiveness into their
relationship and, just before he died, he became
a believer. after she graduated from college, God
called erika to be a wife, a Bible college student, and
a missionary to Baku, ajerbaijan. Here she was able
to teach in an international school, weaving the life
of Christ into her art lessons as she serves children
and their parents. Looking back on her life, erika can
see the hand of God, the master craftsman, at work,
preparing her to serve Him as a wife, missionary, and
teacher. Her advice to young people is to adventure
with God to bring color into your life.