November 2004

Dear Friends,

I have lots of stories to tell you because this fall was filled with travel. In this letter, I want to tell you about our Roma initiatives in Hungary, and another letter will follow before Christmas to tell about Western Ukraine.

Debrecen is one of the larger cities in eastern Hungary. It is famous for its Reformed tradition, as it has one of the most important Reformed theological seminaries in Hungary.

When our group from the PC(USA) and the Reformed Church in America arrived in Debrecen in October, we met with Iren Buzas, head of the Roma mission in the Reformed Church in Hungary. Iren is planning to make Debrecen her headquarter because many Roma live in this part of Hungary.

Iren said, “I want to show you a Roma camp. Let's meet with Carolina who is responsible for a project of the medical faculty in the University of Debrecen. I met her because she is a member of our church.”

Carolina told us how this project was designed to empower the Roma in a very poor camp near Debrecen. At the beginning of the project, Roma and Hungarians were building trust while working together to clean the camp improve the living conditions. Later, there were many different activities, such as tutoring children and advocating for families.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Carolina saying that “the legal cases for evacuation took a favorable turn because so far all cases were postponed until December. This is good because I think it means that the court was not convinced about the simplicity of cases. Families also wrote letters (with our help) to the plaintiff regarding various points in the legal claim; we are waiting for responses.”

And she continued: “We also launched—as of today—a rather unusual course for teaching reading and writing skills to those who do not have them (mostly middle-aged women) because by now it became clear that we (and they) cannot proceed without these elementary skills.”

For this community center, Iren cooperates with volunteers from the Debrecen theological seminary, among them Roma.

In order to enlist the support of the Reformed Church in this “bridge building mission,” as Iren calls it, not only in Debrecen but all over Hungary, Iren and the head of the church’s mission department in Budapest have launched an initiative to create a mission position in each of the four district synods in Hungary. They presented this idea in November 2004 to the general assembly of the Reformed church, and it was approved.

I wish you a pleasant Advent, which in my home country Germany is a season of hope even in the dark days of the coming winter.

May the peace of Christ be with you all!

Yours truly,

Burkhard

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 160