I can’t believe that I returned from my trip a month ago today. In some ways it seems like yesterday. I suppose it’s just the way once you have a family and a job and all of those things that you have to dive headlong back into “real life” after taking ten days off to go a-missioning. Our team arrived home on a Saturday; I had one day to be with family and reorient myself to normal life before jumping back into work on Monday. The week after I returned, I was away from home for a night training co-workers at another office. The week following that, I spent another night away doing training for another group of co-workers. So, I’ve stayed quite busy since returning and have tried my best to grab snippets of time to reflect and catch up. Obviously, I haven’t done that too well. Let me try to fill in the blanks.
So our team had a great time in Oradea on Friday. We appeared on a radio program broadcast Europe-wide and then spent a very fruitful morning teaching undergraduate business students at Emanuel University. It was energizing and encouraging, but after our obligations were done around noon, we were eager for a few hours of leisure before the trip home on Saturday. Oradea lies only twenty minutes or so from the Hungarian border and about an hour from the second largest city in Hungary, Debrecen. It just so happens that Debrecen was once a hotbed of Protestantism in prior centuries and is often called the “Calvinist Rome.” So, you can imagine how excited we were to have a chance at seeing some great Christian history while getting another stamp in our passports. Since Romania and Hungary are now in the EU, the border crossing was a breeze, and we were in Debrecen by 1:30pm. We spent a delightful afternoon walking around this beautiful city and enjoying the architecture and quaint feeling of an old yet modern city. You know, it’s quite remarkable to observe cultural differences. Debrecen and eastern Hungary were the far reaches of Protestantism in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Calvinism never leapt the border to take hold in Romania. Instead, Romania clung to its Orthodox roots, and the effects are clearly seen. There is so much to be said of the Protestant work ethic and the economic gain that comes from the application of biblical principles in a society. In Hungary, the Calvinists did their best to live all of life in a biblical manner, and the country was and remains leaps and bounds beyond Romania as a result. As soon as we crossed the border we could see the difference. Whereas Romania still struggles to overcome its Communist past and is desperately poor and corrupt in many ways, Hungary was clean, orderly, and prosperous even in villages. Even our Romania guide and friend said so. It was stark and amazing! Of course, Hungary shook off Communism sooner than Romania and has been a part of the EU for a short while longer, so that naturally has as affect, too, but one simply cannot discount the Calvinist and Protestant influence on a country.
While in Debrecen, we visited the Great Church and the Calvinist College and meandered around downtown for several hours. And how’s this for providence? I was amazed by the very few people, almost nil, that spoke any English. We were visiting Calvinist College and their museums and as we were leaving we attempted to ask the curator to point us to a bookstore. He had no idea what we were talking about but grabbed a professor-type who was walking down the stairs and out of the building just as we were and asked him to help us. The “professor” turned out to be the Vice Rector of the school and spoke great English. What’s more, he studied at Austin Seminary in Texas and had as a professor there a man who was also a professor of Bruce’s on our team and is a member of our church! We were dumbfounded! Here we are in the corner of Hungary for four hours at the most, and we run into a fellow believer who knows someone from our church. Just wild.
We also took a chance and asked a representative at the Tourist Information office in town to recommend an authentic Hungarian restaurant for dinner. We didn’t know if she would send us to her brother’s restaurant or some dive that paid kickbacks to the Tourist office or what. Instead, we were most pleasantly surprised with a fabulous dinner at Flaska Vendeglo, a wonderfully atmospheric restaurant in the basement of an office/retail building. It was decorated like a Hungarian farmhouse and served us perhaps the best meal we had on the whole trip. I had mushroom soup, cucumbers, and pork chops “peasant style.” The pork chops were delicious and topped with sausage, cheese, pickles (sounds weird, I know), and a great sauce. My mouth is watering even now just remembering it!
We drove back to Oradea around 6pm to get a little sleep before our trip home thoroughly relaxed and having enjoyed a great time in Debrecen. I can’t wait to see it again in the future!
More to come…
