Joanna Gettinger
 Read about Jo's experience in Hungary, August 2000
I am so thankful for you! Thank you so much for supporting me on my
mission trip to Hungary. And thank you even more for your prayers. Jesus took the gift you gave and made it blossom! And I can't wait to
tell you about it. So, hey, that's what I'm going to do now!
Being in Hungary was fun! We took a couple days at the first to
tour Budapest. We got to see beautiful churches and a palace (that made me feel like I was walking into the set of a movie, and I really should be
wearing a ball gown and coming in a coach), and one day the camp staff took a boat up the Danube River to a castle on a hill! That was so great!
But seeing the sights of Europe was not the best thing about this trip!
As I told you, we were doing an English camp. It was absolutely nothing like I had expected, though after having lived it, it's hard to
remember what exactly I had expected. But I'm so glad it was exactly what Jesus wanted!
The students came to learn English. And it was really beneficial.
Norby, one of Hungarian translators who had come to the camps as a teen (and that's where he became a Christian), said that two weeks of English
camp during the summer was enough to put you at the top of your class at school.
And I could see how the students improved, and that was exciting. So giving them practice in English was one of the goals. The other was to show them
Jesus. We had two ways of doing that. The first was the curriculum. All of the things that they read in
English, all of the questions that we talked about in conversation group were designed to get them thinking about Jesus and to let them know that God
was real and He loved them and wanted to have a relationship with them. And that was a ministry. Ilona, one of the girls in my room, was reading one of
the lessons about how to know that God exists, and she began talking to one of the girls on our team, and she became a Christian right there!!!
The other way of showing them Jesus was through relationships. Yes, we were the first to show them that Christians could be fun and crazy (I
know that you don't think that I could ever be fun or crazy, but if it's for Jesus I can do my best). We did lots of crazy skits that really didn't have
a point. We sang lots of crazy songs (I'm a Little Teapot, Baby Jaws, Pharaoh Pharaoh) to help break down barriers and make them comfortable with
us.
A lot of time was spent just spending time with the students and
showing that we loved them. Love bombardment, one of my professors calls it. Whether we were playing baseball or Uno (which I may never willingly
play again) or just braiding their hair, we were showing them that Jesus loved them. And that was also effective. One of the girls that I spent a
lot of time with, Zsu Zsi, believed that God existed but admitted that she didn't know Him, so she didn't know that He loved her. I spent a lot of
time praying for her. And it was the most beautiful thing when I heard that she had prayed to ask Jesus into her heart, and now she can know Him!
The thing that ministered to me the most was the unity of the camp
staff. We had 30 staff members for 45 students (and we needed them because we had half "native English speakers" and half Hungarian translators). We
had the most wonderful time having fun together and singing praises to Jesus together (in English and Hungarian, He can understand both really well) and
praying for the students who we wanted to see as our brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of the translators had come to know Jesus at a previous
English camp, so they were giving back what they had received.
It was amazing, and I learned so much about Jesus and myself and how He wants me to
serve Him. Again, thank you for sending me and for sending your prayers. I remembered you every morning in my prayer time, because I was so thankful
for those who had my back in prayer. God really used you to change lives in Hungary, including mine!
Here are some photos of me in Hungary! Click on these
photos to enlarge.
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