Photos from Transylvania

Származási hely: Erdély 2008

Trip to Transylvania - 2008

Last week we had the privilege to go to Cluj, Transylvania (in Romania) for about 3 days. Our plan was to visit Levi Albu, a Transylvanian Hungarian Crusade staff living and serving among the Hungarian university students in Cluj and to help him „jump-start” a YTL Ministry. Levi spent his last year in Hungary with our team to be prepared and to gain experience in serving among Hungarians. He has been in Cluj since June, 2008.

We left Budapest at 4:30 am Tuesday morning with a team of 9 (5 staff and 4 students) and got to Cluj at 2:30 pm. After arrival we immediately submerged into the SSK distribution on the philology campus. We then made plans for the following day and went on to the economics campus to invite Hungarians to come to our event the for Wednesday evening. At night we started calling back SSK students to set up meetings during the day.

Hungarian students in Transylvania are different from those in Hungary. There are about 1 Hungarian to every 30 Romanian student on average. They are either very proud of their Hungarian descent and thus shun those in Hungary because they think we are not Hungarian enough, or they are very shy and are reluctant to even admit to being a Hungarian. So for us standing at the entrance of the campuses and ask the students walking by whether they are Hungarian or not yielded some interesting, even slightly extreme reactions. It is a bit like walking up to people on the campuses of Budapest and asking them whether they are gypsy or not. Still, we had to find the Hungarians. It turned out there is hardly no events being done among the Hungarian students of Cluj in their language that is advertised openly on the campuses.

The next night we had the “4 basic personality types” event. We expected that hopefully 60-70 people will come. Well, 5 minutes before the start they still kept coming by the dozens! We had about 110 people pack the small room, many were standing, even in the hallway outside the door listening. Wow! Of all the 110 people we had over 105 highly positive responses. Students are hungry.

I have other wonderful stories to tell you, like one student’s story: Lóránt, who accepted Christ as me and my disciple shared the Gospel with him, but I have to go now. Please look for more soon... :)

K