Susan’s Story:

In 2009, I was given the chance to travel to Thailand to spend a week with 200 orphans at the UdonThani Home for Girls.  It was my first service trip overseas, a step I took after years of volunteering my time helping local organizations such as the Seattle Symphony, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Young Life.   I had recently made a decision to recommit myself to my Christian faith and hoped that this trip might give me the perspective I’d need to combat how discontented I had become with my life.  Just as I’d hoped, I began to see the world very differently upon returning from Thailand.  More unexpectedly, I also felt compelled to continue serving overseas.

A year later, I felt myself being called to Hungary, the country my parents had left so many years ago to give me the chance at a better future.  My parents raised me to be proud of my heritage and fluent in the language of their homeland.  Education was of vital importance to my mother and father and they worked hard to ensure that I was the first college graduate in my family.  I believe that I was blessed with my education so that I can now share its benefits with the Hungarian people.

I decided to follow the call to Hungary, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do there…so Iike any good engineer, I began researching opportunities.  I jumped at the chance to teach English at a summer camp in Cegléd with Operation Mobilization (OM) just a few weeks later.  It was a wonderful first experience.  With every intention of returning to Hungary to serve in the future, I spent my last week striking up conversations with the locals, hoping to find people with firsthand knowledge about where I could help in Hungary, even from back in America.

I made a list of the challenges facing Hungary that the people I met shared with me: economic hardship, high unemployment, college graduates leaving Hungary after they had received free education from the Hungarian government, social integration of the Roma, Red Sludge disaster relief, helping recent flood victims, etc., and went about trying to find projects that addressed those issues.

I asked God to show me what He wanted me to do in Hungary and to break my heart for the things that break His.  And He answered my prayer.  Upon returning home, I met a former missionary who served in Hungary for over 15 years, and asked him if he knew someone in Hungary who could help me organize a project for my American friends and me.  Through the missionary’s connections I met József, a pastor who’s dedicated his life to serving the Roma in multiple communities throughout Hungary.  József told me about Kékcse, a little Roma village in northeastern Hungary, and all the work that needed to be done there.

For 4 months, my friends and I worked hard and raised money so that we could go and serve in Kékcse that fall.  I fell in love with the people there.  God helped me to see their potential, these people who are so rich in culture and tradition and who worked so hard alongside us every day that we were there.  And the children, dreaming about growing up and being somebody.  I empathized.  My parents gave up so much so that I could live out my dreams.  And it broke my heart to know that their chances of success were different than mine, simply because of the opportunities I’d been afforded.  I felt strongly that I was to help them live out their dreams too.

Before the end of our time in Kékcse, I was already searching for the next project that would allow us to return again.  Little did I know that the Roma high school’s doorstep I showed up on would soon be the same one that I’d ask the Rotary Club of Seattle and Seattle-Pécs Sister City Association to help renovate, or that the young man I met on the bus later that day would be the son of the man who’d take us to the little Roma village he and his family serve in just a year and a half later.

In early 2012, I knew it was time to return to Hungary, and months later, it became clear that Pécs and Vése were where we needed to go.  After 9 months of preparation, my team and I left home to spend almost three weeks serving the people there.  It was an amazing time, full of unexpected twists and turns and people we never ever expected to meet.  We were even given the chance to share the work we’re doing there with the Hungarian people on national television!  It was then that we started Hungary for Love.

The Bible says in the book of Proverbs that hope deferred makes the heart sick, but that a dream fulfilled is the tree of life.  People all over the world are starved for hope, love, and acceptance and have given up on their dreams.  But because of Christ Jesus, we know how much God loves and accepts everyone and that He is the reason for our hope.  It’s that belief that drives us to share what we’ve been given with others, which might be exactly what someone else needs to propel them one step closer towards realizing their dream.

~Susan Gulyas, July 2013