Taylor University Students Partner With Ministries in Budapest

During our first week of service in Budapest with the OMS team, the Lord worked in incredible ways. He graciously worked through this team and the people around us.

To ensure that our team always stayed focused on God as we served, we had morning prayer and Evensong. Both were daily rhythms that centered our hearts on the Lord.

Morning prayer, organized by Lily Kramer, started with a devotion, Scripture reading, and a word of prayer. Kendle Beck organized Evensong. She often began our time together with a liturgy (often taken from the book Every Moment Holy) to prepare our hearts for the upcoming service opportunities.

“Evensong is our nightly rhythm which gathers our team into a circle at 9 pm on most nights to worship, pray, reflect, and reconnect,” Beck said. “Different members of our team take time to lead these sessions. In coordinating Evensong as a whole, my desire was for each team member to consider 1 Peter 3:15- that we may become comfortable articulating the hope that we have in Christ. This has been a treasured time for us and a beautiful opportunity to celebrate the work the Lord is doing, pause to consider what He might have for us, and share our personal testimonies with one another.”

As people shared their testimonies within the team, some were given the chance to share their story in public during different service opportunities.

Youth with a Mission

During our first week here, we partnered with Youth With a Mission (YWAM). We started with a street evangelism event, setting up a few mics and a guitar in an underground metro intersection. People on the team with musical gifts started playing a selection of songs. The rest of the team spread out and started introducing themselves to people, hoping to have meaningful conversations.

The main goal was to show the love of Christ. However, we were also hoping to invite people to a Coffeehouse event the next day at Selah Coffeehouse. Ethan Cutshaw made some meaningful connections during both events.

“A couple from Serbia, Marko and Miriam, that I was able to talk to at the street evangelism event the night before the coffeehouse, decided to come to our coffeehouse event!” Cutshaw said. “I was so excited to see them and be able to continue the conversation I had with them in the metro the night before! They told me all about their adventures from the day including going to the fine arts museum and walking around the city, as well as a funny story about having to buy Marko new shoes due to his previous ones hurting his feet from walking so much! I was able to share my testimony and talk about my faith with them and it was so amazing to be able to connect with other Christians, who are from a completely different culture than I am. They shared about their testimonies and gave me some amazing wisdom as I continue my ministry here in Hungary while we talked for about 2 and a half hours! Another member of the trip, Olivia Nairn, entered the conversation as well and we had an amazing time getting to know them, answering any questions they had about America or our ministry, and enjoying each other’s company. At the end, I was able to pray for them and they even offered that if Olivia and I were ever in Serbia, both of us should contact them and both of us would have a place to stay! There is so many things that connect us across cultures and it was so cool to see that in action the night of the coffeehouse!”

While people had good conversations, music was also a vital part of the work the Lord was doing. During the street evangelism portion, we started with secular songs, but as the evening progressed, we started doing more worship songs. We worshiped and prayed together under the ground as the metros clattered over us.

Jonathan Stiver organized a lot of the music selections for the street evangelism and coffeehouse events.

“We have had so many opportunities to minister to people in musical ways!” Stiver said. “One of these was a street evangelism opportunity where we used music to attract attention in the metro system. As people stood around to listen, several of us would begin conversations. Obviously, the main goal was to tell people about the hope of Jesus. However, we played music again the following evening in Selah Coffeehouse. We had the opportunity to invite many of the people we met to this event and continue our conversations with them.

“At the coffeehouse, we played about an hour of live music and created a welcoming environment. We had several people return to see us play! I heard several stories of my peers having deep conversations with people from other countries like Serbia and India. We played some beautiful music too!”

Riverside Church

Music has also played a powerful role in less secular settings. We started the week with hosting a prayer night at Riverside Church. People from all nations and tongues gathered in one building to worship together, taking the time to pray over each other in their own languages.

“Prayer night at Riverside was a powerful way for us to learn how intercultural the churches here are here in Hungary,” Julie Borkin, co-leader of the Hungary team, said. “After the Taylor team led worship, we were invited to first pray for the needs across the globe, then for Hungary specifically, and for their church and ministries. Then we switched to praying for individual people, and we all prayed aloud for the person in our own “heart” language, united in our desire for God to minister to the ones in need. What a powerful picture of moving beyond knowing to believing and agreeing together!”

Over the course of the trip, many people have gotten the chance to build relationship with some of the people at Riverside. It has been a blessing to fellowship with these people and to know them better each time we see them.

Salvation Army

Another one of the opportunities we had was to go to a Salvation Army homeless shelter to serve food, lead worship, and play games with the people there. We got the chance to pray over some people and to connect over multiple games of Bingo. We used Hungarian pieces of candy as Bingo pieces, and they were both functional and delicious.

For lunch, we served chili, cornbread, and chocolate chip cookies. We enjoyed our meal next to the people and then moved on to worship together. People there were holding hands and praising God. Afterwards, we got the chance to pray over people who needed it, gathering around those and praying together out loud.

ESL at the Methodist School

We also received the opportunity to go to a Methodist school and give short presentations to high school students learning English. Some people were even asked back into the classroom, and Norah Aalsma connected with the students there.

“When I walked into the classroom, I immediately noticed these three friends in the corner of the room right away,” Aalsma said. “Something was pushing me to approach them and I know now it was the Holy Spirit telling me I was supposed to share the gospel with them. I got to talk to them for about 30 minutes and God was moving profoundly.

“The school was technically a Methodist school and there was a class where the Bible was read, but no one had ever told them what Christianity is. That realization shocked me. They had heard of hurtful things about the church in Budapest and their parents had purposefully kept them away from it.  One of them started the conversation by asking about my faith. I got the chance to share the good news with them with them and they were thirsty for information, they wanted to know more. They continued to ask more questions and exclaimed how refreshing this was to hear this, especially in contrast to what they had heard about the church before. I could tell they wanted this love.

“I did nothing to make this conversation happen, the Holy Spirit led me to that situation. God was working so clearly in their hearts and I praise Him for giving me the opportunity to share his goodness and love with others!”

Please continue to pray that the Lord would be present and continue to work as we step into new relationships.