October Update - Boumans by the Danube

Food bank report – Julie Imagine sitting in a coffee shop. What do you see? Friends laughing, chatting, catching up. People enjoying an afternoon pick-me-up coffee and a piece of cake. Young children having fun together in the play area. You can probably easily picture this kind of everyday scene, but this café has a twist. The clientele at this cafe are all Ukrainian refugees. Every Thursday they come to St. Columba’s Church of Scotland in Budapest to pick up food they have ordered from the Food Bank housed there. Then many of them stay to enjoy each other’s company, to seek other kinds of help, to relax before heading back out across the city. This fall I have been volunteering at the Food Bank a couple days a week. Every week I see clients expressing true gratitude to volunteers, as they say how important this service is to them. Just a few weeks ago I listened as a woman apologized for not being able to talk the previous week. She had learned that day that her 39-year-old brother, still in Ukraine and on dialysis, had died. Another time a fellow volunteer informed me that one of the clients had been providing aid to fellow Ukrainians before she left Ukraine. The first time she came to the Food Bank and was on the receiving end of help, she broke down in tears. Some of the volunteers are Ukrainian speakers – a mother, some teenage boys, an expat who had lived in Ukraine for years – anxious to connect and help. All of us, clients and volunteers, are grateful for the help and relationships this project is giving us. And at the same time, all of us are deeply longing for this war to end. Intern updates Failure, generative citizenship, refugee families, and furniture! These are just a few of the topics and challenges that our new interns have faced. If you have worked in Jeff’s orbit before, you know that conversations about failure are prioritized – how to prepare for it, and to be ready to live in the reality that comes with not being perfect. This has been helpful in the face of a great deal of fluidity in the daily work of supporting the work of refugee ministry. Needs are deep and many, and the organizational structure, with a variety of internal and external demands, remains a heavy challenge. Cohort/EDYN possibilities In early November, Jeff will travel for a few days to a small conference in the Czech Republic, to the annual meeting of the Ecumenical Diaconal Year Network (EDYN), a small collection of organizations in Europe who collaborate to provide year-long Christian service opportunities to young adults. Teaching update – Translating the Reformation In my small class of intermediate English students, I have assigned the students the service-learning task of translating 95 Reformers’ theological and spiritual quotations from Hungarian into English. New church support – Loop Church, Chicago We are grateful to welcome Loop CRC Church, Chicago into the set of churches that have taken intentional steps to support us. We look forward to sharing a journey together in our different locations Support update We continue to be thankful for the faithful and regular gifts of financial and personal support. Below we are including a clip and paste option for those of you who would prefer to send a check instead of giving on-line. To give on-line, you can find more information here. In the first third of the fiscal year, we have not yet raised a third of our yearly support. We would love to add more partners, either new churches or individuals, to our support team. At the link provided, just scroll down to sign up as a financial or prayer partner, or both!