Boumans by the Danube: Boumans by the Danube

Boumans by the Danube November 2025

Dear friends,

Julie and I are in the midst of a challenging season of packing up for a six-month absence, so this update will be just two stories. On Thanksgiving Day next week (also Julie’s birthday!), we will fly to Malaga, Spain for a four-day Cohort Europe intensive weekend. Following our time in Malaga, we will spend a few more days visiting friends and Resonate colleagues Tony and Stacey Meyer in Madrid, where they serve the Mountain View church… And then on December 10 we fly from Spain to the US to begin our six-month time away from Hungary. Thank you to so many of you who responded to our September letter with ideas and offers for a place for us to stay in Grand Rapids. We have found a lovely house to rent in Alger Heights, centrally located near our own house and Bastian, my mom, other dear friends, and our home church Neland Avenue church. We will be in the US through May.

Romania Intensive – Cohort Europe

Since our last letter our highlights have included a superb Cohort Europe intensive weekend in Romania, with our partners and good friends in the Jiu Valley. We visited the No Limits climbing gym, the Anchor Valley church plant and its after-school programs, the read-aloud community library, and we did team-building exercises with a group of teens from the Lupeni IMPACT club. We heard the inspiring story of the New Horizons Foundation and their 25 years of life-changing service with youth development all over Romania. And we learned a lot about the Romanian Orthodox tradition by participating in a Friday Vesper’s service, as well as a private Q and A meeting with the local priest. The highlight of our visit was a Friday morning time with a lovely Romanian couple in their countryside back yard, making the Romanian delicacy ‘Zacuscǎ’ from scratch. Zacuscǎ is a delicious sandwich spread made with smoked eggplant, red peppers, onion, and tomato paste; and it often serves as a staple for Romanian Orthodox believers who typically fast from eating meat during both the Advent and Lent seasons. It was a very cold day in Mariana and Iosca’s back yard, but the fire that smoked the eggplant and the peppers and later warmed the entire mixture before it got put into jars for preserving, kept us warm. My highlight was accidentally discovering that Iosca, our host who was perhaps a few years older than me, was actually born to a Hungarian-Romanian family, and he spoke Hungarian as his mother tongue. Over time, however, due to a complicated geo-political story that left hundreds of thousands of Hungarians out of the re-drawn Hungarian borders in 1920, these families and their families sometimes intermarried and transformed into Romanian speakers, which is what had happened to Iosca (Jozsef). I discovered his heritage by accident when I used the Hungarian word for “yes” instead of just saying yes in English, and when he heard my “igen,” his face lit up and he started speaking to us in his long-lost and almost forgotten native Hungarian, which we could recognize much more than his Romanian. He and I had a delightful day with his rusty Hungarian and my developing Hungarian, and a mutual sense of mischief. He told us it had been since his parents died that he had spoken Hungarian, and he had forgotten even some of the basics. Our group also enjoyed participating in the weekly reading time with about forty children and their parents at the library club; and we were able to spend a few hours with a group of teen leaders talking about their hopes for their community and themselves.

Dizsnovágás

The other highlight in recent days was a very Hungarian cultural event that we participated in with a group of nine friends over the All-Saint’s weekend – a “dizsnovágás” or pig slaughter. We finally got to literally see how the sausage is made. Not for the faint of heart, this was something on Julie’s and my bucket list because of how many Hungarians we have met who told us that it was just part of their family’s annual tradition. Our group was made up of a mix of Hungarians, Americans, a Nigerian and two Dutch people, and we had two glorious days in which to ponder this part of Hungarian culture, and to appreciate the gifts of the creation to our sustenance. Some of us found the following prayer to be a helpful way to focus our thoughts: “Holy One, we are mindful that we are taking the life of one of your creatures today. May the shot be sure. May death come quickly. May we, by being nourished, help nourish the community around us. Amen.” We came home with some ham and sausage, some new friendships, and an appreciation for the work of farmers, butchers, and other people who spend their labor closer to the land than we do.

ReConnect time in Michigan

For those (many) of you in Michigan, we are eager to see you, either individually or in small groups over the next several months (mid-December through late May) – please reach out and let’s connect and set a time and place to get caught up.

Praise and Prayers

For safe travel to Spain and then the US, and a meaningful time of learning for the Cohort Europe team in Malaga next week

For a smooth transition to Grand Rapids, and meaningful time with family and friends over the coming holidays.

For some time of rest, and also of connection and planning during our time of ReConnect in the US. We hope to be present with our kids and our moms in ways that our normal life in Europe does not allow, and we hope for some time of retreat and rest as well.

For protection for all those who are “on the move,” refugees and migrants, whether displaced by war, economic instability, hunger, or other reasons, and for governments and religious communities to work together to provide welcome, security, protection, and all that they need for flourishing lives.

Peace, friends,

Jeff and Julie Bouman

How to Give

Giving patterns in missions appear to be changing. As a result, there is increased need for your direct support. In this giving season, we ask that you consider a special or an increased gift to our ministry through Resonate. We cannot do the work that God has called us to without your generosity. Thank you!

Give online, be sure to choose the “Missionaries-Europe” option under “Please select” and then the drop-down menu for “Jeff and Julie Bouman”
Mail checks to Resonate Gift Processing, PO Box 30006, Lansing, MI 48909-9760
Please also consider an extra gift to one of our three Cohort Europe participants – each of these young women comes from a country where missionary giving is not as culturally common as it is for Americans and Canadians.

For Dasha, from Ukraine, give here.

For Pamela, from Syria, give here.

For Justė, give here.

Each of these members of Cohort has been challenged to raise $10,000, and we trust God to provide for each of them as they serve.