So I apologize for not having blogged in awhile! I have had a crazy but wonderful Christmas season from celebrating with my English clubs in Budapest, to visiting the team in Berlin, to spending Christmas with a family in south Germany to celebrating New Year’s in the mountains in Norway (you can check out pictures on my Facebook)! My travels were wonderful and I feel so blessed to have friends that will welcome me into their homes and treat me like part of the family. The traveling was refreshing for me, and also made me feel as if I have made some progress in my Hungarian because I officially speak much more Hungarian than German or Norwegian! It has also made me think more about my desire to eventually live with Hungarian roommates. I feel that being truly immersed in the language and culture by living with Hungarians would help me to learn so much faster.
As I start 2015 and return to Budapest I think it a very appropriate time to think about some of my goals for English club this semester. Some of my goals for last semester were to become more organized, to do a better job with advertising and to build more community. I think I am on track to doing a better job with all three of these. I am starting two bible studies and a game night in the next couple weeks, I have a Facebook group up and running, which you can check out at KMK English Clubs!, and I also created and put up some fun flyers! I already have the schedule for next semester pretty well planned out and feel like I have a better idea of how to keep track of attendance and just be organized for the lessons. So overall I feel that last semester was a success. It wasn’t perfect, but I learned a lot and I feel like things continue to improve.
So some of my goals for this semester for English Club are to build a stronger connection to the local churches, to cast a vision for more Hungarian Christians to come hang out and engage in spiritual discussions and to find a few people to mentor/ invest in so that English Club will be sustainable even after I leave. Some other logistical things include possibly finding one more teacher for the Monday night group (right now we are two plus a sub) and someone to help with the Wednesday game night. My goal in finding more Hungarian Christians to come to English Club is that spiritual conversations will be more natural and won’t need to be so facilitated from the front. Also I hope that as relationships are built, good conversation will happen outside of the classroom maybe even at the game night…
Well, that’s my update for now. I feel like I have been growing in patience and trust, trying not to worry what others think of me, or about what will happen tomorrow. Another personal goal for the semester is to work on building deeper relationships. I feel like being in a foreign culture and working an unusual job where I don’t have the commradery and connection of being a student or sharing a work place has made building close friendships much more difficult. I also feel like that is something that I didn’t give much effort to last semester and that it is super important to my health and well being here.
Thank you all for your prayers and support. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s a little late!