Church and a Bite of Bread

On Sunday, we attended our first church service in Budapest. There are only a few English speaking churches in the city. We had 2 recommended to us, so we chose to visit the one closest to the area that we think we will be living. We plugged the address into the GPS and away we went.

We pulled up to a very modern, American looking school where the church meets. As we learned later, it was a communist "show school." When people wanted to see a school in Budapest, that is the school the government would show them. Of course, the other schools were nothing like it. Anyway, we walked in and it was a very nice facility. We were immediately greeted by a couple who asked us if we were the people from Texas! I was pretty surprised! It turns out that they were friends of a friend and had heard we might be visiting. We met a few other families, some new to Budapest and others who had been here for several years. The people were warm and genuine and welcoming. It had a strong sense of community among the members.

The service starts out with music. After the singing, the kids go to their classes. It was great to worship together as a family. Chelsea and Cade were hesitant to go into their classes, but did just fine once they were there. There were 2 kids in Cade's class. Chelsea's class was 4 and 5 year olds, and there were about 8 kids in there. She learned about Esther and made a crown that she wore proudly for the rest of the day, including to a restaurant for dinner.

The church had communion after the sermon. We are used to the small wafers from our church back home. Here, everyone pulls a piece out of the same bread loaf. We were thankful we were on the second row so not too many people had touched the bread before us! We were also thankful we got individual cups. Side note - we offered some antibacterial gel to our realtor the other day. He had never seen such a thing before, but thought it was pretty great. We are glad we brought a large supply!

As a whole, it was a great service with great teaching from the Bible. Internally, it was a bit of a struggle for me. I am a big church girl. I have always attended very large churches. I like the programs. I like the music. I am not used to worshiping when the songs are projected from an overhead and someone has to move the transparency around. I am not used to dropping my kids off in rooms with gray walls and few toys.

As I sat in church and processed it all, the Lord whispered to me, "Is it about you or about Me? Why does the fact that there are no fancy lights or screens change the way you worship?"
I think in America we are so used to getting whatever we want in all areas of our lives- from groceries to worship style. Here, there is one choice for me - to worship, or not to worship. I pray that the Lord will find me to be a worshiper!