Stories from

HungaryKiskoros • Budapest • Elek

Hungary

attila Jako

Beatrix Klinger

Erika Szido

EurOPE

Grace Publications6025 Moravia Park Drive

BaLTiMore, MD 21206

Printed in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.a.

Copyright © 2011

Grace Publications is a ministry of

Greater Grace World outreach, inc.

www.ggwo.org

InTrODuCTIOn

These pages contain what we consider to

be good news from afar. The words are written to

take your imagination to nations, to places, and to

homes so that you would understand more about

the reality of what God is doing in His world. Think

about the people as they tell you about the days of

their youth. We believe their stories will stir you to

pray and that the maps and sketches will give you

a sense of where they are from and of what their

countries are like.

The stories you are about to read are true stories.

They are from people like you who grew up in towns

and neighborhoods like yours and did some of the

things that you do. at some point in their lives, each

of these people became believers in Jesus Christ.

each of them recognized their need for His saving

grace and entered into real spiritual relationship

with Him. also, each of these people came to be a

part of the ministry of Greater Grace World outreach,

a church devoted to preaching the Gospel and to

the mission of making disciples of Christ in every

nation.

our prayer is that these series of books on these

amazing people will help you to see the wonderful

work of God. Through the reading of these stories,

you may find yourself wanting to meet people like

these people and to go to new places and be part of

the great adventures of missionary life.

Special thanks to those involved in producing

this publication: Melissa Quickel, for her interviews

and transcriptions; Daniel Dunbar, for putting these

into story form; karen Janssen, for the drawings of

the people and the places; Sue May, for the layout

and design; and for Bruce May, for the printing and

production.

Steve andrulonis

Editor in Chief

Grace Publications

Hungary

HUNGARY

Budapest

Kiskoros •

Elek •

Kiskoros … attila Jako

Budapest … Beatrix Klinger

Elek … Erika Szido

attila’s Home TownKiskoros, Hungary

HUNGARYKiskoros •

7

Kiskoros, Hungary

attila Jako

Growing up in kiskoros, Hungary, attila Jako

was an ordinary Hungarian boy. He went

to school and he had fun playing soccer and riding

bicycles with his many friends. He took some guitar

lessons, liked being a little lazy, and got into trouble

at school every once in a while. He was like other

7-year-old boys, but teachers and other adults

treated him differently. in daycare, teachers slapped

him, and in school, teachers ridiculed and hurt

him. Why? He did not know. He was not the best-

behaved boy, but not so bad that he deserved what

these people did to him.

What attila did not understand was that he was

8

mistreated because of his mother’s job. attila’s

mother worked for the Communist Party, which

ruled  the country of Hungary. Many of the Hungarian

people did   not like the Communist government

and so did not like the people who worked for it.

Because attila’s mother worked for the Communists,

he celebrated the Communist holidays, and his

teachers did not accept him or treat him like the

other students.

even though his family did not go to any church,

11-year-old attila chose to not use God’s name as

9

a swear word and began praying the Lord’s prayer

every night before he went to sleep. He knew very

little about God, but he decided that, even though

it was acceptable and cool to use God’s name as a

curse word, he would not. He knew this was strange,

but he did it anyway.

When he was older, attila spent some time in the

military. one day he overheard a Christian soldier

speaking to another soldier about the Gospel.

although the other soldier was not interested in

hearing about Jesus, attila was, so he asked the

Christian soldier, “Can you tell me?” The Christian

soldier said that Jesus loved attila so much that he

died for him so that attila could have eternal life.

“No one else loves me like that,” thought attila, “so

if this is true, i really want it.” He became a believer.

Do you remember how attila took guitar lessons

when he was a boy? Well, attila and a friend started

playing rock and roll music when he was 14, and now

he was a rock musician with long hair and earrings

and a nickname—The Dope Man—because of his

drug problem. attila believed that God truly loved

him, but when he went to churches, the people did

not accept him as he was. Fortunately, he met a

friend who told him about a church in Budapest and

she gave him a taped message preached by a pastor

10

named Tom Schaller. What he heard on the tape

touched him so much that he went to a conference

and met Pastor Schaller.

Pastor Schaller asked attila, “Would you like to

go to Bible college?”

attila thought, “if i go there i will have to take

out my earrings, dress normally, and cut my hair,” so

he asked, “Can i come as i am?”

Pastor Schaller said, “of course! God loves you

just the way you are,” and attila knew right then and

there that he had found his place.

God transformed attila’s life. His nickname

changed from The Dope Man to The Bishop. He

stopped singing songs like Highway to Hell and

began to sing songs about heaven. He went from the

boy that the teachers rejected to become a teacher

at Greater Grace international School, because God

and some Greater Grace believers accepted him just

as he was. “Therefore, accept each other the same

way that Christ accepted you,” (romans 15:7).

HUNGARY

Budapest

Beatrix’s Home TownBudapest, Hungary

13

Budapest

Beatrix Klinger

Have you ever missed out on going

somewhere fun because you got sick?

Have you ever had to sit and watch everyone else

play because you got hurt? if so, you were probably

disappointed and maybe a little angry too, but you

eventually got better and you could go somewhere

or play another time. But what would it be like if you

never felt better or your injury never healed? How

would that feel? imagine that you could see, but

then you couldn’t any more. That’s what happened

to Beatrix kilnger. When she was just a baby in

Budapest, Hungary, the doctors found tumors on

both of her eyes, and when she was 31/2 years old,

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she lost her sight.

Blindness did not stop Beatrix from doing the

things she enjoyed. She made handcrafts. She got

a special drawing board that allowed her to feel the

lines she was drawing. She played with her friends

and went to camp for holidays where there was a

lake to swim in and a nearby town to visit. Beatrix’s

mother hired a tutor to teach her how to read and

write in both english and Hungarian. at school

she heard about the Bible, even though Hungary

was a Communist country and teachers were not

supposed to speak about religious things. in secret,

some of the teachers told students about the Bible

and taught them a few verses and rhymes.

15

Beatrix’s family moved to vienna, austria. She

went to the Catholic church with her family, but

they did not like it much, so they decided instead to

stay home and pray and read the Bible on their own.

Beatrix believed that God existed, but she could not

understand how he could create the entire world

in just three days. She was being taught about

evolution in school and that did not agree with what

the Bible said. She decided that she needed to know

more about God.

one summer when Beatrix was 14, she went

with her family to Budapest. She met some american

missionaries who were teaching people english

from the Bible, and so she took lessons and learned

more english and more about the Bible. She wanted

to find a church where people spoke english, but

she couldn’t, and she began to lose interest in

church. in her teenage years, she drifted away from

God into trouble. Trouble helped Beatrix realize that

she needed to turn back to God and the faith the

american missionaries had shown her.

Back in vienna, Beatrix found work with a

company that dealt with visually impaired and

blind people. The company participated in many

exhibitions and conferences, and one time Beatrix

was asked if she would be willing to have a

16

Hungarian lady who was attending the conference

stay with her in her apartment. Beatrix said yes and

spent a day with the lady at the conference, going

from exhibit to exhibit, translating from German into

Hungarian so the lady could understand.

By the end of the day, Beatrix was exhausted.

When the lady went home with Beatrix, she asked

Beatrix if she would like to talk for about five minutes

or so. They ended up talking until 3 o’clock in the

morning about God, the Bible, and the lady’s Greater

Grace church in Budapest and Beatrix promised the

lady she would come to her church whenever she

next went to Budapest.

When Beatrix heard that the Greater Grace

church in Budapest was having a conference, she

wanted to go, but she did not have the money to

pay to register. Her friend, the lady who had stayed

with her in vienna, told Beatrix that she would pay

her conference fee if Beatrix would come. Beatrix

promised to pay her back, and went to Budapest

and found the english-speaking church that she had

looked for back when she was a teenager. She heard

beautiful messages from the Bible from Pastor

Schaller and Pastor Boyce, and she was baptized at

the conference.

Since then, Beatrix has traveled to Baltimore

17

and asia. God has given her the desires of her heart.

Blindness has not stopped her from ministering the

Gospel throughout the world. What the devil meant

for evil, God has meant for good, and although being

sightless is a challenge, Beatrix counts it as part of

the great adventure of her faith.

HUNGARYElek •

Erika’s Home TownElek, Hungary

19

Elek, Hungary

Erika Szido

are you a creative person? Do you like to

design things? erika Szido does. When she

was growing up in the little town of elek, Hungary,

she liked to knit and create things with her hands.

She and her older brother rode their bicycles to

and from school each day while their parents went

to work. erika’s mother worked in a carpet factory

and her father repaired televisions and other

electronic equipment. one of her mother’s friends

had a daughter erika’s age named Gaby. Because

they lived in different cities, Gaby and erika often

spent summer and winter vacations visiting each

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other’s homes. Gaby’s father was a strict Communist

who would not allow any talk of God in his home,

so when Gaby attended the Catholic church with

erika’s family in elek, she was fascinated by the

beautiful pictures of Bible scenes she saw there. on

one of Gaby’s summer visits, the girls were caught

in a rainstorm and erika prayed that God would

stop the rain, and He did. erika was astonished

and thought, “God is really there!” as the two girls

grew older, their visits became fewer, and by the

time they were high school students, they had no

connection, because their lives had taken them in

different directions and different cities. erika did not

go to church very much, but the religious training

she received as a child stayed in her mind and kept

her from getting involved in many of the sinful

things other teenagers were doing. But erika lacked

joy and she felt empty, unloved, and insecure. When

she finished high school, she worked for a year in

an elementary school and decided that she would

never be a teacher. She wanted to go to college

and study her favorite subject, art, so she moved to

Budapest to prepare herself for the entrance exam.

While she was working for an artist and

preparing for the exam, she received news that

her mother was in the hospital with a serious liver

21

problem, and it was like the ground had been pulled

out from under erika’s feet. She thought her mother

was going to die and she began to

wonder, “Why i am here on this

big ball of mud? What is the

meaning of my life? Money?

Drugs? Finding a husband

and having a family? Having

a career or a job?” She

realized that none of these

things was lasting, that

they all ended in death,

and she felt depressed

and wished she could

just disappear. She tried

reading her grandmother’s

picture Bible and tried going

to different Catholic churches,

but nothing helped and she

grew angry and bitter, even

though her mother was able to come home from

the hospital. one day she decided to go home to

visit her family in elek, and who should God design

that she meet on the train, but her childhood friend,

Gaby! Gaby was so peaceful and her eyes were so

bright that erika thought, “She must be drunk or

22

taking drugs.” Gaby was not drunk or on drugs; she

was filled with the Holy Spirit. She had accepted

Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and she wanted

to share the Gospel with her old friend, erika. She

told erika about God and His love and how His Holy

Spirit could live in her heart. Gaby invited erika to

a concert at her church, and erika agreed to go, but

said she would not become part of that church.

When erika attended the concert, she sensed the

presence of God, and after the pastor preached,

she responded to the invitation to receive Christ in

tears, praying, “Jesus, i want you. i am a big sinner.

Just clean me.” When she left the concert, she knew

she was different, a new creation. She had great

peace and joy in her heart and a tremendous hunger

for God’s Word. She borrowed a Bible and read it to

learn more about the new life she had inside her, and

she started going to church every week. God opened

the door for her to go to the art design college and

study textile design, but she had to agree to also

study to be a teacher before the college would

accept her as a student. While erika was in college,

her mother got brain cancer. Her mother received

Christ as her personal savior before she died and

went home to heaven. after her mother died, erika

tried to speak to her father about God, because he

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had begun making unhealthy decisions. He would

not listen. God led erika to the Greater Grace church

in Budapest where she learned about grace, eternal

security, unconditional love, and forgiveness—

things she had not been taught in her other church.

it was this teaching that gave her grace to creatively

love her father and bring forgiveness into their

relationship and, just before he died, he became

a believer. after she graduated from college, God

called erika to be a wife, a Bible college student, and

a missionary to Baku, ajerbaijan. Here she was able

to teach in an international school, weaving the life

of Christ into her art lessons as she serves children

and their parents. Looking back on her life, erika can

see the hand of God, the master craftsman, at work,

preparing her to serve Him as a wife, missionary, and

teacher. Her advice to young people is to adventure

with God to bring color into your life.