Dear Westminster Church Family and Friends,

Greetings from Odorhei, Romania!

After long hours in the air and on the road, I made it safely to my place of origin. As promised, I am going to be sharing with you about my travel experiences to offer you insights into life in these places that I also call home.

While I am currently writing to you from the patio of my parents’ home, before arriving here, I enjoyed a few days in Budapest. I adore this lively, multicultural city where I also have family, and where I spent six significant years of my life and career, working with refugees and asylum seekers.

This past Sunday I had the joy of worshipping at the Scottish Mission, a Church of Scotland congregation in Budapest that was my spiritual home during my time living there.

The church was originally established to care for Scottish workers who built the Chain Bridge across the Danube in 1841. Across its close to 200 years history, the Scottish Mission has changed its ministry focus several times.

Initially striving to reach people of Jewish background with the gospel, at the end of the 19^th century, the congregation became a catalyst for church renewal beyond its walls, inspiring and shaping many ministers of the Reformed Church in Hungary to engage in ministries of compassion and care in the city.

During World War II, the church and the school they operated became a safe haven for children from Jewish background. Jane Haining, Scottish head teacher at the school fiercely protected her students from Jewish background from the Nazi occupiers of the city, saving many by hiding them in the basement of the school. Haining was deported to Auschwitz on April 4, 1944, where she died in the gas chambers.

Haining’s legacy of defending the vulnerable, those pushed to the margins of society has lived on within the congregation. During the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, as refugees from Croat, Serb and Bosnian background began arriving in Hungary, the Scottish Mission became a champion for asylum seekers who belonged to other ethnicities and faith traditions. When we started the Refugee Integration Program that I coordinated in 2005, this congregation became a natural home base for our refugee friends and our ministry.

Its current minister, the Rev. Aaron Stevens has been serving the Scottish Mission since 2006, but we have known each other from our time at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, where we both studied. It’s been a delight to reconnect with him as well as see a few familiar faces from my time in Budapest, people who are still part of this very transient congregation.

Aaron observed that nowadays this “Scottish” church has also become the spiritual home of many ethnic Hungarians who struggle with the ways those in the leadership of the Reformed Church in Hungary align themselves with nationalist governmental politics.

I also learned from him that, true to its long legacy of celebrating cultural diversity and welcoming the stranger, the Scottish Mission now hosts an Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Ukrainian community, who found refuge in Budapest from the war between Ukraine and Russia, joins a Russian Charismatic congregation, a Norwegian choir, and the Scottish congregation with members from across the globe in sharing this space. From 7 am to 5 pm on Sundays, this is a space that provides a true witness to what being neighbors can look like—what it is to negotiate shared life, learn about each other’s distinctiveness, and celebrate the richness and the joy of real communion.



The Scottish Mission set up for the Ukrainian Orthodox worship.

The worship space at the Scottish Mission.

Baptism - hope lives on as people find a new home.

This is it for today, friends. Hope you enjoy the photos I’ve included in my post. More to come next week!

In the meantime, I am grateful for the ways you rally around Nahida’s family as our community grieves her death and prepares to celebrate her life. My prayers continue for Don, for Jean and John, and their families, and all in our Westminster community and beyond whose lives were touched by Nahida.

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.

Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow... No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:38-39)

Grace and peace,

Pastor Enikő