A letter from Burkhard Paetzold in Germany
June 2013
Grace and peace to all of you, dear friends.
In a worship service in my home church last Sunday we sang a hymn from our old German hymnbook, and two of its verses spoke to me in a new way:
Komm in unser reiches Land, der du Arme liebst und
Schwache, dass von Geiz und Unverstand unser
Menschenherz erwache. Schaff aus unserm Überfluss
Rettung dem, der hungern muss.
Come into our wealthy country,
You who love the poor and weak.
So our human heart awakens
From all ignorance and greed
And create from all of our abundance
Rescue for the hungry one.
Komm in unser festes Haus, der du nackt und ungeborgen.
Mach ein leichtes Zelt daraus, das uns deckt kaum bis zum
Morgen; denn wer sicher wohnt, vergisst, dass er auf dem
Weg noch ist.
Come into our solid home,
You the naked, unprotected
Turn it into a thin tent,
That barely covers overnight.
He who safely lives forgets,
How he still is on the road.
(EKG 428, words Hans von Lehndorf)
Jane Rabe of Winnetka PC is talking with a Roma grandmother at the Roma mission center in Nagydobrony.
Over the last two weeks I was blessed to travel with a group from Winnetka Presbyterian Church, near Chicago. I’ve mentioned this mission-minded church in several of my earlier newsletters. Tom and Jeanette Eilers have come to Carpath Ukraine eight times to visit Roma churches and every time they’ve brought new congregation members. This time the church sent 17 people including 8 youth to do hands-on work in support of Roma schools. They helped install a water filter of the Living Waters of the World project and hosted Roma kids who were learning about the importance of “living water” by playing and singing. Other folks furnished a playground or helped set up the Csonkapapi Roma children’s summer camp. Our group also visited schools for Roma kids that had been built and furnished with much support from the Dutch organization “Help for Eastern Europe” and Winnetka’s own contribution.
Winnetka PC youth is playing Ringle Ringle Roses with Roma kids in Szerniye Carpath Ukraine.
But most important, the group learned of the difficulties and joys of our mission partnership with Roma communities in Eastern Europe.
In our final trip debriefing, together with Eszter Dani (head of the Mission Department of Reformed Church of Hungary) and Dick and Carolyn Otterness (Reformed Church of America), the participants felt that the overwhelming joy, openness and welcome by Roma was something very surprising for everybody. In particular the youth found easy access to playing with the kids and having great fun.
Roma kids in Szerniye Carpath Ukraine.
“They have so little and show so much joy,” some said. “And in our communities many kids have so much and are much more reserved…”
When we visited a Hungarian worship service we noted that men, married women, and unmarried women were seated separately and that there are no Roma in the church. We felt this service was very solemn and the mood was completely different compared with the Roma worship we attended later. A joyful crowd of families sat altogether full of song.
Our friend and colleague Eszter said, “I’m sure the Roma communities you visited were truly happy about visitors from that far and when they recognized some came again to show them Christ’s love—but you have to know their life is not at all easy.”
If you had to live here, you would recognize that many Hungarian neighbors are poor and have a difficult life too. To accept Roma isn’t easy for them. To see their hardship too might give us insights about how can we help them build bridges to their Roma neighbors.
It might help them wondering why people came crossing the Atlantic to express their concerns about the situation of the Roma. We might compare that with congregations in the U.S. near Native American reservations and need to hear about the discrimination against the Roma in Europe in order to understand,“Hey, we never tried to reach out to our Native American neighbors.”
House in Peterfalva Carpath Ukraine that is planned to be turned into a mission center and kindergarten for Nadia Ayoub's Roma ministry.
During our trip we also visited the building purchased through the ministry of our PC(USA) mission colleague Nadia Ayoub. The building was bought with Presbyterian Women (PW) donations to become the new Roma mission center and preschool in Peterfalva, Ukraine. I’ve written earlier that Nadia was very brave to start new preschool activities in places where there had been no outreach at all and where Roma people are 99 percent illiterate. Nadia and local helpers started in family homes. It was not easy, but there time built trust. Now this former family home on the main road in the Hungarian part of town is ready for reconstruction and Nadia needs your prayers and support to go on with reconstruction.
Every other year I try to attend the German lay assembly “German Protestant Kirchentag.” This year it took place in May in the city of Hamburg, Germany—a great way of sharing with mission-minded people from near and far. The motto this year was “As much as you need” and referred to Genesis 16–18.
Panel at the German Protestant Kirchentag with Eszter Dani center photo at the courtesy of Amy Lester.
This year the Reformed Church in Hungary with its mission staff and volunteers was very much present. I was invited to attend a panel discussion with Bishop Bölcskei and Eszter Dani, Szabina Sztojka, a Romani student, and Doris Peschke of CCME (Churches' Commission for Migrants in Europe). It became clear that in a situation like it is now in Hungary today witness and ministry of the Church is much needed. And so the mission department has drafted a concept of the church’s holistic ministry among Roma.
In another discussion group, which took place in the memorial place that was once a Nazi concentration camp, Petra Rosenberg read from a book by her father Otto Rosenberg, A Gypsy in Auschwitz. This very much touched my heart. This memory was still with me when I went to see a diaconisse (Sister Rosemarie) who had once worked with Sinti in my own German town during the East German regime. She told many stories and showed pictures and gifts from that time. Most impressive, her co-worker Sister Sieglinde, another late diaconisse, had literally escaped from the diaconissen school to start outreach among German Sinti and became very successful and much loved.
Karen Moritz and I were invited to the yearly Synod of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren in late May so we could learn about the latest developments in the ECCB and meet other partner church delegates. The big issue was the step-by-step yearly decrease in state funding for churches.
Zsuzsanna Jakab local coordinator for the Roma school program of Help for Eastern Europe in Carpath Ukraine visits with Anna Hříbková coordinator for Roma projects of Diakonie VsetinCZ.
But I want to tell you about another trip with Karen and in addition Zsuzsa from Carpath Ukraine in April to visit Diakonie in the Czech town of Vsetin. The Diakonie in Vsetin is very committed to working closely with the Roma in their town and collaborates with other Christian and non-Christian organizations, for instance, Caritas. Diakonie showed us what their partners do. We saw good school integration programs. But Diakonie was also critical regarding programs that segregate Roma, like in some of the housing projects of local municipalities.
I do want to thank you for your prayers and support for my ministry. I’m grateful for each and every one. It is much appreciated and I will try to send personal thank you notes, but may not always have done this in the past, for which I’m sorry.
Good news is coming from Glacier Presbytery. The presbytery is working on the challenge of having 100 percent of its congregations in a relationship with at least one PC(USA) missionary and in particular to support ministry with the Roma people. And, they might be well on its way to being the first presbytery to reach this goal!
I wish all of you a blessed summer season.
Burkhard
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 283
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