C: Tell me your background.
M: I was born in Mongolia. I was 12 years old when my family moved to Hungary. We moved because my parents wanted their children to grow up in a European country. They saw that there was the possibility of a good life, good standard of living in Hungary. In Mongolia life was very hard. I don’t know exactly why Hungary is where they ended up except that there was the opportunity to come to Hungary. They came with a Mongolian group to a small village not far from Budapest. There was work there for both my dad and mother in a factory.
C: Do you remember Mongolia?
M: A little bit. My grandmother still lives there and my mother’s and father’s brothers and sisters still live there. But I have never been back.
C: When your family came to Hungary were they Christians?
M: No. When we came to Hungary our family was Buddhist. My mother’s parents were Buddhist and my mother was Buddhist but dmy father he didn’t really follow Buddha. Then when we came to Hungary by little sister was 9 years old and she met a girl who was a Christian. That little girl shared the gospel with my sister and she became a Christian. She started visiting a Christian church and began participating and accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior. At that time I was 14 years old. We saw the difference this made in my sister’s life. She was very happy. We asked her why she was so happy, always smiling and so joyful and she said that it was because she believed in Jesus Christ and was with others that loved Jesus. She was always praying and reading a black book-The Bible. My older brother and I were always laughing at her and telling her “What are you doing? You are Buddhist. You are not allowed to believe in a foreign God.” Then she would cry. But then some time later, I became really curious as to what my sister was doing in that church. She was always coming home from that Baptist church so happy. So out of curiosity, I started going to the meetings with her. It took me one year to really understand what Christianity is and why many people believe and what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So when I was 16 years old I became a Christian. My sister and I then began praying for my parents and whenever we had an opportunity we shared the Gospel with them. My parents said it was OK for us to go to church but they told us not to speak about Jesus Christ because they didn’t want a religious war in the family. We had many idols on our walls because when you are Buddhist, you don’t have to go to temple you can just worship in your own house.
Then our whole church started praying for my parents. They prayed for three years for my parents. During that time my parents went back to Mongolia to visit and they asked us what gifts we would like them to bring back for them. My sister and I told them that we wanted no gifts only that they would go to a Mongolian Christian church and listen to the Gospel in Mongolian while they were there; that’s the only gift we wanted. So when they went to Mongolia they did what we asked and heard the Gospel in their own language and their hearts were ready and they understood and they started believing in Jesus Christ. When they came back to Hungary, they threw all their idols away and began following Jesus. After that Janet D. began discipling my parents.
C: How did they come to know Janet D.?
M: I had met Janet D. at the Baptist church I was going to and we became very good friends. I asked her to teach me English and she agreed. She also taught me many things from the Bible about God. I told her about my parents becoming Christians but that they knew nothing about Christianity, she agreed to meet with them and teach them. They didn’t even have a Mongolian Bible. So my pastor at the Baptist church got them a Mongolian Bible. Janet would teach them in Hungarian and then I would translate into Mongolian. My parents then began sharing their faith with their friends. They really felt that this was the real living God-very different from Buddhism. My parents invited their friends to a Bible study meeting. We had this Bible study group for one year, and then my parents prayed for a pastor to come from Mongolia to start a Mongolian church. We invited a Mongolian pastor to come who was a gifted evangelist. Many Mongolians came to believe in Jesus Christ through his preaching. But then the pastor needed to go back to Mongolia because he had his own church there. So then my father after being a Christian for only two years accepted the calling from God to be the pastor of our church. God told him that he had to lead this small Hungarian Baptist church. At first he worked in the factory and as a pastor. But God blessed us so now he doesn’t have to work in the factory but just as the pastor. Now both my parents are working together in the church. They are serving God and the Mongolians in Budapest. Our church is made up of all Mongolians and all the preaching and teaching is in Mongolian.
C: Tell me more about yourself. Why did you come to KRE? How did you get to know Anne-Marie?
M: I got to KRE through Janet D. and Anne-Marie. They both suggested that I take the course on climate change in the church but I don’t attend this university. I am at another technical and economic university here in Budapest. This is my last year in getting my bachelors degree in international communications. When I complete this degree, I would like to continue my studies and get my masters degree in international development. Eventually I would like to work with a non-profit corporation like Baptist Love Inc. They have 3 or 4 offices here in Budapest doing humanitarian work. This kind of work really interests me so that’s why I want to get a further degree in international development. But I need to reach a certain level in my exams so that I can qualify for a scholarship.
C: Tell me about the courses you took with AMK.
M: I really liked the course on climate change in the church because of the interaction within the class. It was more than just the normal lecture by a professor. There were about 20 people in the class. We had very interesting topics that were very practical for life. We visited the Chinese church and the Korean church and then discussed what our experience taught us and how it affected us.
C: How can others find out about the courses that we offer? Do you have any ideas about how we can advertise?
M: I think in many universities there are many Bible study groups. You could visit these groups and tell them about the courses or seminars. When I told my friends about the climate change course, they were very interested because the course was very useful to me. In that course I met a guy who had a stereotype about Chinese people until he went to the Chinese church and interacted with the other Christians there. There were Chinese brothers who were really kind and they invited the class to have dinner with them. Then this guy gained a better understanding of Chinese people. Before that he only saw Chinese people from the market or restaurant so his stereotype was based on that. But now he knew them personally and it changed his impression.
C: We are thinking of having a coffee shop. Do you have any ideas about this?
M: The first thing is that there are many foreign students coming to Budapest that are very alone and would look for a place to meet and have conversation with other students. I once saw a sign that said “You have opportunity to practice your English”. If you would advertise like this and open up an area where students could practice their English for free, I think there would be students interested in this. It would be good to have a nice comfortable atmosphere with coffee and a person to talk with; a place where students could feel at home.
C: What is your hope for the future of the church and for the future of Hungary?
M: My hope for the Mongolian church is that it reaches more Mongolian people here for God. There is a lot of movement between Mongolia and here. We have a dream that there will be Mongolians here in Budapest that will grow in their faith and that God will call them to go back to Mongolia as missionaries. My parents are open to God’s leading in their own lives in this direction. As for my future, I feel called to stay here in Hungary. I don’t know yet what will happen in my life. I have a Hungarian boyfriend who is not Mongolian. He is studying to be a pastor and we planned to get married. He comes from a Christian family and he is going to a Baptist seminary.
C: How did you meet?
M: This summer, I went to a Christian camp and he was a leader of a group. We had an opportunity to share our testimonies and I observed in him a wisdom and spiritual maturity. We met and we talked and I really saw his love for Jesus Christ. This attracted me to him. Then this past November we met again and he said “Mogi, I have been praying and fasting for 3 months and God has shown me that you will be my wife.” I was really surprised and said how do you know this? He said that he was 100% sure and that when we met he observed how I served the Lord and he was attracted to me but he wanted to be sure so he fasted and prayed for God to show him if I was the one to be his wife. God gave him some scripture and prophesy that showed that I would be his wife. He said that he wanted to give me time to pray about it but he was sure that God would lead me to him. So I agreed to pray about this but God had already been preparing me for this because a month before this my girlfriends and I had begun a prayer group to pray for our future husbands. I prayed for real peace about this and God has given me peace. Previously, I had written the attributes that I would want in a husband and my boyfriend has all these attributes. So God showed me that he should be my husband. So I called him and said what God has shown me, but first I need to get to know him better before we move on to marriage. So we see each other one day each week and talk to each other on the phone each night and email each day to get to know each other not just based on physical attraction but on who we really are. We are able to be much more objective and not just base it on our emotions.
C: Is there a traditional Mongolian way of finding a husband leading to marriage?
M: Traditionally parents choose for their children. My parents were chosen for each other; but now in Mongolia many children choose for themselves. It’s very important to me to have my parent’s approval. So right away I told my parents about what my boyfriend had said and I asked them for their prayers. My father and mother said that they have peace about my decision and when they met him they saw with their spiritual eyes that he would be a good husband for me.
C: Thank you for taking this time to let me interview you. Do you have anything else to say?
M: I would like to ask you if you hear of any non-profit corporation that I might get in contact with that you would let me know.
