A Transylvanian experience: Rev Kirsty Thorpe

In summer 1992, Jennifer Davies and I went to a theological conference in the village of Ilieni in Transylvania, having travelled with a coachload of Hungarian ordinands from Budapest.

The conference centre had been built with financial help from Reformed Christians in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany. The minister, Kato Bela, was running a project to foster orphan families long term with childless couples, and had great plans to get a medical centre and other facilities to the village.

We got to know quite a few of the students, both Romanian and Hungarian, and had a rich taste of Eastern European styles of worship, theological education and the way Romania was soon after the fall of the old regime.

I had already got to know quite a few Hungarians from the period when John Morgans had been Moderator of Wales in the 1980's and made his first visit there, which resulted in the choir from Debrecen coming to sing.

Last summer Tamas Sugar anda Marta, who had been in ministry in Darwen near here, came to lunch and when I showed them photos of the Transylvania trip they knew a lot of the people I'd met. They were amazed that I'd had that experience.