Hello from Hungary

The Cokenour Family

The Cokenours heart for Eastern Europe started long ago. Christina was born in Texas to Hungarian immigrants who left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution. This is a snippet of their missions story:

”One of our biggest mission lessons is simply—speak to people in their heart language, even if you can't speak perfectly, and God will help them to receive it. Unless of course you accidentally say something really stupid (for example, the words for bed and brain in Hungarian look like this: agy, ágy). 

When we arrived 8 years ago, it was January, the coldest and darkest of the winter months in Hungary and Christina was the only Hungarian speaker in our family. We desperately needed a preschool for the two youngest Cokes so they could be immersed in language with other young Hungarian children. We also needed time to be able to work together and map out a plan for Terry to learn the language and make connections with other leaders in the region. Hungarians are very suspicious of everyone due to decades of communist rule (among other reasons), but they are especially suspicious of foreigners and outsiders. When finally finding a preschool who would take two non-Hungarian speaking sisters together, later the director would say, "I let you in the door because you said you needed my help." Being suddenly thrust into a culture that was not our own made us dependent on the local people and taught us a level of humility we didn't have before. Our biggest gains in Hungary have often been when we were at our weakest.

We are all, in Christ, aliens and strangers in this world, God in His Word has made that very clear. After 8 years in Hungary we feel God has uniquely equipped us to bridge the gap between local and overseas mission and ministry, and help servant leaders. Now more than ever, we need missionaries all over the world.”

- The Cokenour Family