Budapest: 1-2-3

In January I traveled to Budapest, Hungary. I know this blog post is a bit late, but I still want to share with you 3 highlights of the trip.

1. EuNC Faculty Assembly
Every year at the end of January, European Nazarene College (EuNC) holds an assembly of the teaching faculty from all of its learning centers.

EuNC Faculty in Budapest

Until just a few years ago, this meeting was always held on the campus in Buesingen, Germany. However, in the years since the school discontinued its residential program to focus entirely on developing the learning centers, the faculty assembly has been hosted by a different learning center each year.

The faculty assembly is a time for hearing reports from the different learning centers, sharing ideas, and learning together how to better meet the needs of students. This year’s special speaker was Dr. Mark Maddix, Dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministries at Northwest Nazarene University.

EuNC has 15 learning centers in 16 countries across Europe and the former Soviet Union training church leaders and preparing them for ordination. Here in Romania, we have over a dozen EuNC students taking classes. I'm currently preparing to teach in two of EuNC Learning Centers in Central Europe later this year.

Below is a video about EuNC’s mission to be one school in many nations.



2. Manual Translation Summit

Manual Translation Summit participants from Albania,
Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Russia, and Ukraine

You may remember that a year ago I attended the Manual Translation Summit in South Carolina, with people from around the world working on translating the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene into their languages. Out of that meeting came the idea to have a similar summit for European languages. For the past several months, I’ve been serving as liaison to organize the event.

Since about half of the participants are also involved with EuNC, we decided to have the Translation Summit immediately after the Faculty Meeting – at the same location in Budapest. There were 10 language groups represented. Some of these groups have already begun updating their translations of the Manual to the current (2013-2017) version. Others have an older version (2005-2009 or even 1997-2001). There others which don’t yet have a Manual, so their first priority is translating the Articles of Faith.

Event Coordinators and Hosts
representing German, 
Hungarian & Romanian

In addition to receiving instruction on translating the Manual, participants also learned about the broader literature translation process, received training on professional translation software, and were introduced to the Wesleyan-Holiness Digital Library.

As literature coordinator for Romania, I was glad to have several of my questions answered about how we need to proceed with our next literature projects following the completion of the Manual. (I'll save that for a later blog post.)

3. Sightseeing
You can’t travel to Budapest without seeing the sights. Even with full days of meetings, there were breaks in our schedule to allow for seeing this historical city. Below are a few pictures I took while in Budapest.

Buda Castle, by the Danube River

Parliament Building

St. Matthew's Church

A duplicate of the Sighisoara (Segesvar) Clock Tower

Click here to view additional pictures I took while in Budapest.