Hungary is a land-locked country in Central Europe, a little smaller in size than the state of Indiana, having a population of just under ten million.  Hungary was about three times its present size before World War I, when it was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  During World War II, Hungary was squeezed between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.  Following the war, Hungary fell under communism.  The Soviets defeated the Hungarian revolt of 1956 with a crushing military response.  Over time, Soviet control relaxed to such a degree that when communism fell in 1989, the average person hardly noticed a difference.

Lying in the Carpathian Basin, Hungary consists mostly of rolling plains.  The highest hills are about 3,300 feet.  The Danube and Tisza Rivers run through the central part of the country from north to south.  Hungary’s neighbors include Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia.

The winters are cold, humid and cloudy and the summers are warm.  Farms cover about half the land area.  The farms grow wheat, corn, sun flowers, sugar beets and potatoes.  Farmers also raise cattle, pigs, poultry and dairy products.  Hungarian industries include mining, construction materials, chemicals (especially pharmaceuticals), processed food, textiles and motor vehicles.  (Information in the preceding three paragraphs comes from the CIA’s World Factbook.)

Hungarians can be brilliant.  Hungarians invented the first telephone switchboard, the carburator, the ballpoint pen, the safety match, holography, the hydrogen bomb and the Rubik’s cube.  A Hungarian laid the mathematical foundation for computer science.  By far the greatest woman chess player in history is a Hungarian.  A Hungarian doctor won the Nobel Prize for discovering vitamin C.  In all, thirteen Hungarians have won the Nobel Prize, no small achievement for such a small country.  In view of the above, the high value Hungarians put on education should not surprise us.

On the other hand, according to figures compiled by the World Health Organization, Hungary has the fourth highest suicide rate in the world.

According to the 2002 Hungarian census, 52% of Hungarians identify themselves as Roman Catholic, 19% are either Hungarian Reformed or Lutheran, 2.5% are Greek Orthodox and only 0.2% are Baptists, almost all of whom are in the Hungarian Baptist Union, a member of the World Council of Churches.  These figures do not tell of the agressive efforts of the cults (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc.) or the domination of the Charismatics in religious broadcasting.

When we arrived in Hungary in 1999, we became the tenth independent Baptist missionary family working in church planting.  That number has now shrunk to six.  We need more missionaries.