Exclusive interview with Jocelyn & Paul Gracza – Missionaries serving in Hungary

Do you know exactly what a missionary is? And what they do? Meet Jocelyn and Paul Gracza who came to Hungary from the USA 25 years ago. They have served in various capacities over the years and have devoted their lives to helping others. They were enchanted by our country, nation, culture and feel very much at home here.

Have a cup of tea or coffee, sit back and let us introduce to a lovely couple – get to know their stories, life and goals.

DailyNewsHungary: When and how did you come here? What were our goals? Why Hungary?

Paul: We arrived on the 6th of December, 1990. We came to work with the Pentecostal Churches here in Hungary. When I was 19 years old, I felt very strongly in my heart that the Lord was leading me to be a minister, but also to be a missionary to Hungary. My background is Hungarian; my grandfather grew up in Nagybörzsöny, my grandmother in the Szeged area.

Jocelyn: When we arrived on the 6th of December, we didn’t know that it was ‘Mikulás nap’ and our supervisor took us out to the Citadel. It was right at dusk, the lights of the city were just turning on, there was light snow and we had our daughter with us who was 10 months old. He looked at the city and said “Paul and Jocelyn, this is your new city.” It was a very special moment for us; it became our home that moment. The roots of our heart and soul went into the ground of Hungary and they’ve never been pulled out.

DailyNewsHungary: Who is a missionary? What do you do exactly?

Paul: We are supported from churches and people in America. So our financial funding comes from churches mostly. They also pray for us. As missionaries we’re sent out from churches there to help the church here in Hungary just to continue to develop with the programmes and the churches that they have already and help them to grow more. We work in partnership with the Hungarian Pentecostal Church (Magyar Pünkösdi Egyház). We try to help facilitate and work alongside the goals they have as a church.

Jocelyn: When we came, they had a very strong need to start their own college. They didn’t have pastors trained to take the pulpit in some of the churches and there were retiring pastors who didn’t have a follow-up pastor to take their spot. They asked us to help start a college so that they would have a seminary where they could train people to work within their churches. The other thing we helped with was church building, creating their own spaces where they could meet. We would have teams come from the States to help them physically in building their churches.

DailyNewsHungary: Paul, you are the director of the Pentecostal Theological Church. How does that fill up your life?

Paul: We helped a lot starting it, developing the curriculum, helping with teachers; and we had a Hungarian director for the first 5-6 years. Then, he became ill and the Pentecostal Movement in Hungary asked me to step in to be the director. It started out as a temporary thought but I’ve been working with them for 17 years now. It’s been a great joy to see the college develop. In the beginning they had 15 students, now we have 175 students so it’s still a small college in terms of the Hungarian higher educational system. I’m there most of the days doing administrative work and I also teach classes. We have a great team, I’m the only non-Hungarian, which has been an interesting aspect to the job but we work together very well as a team.

Jocelyn: So in the beginning, we didn’t have a curriculum and teachers. We would have two-week block sessions where we would teach two classes at a time for two weeks. One teacher would be a Hungarian and we would have the other come from the States who would pay for the translation of his course. We were able to translate textbooks just by having teachers come from the States and be guest teachers. Then, as Paul said, we were able to transfer into a completely Hungarian based college. This transition was a real success for us.

DailyNewsHungary: Jocelyn, how could you help as a mother and wife?

Jocelyn: We made the specific decision to have our children invest in the Hungarian life. We chose to live as Hungarian as we could. We didn’t want to live an expat life; we wanted our children to live Hungarian. I went to education consultants to find the best way to help them. They said that in order for them to have an educational level of the language, they needed to start nursery school at 3. So although it was hard, we did that. Also, in the first 7 years I was the editor of Lydia magazine (still exists today and is doing wonderful), which is the first ecumenical Christian women’s magazine. I was working a lot and the children were with the babysitter, they spoke Hungarian the same level they spoke English. Then came primary school and we wanted all three children to go to Hungarian schools which we knew would be hard. So Paul asked me if I would give 10 years to being an at-home mom to help partner with our children through school. I stepped out of the magazine and went to being a full-time mom.

DailyNewsHungary: What did you know about Hungary before coming here?

Paul: Well, since my grandparents grew up in Hungary and continued the traditions in the USA, we knew some of the foods, the culture, saw some pictures and I remember a few words from my childhood like ‘nagymama’, ‘nagypapa’, ‘bejgli’, ‘köszönöm’.

DailyNewsHungary: How did your opinion of the country and nation change throughout the time?

Jocelyn: When we first came, we went to language school for about 7 months, Paul continued for longer. He is much better at grammar but I think I have a wider vocabulary. I knew German so I tried using it but our language teacher told me that ‘You live in Hungary so quit speaking German and start learning Hungarian!’ She loved her culture and thaught us to love it as well. She took us to special places because she believed that we have to experience the culture, the people and architecture etc. When I would go to the market everything was new to me and people were kind to me. I would point at things and they would help me. They were also honest with me, when I would put my hands out with my money, they would fish through it to find the right amount. I was very impressed with the hard-working and kindness. We went through everything with the Hungarians. When we came here, it was the first year after the change of regime. Since then, we went through all the changes with them. I think it is very much a part of what we are that we have grown with the people.

Paul: We made a conscious decision to try to make friends with as much Hungarians as we could and that helped us with the language and getting an understanding of the people. That made our transition much easier.

DailyNewsHugary: How did you manage to integrate? Do you have some of your helpers still with you in your life?

Paul: Yes, we do. The Pentecostal Church already had an apartment set aside for us so we got to know the daughter of the owner and her boyfriend. Then there was another individual who helped us with getting some appliances. We still know them, they are from the church and we have been friends for 26 years now. Luckily, we had many people who helped us with integration. Our friendships are such that if we don’t understand something we can ask for clarification easily. We feel very much at home here but we don’t always understand a 100% of what’s going on.

DailyNewsHungary: It seems like the language was the biggest difficulty for you. Do you have some funny stories that you would like to share with us?

Jocelyn: One day I went to the market and I didn’t know that I had to bring my own bag. I wanted to by these big cellophanes, but I didn’t have a bag so I asked the cashier if I could have one. She said no. Then I said ‘Oh, you’re right, I’ll pay for it’ but she very rudely told her colleague that I just want it for souvenir. I told her ‘No’ but she angrily tucked my cellophanes into a paper bag. I got very frustrated and marched home to Mari, who was our first babysitter. She could see that I was very angry and asked what was wrong and I told her ‘Meleg vagyok.’ instead of ‘Elegem van.’ (She basically said ‘I’m gay’ instead of ‘I’m pissed off’) She knew my husband so was pretty sure that wasn’t accurate. I was glad I told this to her not somebody else. ☺

Paul: I remember early on when we were just learning the language; we were in Nagykőrös and had a programme at the cultural centre. I was just going to greet everyone and I wanted to say a few words in Hungarian about myself. I wanted to say how nice it is to have a wife and how much I love my wife. But instead of saying ‘Feleségem van’ I said ‘Felesegem van’. (This meant ‘I have a half-bottom’ instead of ‘I have a wife’) There was a lot of laughing and I didn’t understand why. Then someone told me the reason and I really understood how big of a difference accentuated letters make. So yes, we had many funny stories. ☺

DailyNewsHungary: Can you tell us about the Pentecostal Community and what place it has among the other churches?

Paul: The Hungarian Pentecostal Church has been here probably since 1928. It started out as a small movement than they started to plant churches. Today we have around a total of 125 churches and maybe 20000 people who are part of the church throughout the country. There are a lot of ministries and activities that the church has. We have a retirement home in an area called Kadarkút. We have a women’s rehabilitation home in Dunaharaszti. We have the college. We have a very effective ministry to the gypsies and many people who work with that. We have elementary schools, a few nursing schools, a music school that opened recently. So we are a recognised church organisation in Hungary and we are part of the Ministers Alliance and the Ecumenical Alliance of Churches.

DailyNewsHungary: You just got back from your one-year ‘tour’ in the States. What was the aim of it?

Paul: Our work here in Hungary is kind of a five-year cycle. We spend four years here and then return to the States for one year to give an accounting of our work. This helps us to meet again with the churches that support us. So it is a year of travelling and work. This time we drove over 62 000 kilometres and flew a little bit more. We had 105 church services, 125 meetings with different pastors and people. So the main focus is to re-establish relationship with the churches that help us and support us to be able to stay here.

Jocelyn: We visited 31 states in the last year. We didn’t go back for this accounting year for the last twenty years because our children were nationally educated.  During that time we only went back in the summer for a few months. But we had to commit and do it now.

DailyNewsHungary: Only the two of you came back. How different is your life now that all of your children have grown up and are living their own lives?

Paul: I think it has been easier for me than Jocelyn. I’m very happy for many reasons but mostly because they’re all in a good place. Our three children are either working or studying or doing what they had wanted to do. For a parent this is very satisfying and a good feeling to know that they are doing things that they enjoy. The house is quieter; the tempo of our life has slowed just a little bit.

Jocelyn: I’m working on being happy. ☺ During the day it is good because I’m busy, but after supper it’s hard to get used to how quiet it is and that I don’t have pick anyone up. I have this constant feeling that I’ve forgotten to do something. I have a very independent husband who serves himself and now I don’t have anybody to do something for. So I try to serve him but he looks at me wonderingly. Also when you’re a full-time mom, it is hard going back to not being a mom actively and figuring out a new note to your life. Our children are very faithful in communicating with me so that makes it much easier. And our grandchild is adorable!

DailyNewsHungary: Do you feel like you need to take up a new role?

Jocelyn: I’ve been asked to teach English in the grammar school that our children went to. I see that as an ability to invest in teenagers. I have a lot of classes, I’m teaching 12 hours a week. Hungary has given our children an education and taken care of them. I feel really honour-bound to give back. What I’m doing there is volunteering. I’m also teaching in the Forrásház Gondozási Központ once a week. So I feel very much invested in the people. I’m trying to find ways to be invested in the life around me when it is not raising my children. This is a new area for me.

DailyNewsHungary: You came here with many plans. Do you think that you have succeeded with your goals?

Paul: I think we did. Our goal has always been to help as much as we can and encourage as much as we can. We have been helpful in starting new areas of church ministry. When I was younger I had a vision that I wanted to travel a lot and go to many different churches to preach and to talk about the bible. But as the director of the college I found that the investment we had made in the lives of many students, because it’s really WE, we’re there together; those investments lead to them doing something deeper, much more lasting than I could do by travelling around and visiting. So we tried to invest our lives into people in a way that it would multiple their effectiveness in their activities.

Jocelyn: That investment when you see the lives lived out in front of you…; it really matters to have that connection with people. The teenagers I’m working with now, I worked with their parents who were teenagers when we came here. It’s really been very special to be able to see the generations being changed.

DailyNewsHungary: Does this last forever? What does the future hold in store for you?

Paul: I think that we will stay as long as we’re able to continue to help. I mentioned that the Pentecostal Church has a retirement home…I always kid with that because the director there is one of our graduates and I tell him that I’ll bring a can of paint and paint our room for when we retire. ☺ But seriously, I don’t know if we’re actually going to retire here. Realistically we have about another 15-20 years of ministering and living here in Hungary. I’m 55, she is much younger than I am – ‘I’m a child’ jokes Jocelyn – I hope to stay until we’re 68-70 years of age and be able to keep helping and do our things.

Jocelyn: I am hoping that some of our children will find their way back home to Hungary after they finish their education. Their roots are here, but I also understand if there futures are elsewhere. Thankfully the world is a smaller than in past times and we can catch a flight and be together.

We wish the best for the Gracza family!

Written by Alexandra Béni

Source: Daily News Hungary