Dominoes

Did you ever feel like things still had loose ends? I'd been wondering what would be next after I got back from Hungary in February.Hoping people would get in touch, that leads would, well, actually lead somewhere.

(Petra de Leeuw Van Veenen, our Dutch house group leader a few years back, would often say Lord, what is the next step? And then she'd go and make some coffee and cakes, because she was Dutch.)

While I was there I had tried to find contact details for the family that lost two children (including the 3 year old boy, the same age my own son was at the time), but the Mayor's office and Red Cross couldn't help. I'd had no news from my local contacts in Devecser, Zsolti and Marianne. Also, the Budapest journalist I met in Kolontar (who helped me not get arrested), Monika Gundisch from GeoMedia, hadn't replied to my follow up emails. Initially she had: I got this...

HELLO MATT, I WERE IN BRUSSELS, SORRY. NATURELLY I'LL HELP YOU, JUST WAIT PLEASE 2-3 DAYS. MONIKA

...which was kind of exciting, in a capital letter sort of way,but nothing since.

The guys at Calvary Chapel in Budapest that I emailed had said they hoped to do long-term follow-up support for families, but that things had become a bit political and they hadn't gotten any further. So I'd been feeling a bit puzzled lately, like doors had closed. But God has taught me to persevere, in prayer and the practical things I can do. I'm like a dog with a bone, a bit relentless. And I watch a lot of thrillers.

Then last week I got a newsletter from Goos Vedder, a Dutch pastor we knew from our Manchester days, a guy who travels widely in Eastern Europe supporting churches there. In it, he mentioned a Dutch friend of his, Stefan Bos, who runs a news agency in... Budapest. So I googled Stefan's contact details, and emailed him about what I'd done in February. He was really encouraging, and he mentioned this article from Nick Thorpe - the BBC journalist who'd covered the story several times over the past year. (Kate got me Nick Thorpe's book 89: The Unfinished Revolution for my birthday. Because she knows how I like to read about Polish trade union reforms before going to bed.)

I wish the BBC would just let me embed the article at the touch of a button, but here's a couple of quotes from it:

Erzsebet and Zoltan Juhasz walk down this way sometimes, to see where their home used to be. They even found a tomato plant, growing among the tall weeds where their garden was. "I dug it up and replanted it in my new garden and now it's full of fruit!" Erzsebet explains. It is the only light moment in a conversation about a subject which is still usually too painful to talk about - the moment when her 14-month-old daughter, Angyalka, was swept from her arms when a tidal wave of red sludge hit their house on 4 October last year.

As we speak in her new kitchen, another little girl, Dori, runs in, laughing hilariously, three years old, wanting to play. Seven-year-old Gergo comes in to listen solemnly to the grown-ups. His father asks him to go out again - both he and Erzsebet are crying - as they tell their story. But the boy stays, and Dori plays, and outside 13-year-old Renata stands by the slide. And Erzsebet is expecting a new baby, a boy, in November. "We've very grateful for all the help we received, from the Red Cross, from the Baptist charity, from the state too, for giving us this house. I mean, they didn't have to, did they? They could have waited for the aluminium company to pay up." Instead, the missing half of Kolontar has been rebuilt in record time, 21 brand new houses on the highest ground in the village.

[There's also a World Service podcast about the recovery effort.]

I already knew the rebuilding was going ahead, because I google stuff every now and then, and a few months ago I saw these images:

(photo: Gergely Botár)

Which showed real progress, but got me wondering about what was really happening, given the compensation and health concerns I'd heard. The government were certainly saying things were on track (thanks to "superhuman effort", they thought.)

I also stumbled across the work Conohar, a photographer doing his PhD at Loughborough University (ironically, my home town, where I did my Masters in finding things out - I mean, Library and Information Studies). He documents environmental damage.

Anyway, back to the latest Nick Thorpe article. It's also peppered with hopeful comments like

People speak of the remarkable regenerative power of nature, and of the unexpected speed and generosity of the state...

There are mentions of promises being kept, surprises, unexpected fruitfulness: I am so glad to have spent time prayer-walking the towns and prophesying God's goodness to them. I choose to join the dots!

It's also the first time I've been able to identify by name one of the families who lost a child, which was one part of my original "quest". I will pray about it, but I hope to make contact with them somehow. I will try to find someone here in Rugby who can translate a letter.

--

Hard to believe all the worldly hype around the football Transfer Deadline Day yesterday. Pundits talked ad infinitum about how a whole stack of deals was waiting for just one deal to fall into place, then the domino effect would kick in.

Waiting. Then one thing falls into place. Then a whole heap of other stuff.

I hope so.