Children are Precious

Children are precious.  Hungarian children especially so!  Partly because the most recent government began providing tax cuts for parents per child,  with three children per marriage the goal,(and the past Prime Minister and his wife set a good example by having five), but also to counter the common use of abortion as birth control in a nation frightened by its declining birthrate.

Children are precious.  Hungarian children especially so!  Partly because the most recent government began providing tax cuts for parents per child,  with three children per marriage the goal,(and the past Prime Minister and his wife set a good example by having five), but also to counter the common use of abortion as birth control in a nation frightened by its declining birthrate.Therefore it is with great pleasure that we watch double lines of young students going past on their way to a program at Parliament or a visit to a museum.  We think they look particularly bright and attractive and well-behaved.  More specifically, we were delighted to learn that the Youth Center on our street had drawn up plans for a modern new building and program, including a swimming pool on the roof, just two blocks away from us.
 
Always, here, some preliminary digging must be done before construction can be approved.  The new Youth Center site would lie smack-dab up against an inside portion of Pest’s old 13th century wall.  (This wall, centuries before there ever was a Budapest, had not only protected its people from foe and flood,  but demarked a gathering of Roman Catholicism inside and any other ’religions’, such as l6th century Protestantism’s churches outside.)  Well, the digging unearthed a whole village lying just under the soil,  its roof beams propped into notches cut into the old Pest wall, its wine cellars cooled by the wall’s massive base stones, individual houses shown in partial wall outlines.  No way could a Youth Center be grounded there at the demise of these old archeologic ruins.
 
So, history was covered over, except for the old Pest wall which still rises some twenty-five feet above the ground.  And the 3-lot area in front of it  has been turned into a lush green playgound with equipment and space available for different age levels to play without colliding.  We walk by daily, and cherish the sight of tiny new faces finding friends and kinesthetic skills and their place in Hungarian history against the backdrop of the old Pest wall, scarred and marked by centuries of use and mortared to stand for generations yet to come.  The children who play here can’t be just like any other children, can they?
 
Coralyn T. Medyesy,  Missionary in Hungary

Coralyn Medyesy is a missionary with the Reformed Church in Hungary, based in Budapest, Hungary.  She serves as a Teacher of Social Work and Diakonia at the Nagy Koros School.