Bethlen Naptár, 1950 (Ligonier)
Paul Reid Pontius: My adopted family
246 BETHLEN NAPTAR ference in language has been a bit of a barrier to a closer relationship. However, when I think of the Kecskemethys, I do not think of them simply as neighbors, but as friends. We like them and they like us. The finer cultural values of life we all enjoy. We like to go to concerts together, to sing together, to talk with each other, and to be in each other’s homes. And how blest that is! Forth from the Bethlen Home as a center of wholesome influence go radiations of neighborliness and good-will not only to the members of the Federation and the Reformed Church with all its synods and guilds, but also to the distant parts of the earth! And how broadening for me and my family, as well as the members of the congregation which I am serving, it is to know that these neighbors in both the Children’s and Old Folks’ Home are people of Hungarian extraction, and that in that colony we have as friends Joseph and Elizabeth and their two boys! MY ADOPTED FAMILY By Mrs. Paul Reid Pontius Through our good friends, the Kecskemethys, I heard about the Vanyi family of Debrecen, Hungary. It all came about in this manner. My husband, who is a member of the Board of National Missions of our Church, met the Kecskemethys and, being greatly impressed by this noble couple and their splendid work, took me to Ligonier to meet them. On one of these trips, Elizabeth (Mrs. Kecskemethy) told me about the packages she had prepared that day to send to the Widows’ Organization in Debrecen. The stories she told were heart-rending. We became so interested that we asked Mr. Kecskemethy to come to our home the evening of the annual meeting of our Women’s Guild to deliver an address in which he would tell about actual needs in post-war Hungary. In order to make this story more authentic, he read excerpts from several appealing letters. Among these was one from the Widow Vanyi telling of her destitute condition with her four small children. Our women decided to send a package to each member of the Widows’ Organization of the Reformed Church Clergy in Debrecen. Mrs. Vanyi, however, is not a clergyman’s widow, yet her need was obvious. No letter ever made such a fervent appeal; — it went straight to my heart and brought tears of sympathy to my eyes; so I decided to send the Vanyi family a parcel. Such an out-pouring of
