Bethlen Almanac 1999 (Ligonier)

Tóparti Egyházmegye - Lakeside Classis

In 1998, five young persons took their confirmation vows and thus became new members in our church with 14 additional who joined. Yet, due to death and other causes our actual increase was only two, making it to 336. In 1998 we had 8 baptisms, 4 weddings and 15 funerals, including 12 church members. Among our guest ministers and lecturers we mention the Rev. Dr. Erzsébet Horváth of Budapest, the Rev. Ágoston Dobos, a doctoral student from Hungary at nearby Ashland, the Rev. József Kászonyi, Unitarian pastor from Budapest, Mr. Imre Fodor, Mayor of Marosvásárhely, Erdély (Romania), Dr. Géza Jeszenszky, Ambassador of Hungary in Washington, and Mr. László Bojtos, Honorary Consul of Hungary in Cleveland. Margaret Molnár Kotnik gave a slide presentation in English about the history of the Cleveland West Side Hungarians. An outstanding church event was the July 11, 1999 joint Baptist-Reformed worship in our church celebrating the centennial of the Hungarian Baptist mission in Cleveland.

Last year we reported that more than 200 hymnals were redeemed for the new one published by the Hungarian Reformed World Consultative Synod. Unfortunately, by the time the money was collected the hymnals were all sold. With the help of printer István Tónk of Kolozsvár, and of the Transylvanian Reformed Synod a new, revised edition was published. We received 250 copies. We can send you a sample of this larger pew edition (14x21 cm) for our cost of $10 plus $3 for postage. We also have some of the pocket edition (12x17 cm) for $10 including postage. Unfortunately, we do not have an organist edition yet, but for most hymns the organist copy for the hymnal used in Hungary is identical. We can mail only sample copies, if you want to place an order for larger quantities request it direct from Kolozsvár.

We had our share of joy and work in organizing many of our social events to the satisfaction of our guests. In addition to the Mother’s Day dinner and several dinner dances, we had our second Annual Hungarian May Festival over the Memorial weekend in 1999. We had about 5000 guests for the four days. Besides the delicious Hungarian foods we presented programs of Hungarian folk costume exhibit, Hungarian and Irish folk dancers, exhibits, bazaar booths, and a complete carnival (merry go around, slides, train rides, go-carts, clowns, etc.). Mr. András Farkas, a virtuoso musician, provided a one-man show worthy for a whole band. He never ran out of popular songs and music for dancing. We had at least 125 volunteers to help in hosting this event; many of them worked all four days.

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