Bethlen Naptár, 1950 (Ligonier)
Joseph Kecskeméthy: On in the bonds of Christian love
242 BETHLEN NAPTAR at Tiffin, Ohio; Cedar Crest at Allentown, Pa., and Elmhurst at Elmhurst, 111. The fifth conference was held at Doane College, Crete, Nebraska, a school of the Congregational Christian Churches. All women who registered for these summer conferences in 1948 were asked to bring at least two skeins of embroidery floss each as their gift to the Hungarian Floss Project. Thus the nation-wide floss campaign was launched. I attended the three-day conference at Hood College in July of that year. After our first evening meal in the spacious dining hall, the floss was collected from all present (about 250 women), placed on a huge tray and given to me to accept in the name of European women of my faith and my extraction. The tray, filled with hundreds of skeins of vivid-colored floss, resembled a rainbow and symbolized for all of us God’s own rainbow, connecting American and Hungarian women of the same faith living an ocean apart! We laid this symbol of love and understanding on the altar of God and through prayer, dedicated it to His glory. No eye remained tearless. We felt the nearness of God; we understood that His wish is that His children be drawn closer and closer together until we are all one in the bonds of Christian love. Similar services were held at the other conferences. From these conferences, the women carried the message to their individual guilds. The Bethlen Home was named as one depository. The first rich and colorful parcels were received at Ligonier last summer. More and more arrived, till on November 15th we had shipped our first parcels, 95 pounds in all, to Mrs. Zsindely, president of the Hungarian Reformed Women’s Association at Budapest, for distribution among her church women. Others were shipped to the Girls’ School and the Medical Center, both of the Hungarian Reformed Church. Art thread poured in, so that our next shipment of 257 pounds was made on January 11, 1949, while another shipment of 62 pounds was forwarded on February 17 to Mr. Thomas Esze, superintendent of the Reformed Church Orphanage and the Deaconess Home at Budapest, to the orphanage at Saj ósenye, in Borsod County, to the pastors’ widows of Debrecen, to the Old Age Home, to Dr. Andor Enyedi, Bishop at Miskolc, as well as to Hungarian DP’s in Austria and Germany. Since no more shipments could be made directly to Hungary because of the heavy duty imposed on these gifts by the government, we are now forwarding the floss and yarn to DP’s in Austria and Germany, as well as in Italy. Three large shipments have gone directly to these points thus far (Oct.
