Friday, June 19, 2009

New Districts In Hungary

Two new districts of the Church were created in Hungary. The Miskolc Hungary District consists of four branches in eastern Hungary. The Szombathely Hungary District consists of three branches in western Hungary. Before the first stake was organized in Budapest in 2006, there used to be two districts in the country, one in Budapest and the other in Györ. These two districts were combined in order for the stake to be created. Some of these branches in the new districts are very small, with less than 20 people attending Church each Sunday. Other branches are larger, which is where leadership was most likely taken from. Earlier this year we saw two districts of the Church created in Eastern Europe in Moldova and Romania.

Out of the Eastern European countries which were not a part of the Soviet Union, Hungary has seen the strongest Church growth. Many cities have opened to the preaching of the Gospel in the past two years and there remain several branches, dependent branches, or groups which report directly to the mission or are far from the stake in Budapest. These Church units are concentrated in southern Hungary cities such as Pécs, Kaposvár, Szeged, and Békéscsaba.

1 comment:

Chris said...

My wife and I have just returned to the United States after spending 6 weeks in Hungary visiting my wife's family in Nyíregyháza. There is a branch there, part of the Miskolc District. Although once a large branch with around 50 members at church every week, it now only averages around 10. Consequently, the Nyíregyháza branch is unable to provide any district leadership. It if weren't for the missionaries (who pass the sacrament every week), the branch wouldn't have enough priesthood to call itself a branch.

However, despite this, the church does continue to slowly grow throughout the country as shown by the number of young couples getting married in the temple, as well as the number of temple trips (7) organized to the Freiberg Germany temple each year, and by the number of young men receiving mission calls. The most recent came to a young man by the name of Viktor Vékony from Nyíregyháza who will be serving in Romania, the first Hungarian to be called there.