When Clarissa Hunter realized she could graduate from college a semester early, she was interested.
She wanted to travel, but not on simply a pleasure trip, she recalls: “I wanted to be doing something worthwhile.”
So she reached out to Greenwood-based One Mission Society, where she had been an intern during one of her summers as a college student. After graduating from Huntington University, she went to Hungary, working on weekly children’s programs and planning a summer English camp.
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She later returned there in a more long-term role and is remaining beyond her initial two-year commitment that would have concluded in March, working as a communications and ministry coordinator for an OMS team in Budapest.
Hunter recently visited her family and offered an in-person update at Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine. Since returning to her work overseas, she’s also corresponded via email with the Daily Reporter; here are some excerpts from that conversation.
How did you come to be interested in doing this?
It seemed as if Hungary would be the most challenging opportunity. But, it also seemed like the best opportunity to use all sides of the gifts and personality God gave me — both my love of detail and organization and my love of working face-to-face with kids. The internship would allow me to do both by planning their English Camp for the summer and doing programs with Roma kids a few days a week.
Describe what you’re doing there.
I handle most of the communications our team puts out — creating, editing and organizing content. I am also heavily involved in running our English Ministries including our Summer English Camps and our English Clubs throughout the year. I manage the process of camp, working with a team to produce a great camp where kids can learn, think deeply about who they are and hear about who Jesus is.
We stay connected with those kids during the year through English clubs. I help to organize these as well and assist in leading one of them, getting to spend time with the kids each week and build deeper relationships with them. Other parts of my role vary depending on the time of year and other ministries we have going on.
Have any past experiences helped prepare you for this?
I view life as whole, and I believe that most of our experiences play into one another in one way or another. I can look at things I learned as a kid and still see those lessons in my life as an adult.
For example, my mom and dad chose to homeschool us. It turns out that that experience of often working independently from too much imposed structure and the responsibility of learning to manage time and responsibilities well, has enabled me to work in the highly flexible and changing atmosphere of missions. Many times, I have had to figure out and create my own structures in this job, and I believe that early introduction to such environments has enabled me to be rather disciplined in doing that.
I can also look back through my life and see the way God was working to teach me certain lessons that I would face again here. It is hard to anticipate what insecurities and issues will emerge when you move to a completely foreign place with a new language, new people, a new culture, and a new job. It turns out, there were a lot of them for me. The last two years have been a constant process of striving to remember who I am in the Lord and what he has and is still teaching me — through that identity in him, he can use me in the lives of others.
What might the average American not know about daily life there?
Hungary is a very developed and modern place, but it sits on layers of history. In the capital city alone, where I live, you can see (and sometimes feel in customs and foods) the remains of Communism, of World War II, of the Hapsburg Empire, of the Ottoman era and even of Roman colonization. In my daily life, I can stroll the remains of centuries.
Budapest itself is also a very international city, so in addition to history, you can also meet people from all over.
What have you learned so far from this experience? What have been the spiritual lessons?
I have learned that I don’t know and can’t do anything. That might seem dramatic or discouraging, but the truth is that I am nothing without the Lord. I am constantly in contact here with different cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, circumstances, and understandings of the world. It is hard to reconcile them all into a Midwestern, evangelical mindset. They just don’t fit. This has stretched me to seek the Lord more deeply for who he really is, not my contextual understanding of who he is. There are truths about him that are the same regardless of culture, including his power to save and transform the heart. I have spent a lot of time praying that he would show me what transformation looks like in lives so different from my own.
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To join those receiving regular updates from Clarissa Hunter, email her at [email protected]. "Prayer is a huge blessing," she wrote.
To financially support her, look online at Onemissionsociety.org/give/ClarissaHunter. There is information on that page to give online, and tabs on the left explain giving through the mail.
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