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Fellowship of Ames

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Our Partner Church in
Tordátfalva

Overview

The Unitarian Fellowship of Ames has a partner church in Tordátfalva, Romania, led by the Rev. Lajos Lőrinczi. A delegation from our Fellowship visited Romania in 2004. Rev. Lőrinczi and his wife Tünde were planning to visit us in June 2006 and also attend the UU General Assembly in Saint Louis. Their visit was delayed due to visa problems, but they now have long-term visas, and we hope to receive them in the near future.

After years of crushing oppression under one of the harshest of communist regimes, the Unitarians of Tordátfalva are struggling to reclaim their land, history, language, culture and religion. By partnering with them in that struggle, we show support and respect for their worth and dignity as individuals and as a group of Unitarians. This is something they do not take for granted.

We show support for their freedom to be Unitarians in a country largely Romanian Orthodox, and may learn from them how to survive in difficult times. Through shared friendship and fellowship, we can learn from each other the values of the spirit and learn how to see ourselves more clearly as Americans and as Unitarians — through their eyes.

After initiating this relationship by congregational vote under Sydney Morris' leadership, our Fellowship did nothing to partner with our partner church for many years. With the recent visit of several of our members, we hope to establish a longterm partnering relationship that the Unitarians of Tordátfalva can look to for friendship and strength.

Some Facts

Tordátfalva lies in Transylvania, which is a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania. The Romanian name of the town is Turdeni.

If you like to play with satellite maps and such: Satellite photos of the area are very blurry, but it is possible to make out the town and a larger blob in it which I assume is the village church. According to Google Earth, the church is located at 46° 22' 47.8" North, 25° 6' 9.45" East.

Learn Some Hungarian

In preparation for the visit by our partner church minister, the partner church committee is featuring some Hungarian phrases.

General notes: The accents indicate pronunciation, not stress. Vowels with acute accents are long, otherwise they are short. The stress is almost always on the first syllable. The umlauts are pronounced as in German.

Links

As far as I can tell, all Unitarian web pages in Transylvania were built by two people named William Seaver and Jószef Szombatfalvi. They probably did this in their spare time, with insufficient tools. Many of the links on these sites don't go anywhere.

• Tordátfalvi Unitárius Egyházközség [Tordátfalva Unitarian Congregation]
  This is the web site of our partner congregation. It is entirely in Hungarian. The connection is fairly slow, so I have reproduced the home page below, with my own attempts at translation added. The reproduced page has no working links. (Only a few of the links on the original page work, for that matter).
• Székelykeresztúri Unitárius Egyházkör [Transylvanian Christian Unitarian Churches]
  This is the web site for the district.

TORDÁTFALVI UNITÁRIUS EGYHÁZKÖZSÉG (Tordátfalva Unitarian Congregation)   Történet History Lelkész Minister Képek Pictures Testvérgyülekezet Sister Congregation Egyházkör Church Vendégkönyv Guestbook Posta Mail Villámposta Email

The only interesting working link from this site is "Képek" (pictures), which I have reproduced below. There are no descriptions given. Click on a picture to see a larger version.