I Want to be a Christian: Nikki's Story

        	              

 “I became a Christian in 2008,” says Nikoletta (or Nikki), a Hungarian university student living in Budapest.


Nikki recently sat down with us to share the story of how she began to follow Jesus. A video of her testimony was shown at the 2011 Hungary Summit in Manhattan, Kansas, and the full video can be viewed on the ReachGlobal Budapest City Team’s Vimeo channel.


“I grew up in a religious family – but not so religious. My father is very religious, but my mother and my sister and my brother, they are not. I had to go to church almost every Sunday, but I was always looking for an excuse to stay home.


“My mother heard about this English camp one summer. I was 14 years old then, having just finished primary school. My mother told me that it sounds like a very good camp, because we could afford the cost and the teachers were from the United States. I was very excited about it until my mother told me that it was kind of a religious camp, too. When I heard that there would be Bible teaching, I decided that I wouldn’t like to go, because I didn’t like this sort of thing.


“But I did go, this is the first place that I heard about God and Jesus, like someone you can know, not just the God who is sitting in the cloud watching the earth. At that point, Jesus wasn’t important in my life. I knew that, yeah, he was the Son of God, and that he died and rose, but that was all. We didn’t talk about him in my family.



Christians are different



“But at this camp, people talked about Jesus. And I remember that they were happy and calm. I could tell that they liked their lives. They were just different. You know, Christians are always just different. After the camp was over, I kept going to a weekly English club, where we had English lessons, Bible study, prayer, and dinner.


“I think at that time, I started to think about being a Christian. Before that English camp, I never heard that it was my choice to be a Christian. Coming from a religious family it was just do good things, nice things, and pray every night.



Give me the gift!



“After going to the English club for a while, I started wanting to be a Christian, but I couldn’t. It was like, before that, I didn’t accept the gift. I was always asking God to ‘Give me the gift!’, but I didn’t accept it. I just kept asking Him to give it to me, but I didn’t ever accept it! 


“But this one time, when a guy was leading in prayer, I realized, ‘God, you mean, that’s all? I just have to say that I accept what you did for me, and please forgive me my sins, and I want to be a Christian? I just have to accept it, and stop asking for it?’ I was so surprised, and so happy, to know that I could finally become a Christian!


To hear the rest of Nikki’s story, including how she struggled as a new believer, how she was discipled by a missionary in Budapest, how God is currently working in her life, and her hopes for what God will do in her country, watch Nikki’s story on our Vimeo site: vimeo.com/channels/hungary. 



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