In two different states and in two different years God called us to missions. Dave was 15 living in Pennsylvania when he felt the call of God on his life towards missions, and six years later at the age of 15 in Missouri, Karmi felt a distinct call to pursue missions. Fast forward to the early 1990s when we met, married, and started on the path that would eventually lead us to work as missionaries in Hungary.

Dave feels that you are either called to a type of missions work like youth, children, students or pastoring, or you are called to a country. With open hands, we said, “We are called to Hungary. How can we help?” The Regional Director within Assemblies of God World Missions at the time mentioned that Students for Christ, the European equivalent of Chi Alpha, was not established in Hungary and asked if we would be interested. We started down the path of raising support and arrived in Hungary in 1999. We served Hungarian college students around Hungary for many years.

Life took us in a few different directions, and almost eight years ago we started an international church in Budapest, Hungary. What started out as a small group of 12 in March 2014 has grown to over 200 people on a Sunday morning. We’ve seen so many people from literally around the world find a safe place to grow in Christ, worship, and become family at our church, Riverside Church Budapest (RCB). God has provided partners to come and serve alongside us in our setting. We are breaking through to new areas, as RCB has recently moved to a new building.

For us, watching a person proclaim a life of faith before a water baptism or coming up for prayer at the end of a service and saying they accepted Christ is absolutely amazing. After 23 years we are committed to continuing to lose ourselves in Europe.