Anikó Végh
Mental health and organisational development specialist, therapeutic self-awareness group leader

I graduated as a mental health and organisational development specialist at the SOTE, and as a psychodrama assistant at the Hungarian Psychodrama Association.

I have a degree in nursing and I am currently leaving the medical field to lead therapeutic self-awareness groups, mainly on relapse prevention, assertiveness and behavioural addictions. In my groups, we often use and incorporate the potential of psychodrama as a non-verbal group therapy method for recovery. In addition, I try to contribute to this change and development through individual case management and supportive conversation.

I am particularly fond of the organisational and planning tasks, which are mainly related to the image of our institution, networking and maintaining our professional relations.

I have been working at the institution for seven years, and I feel my main task is to pass on my experience that there is hope and that it is worth fighting and working for change, even if it is a lifelong project.

In the work of self-knowledge, knowledge of God is very important in rewriting the negative image of ourselves or of others, and it is an indispensable help in getting out of our comfort zone, our bondage.

When I leave my role at work, I rest in my mothers, and vice versa. I like to recharge from good conversations, trips, sports, but I also get inspired by a good film or a good read. What turns me on most is being close to nature and sitting by the water.

Beáta Kovács
Social and mental health worker

I am a theological social worker and addiction counsellor by training.

My duties include running therapy group sessions, ordering medication, taking inventory, baking project supervisor.

I applied to college because I had a divine calling to help people. It was during my years in the workplace that I realised my place was in sessions on codependency, cognitive delusions and personal boundaries.

In my spare time I like to read lots of books. 

We are also developing a new project, baking cakes for events. As this is still in its infancy, I'm working hard to make it work.

Valéria Kecser

Nursing and therapy staff

I perform my duties through my qualifications as a general nurse, assistant, addiction specialist and occupational therapist. These include housekeeping, mindful living education, creative activities and vocal coaching.

Ágnes Bandzsál

Social care and nursing, therapy worker

In addition to general caring and mentoring, I am also responsible for leading gardening sessions, finding interesting and informative films and using them to teach self-awareness and values. I never wanted to work in the social field, let alone in the health field. I thought I'd be a gardener when I started out, grow trees.... because they don't talk, and I could hide peacefully among the benign plants, leave everyone alone.... Then the twist came, at the age of 22 Jesus turned my life upside down and in His own special way gave me everything I never dreamed of, using abilities I didn't even know I had.

I believe with all my heart what Jesus said about Himself, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life..." and that "He who has the Son has the Life, but he who does not have the Son of God has no Life in him."

Well! That's my calling, I'm happy to share it with anyone who's interested, and I'm grateful to work in a workplace where it's not a disadvantage but an advantage.

In my free time I like to be free !

Krisztina M. Krivickijné

Theologian, Pastoral Psychology Specialist, Mental Health Counsellor

The focus of my therapeutic group sessions is to deepen faith in God and personal relationship with God through the exploration of self-awareness and personal God-image. I myself have experienced the bondage of addiction indirectly.
I grew up in a family with alcoholism, so I have experienced first hand all the impossible life situations, events and madness that can enter a person's life, and through them the family's life, through this disease.
"I want mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but to call the
sinners to repentance." (Matthew 9:13)
These are the words of Christ, which beautifully express all that I can do for women in residential care during rehabilitation.

Gizella Nagy Brown

Agricultural engineer, economic assistant

I am an agricultural engineer - economics with a specialisation in economics.

I work as a finance officer in the institution, where I am responsible for financial matters.

My calling is to help women who are considered and valued as outcasts, worthless, rejected by society, by the secular mindset. I myself have experienced this rejection on several occasions. It wasn't the world that came to my rescue, but Jesus, whom I met at the lowest point of my life. I was alone, rejected and lonely, with hardly a single person reaching out to me. Then Jesus knocked on the door of my heart and I let Him in.  My life has changed. I allowed him to show his love and care, and I allowed him to build me up. I understood that I am not valuable because of what I do, whether I have a job or what my qualifications are, but because I am a wonderfully created creature of God.  Jesus also died on the cross for me, bearing my sins.

In the Gospel of John (10:10) He says that He came that we might have life and have it abundantly, and in the Gospel of Luke (14) He says that we should proclaim release to the captives and the opening of the eyes of the blind. I want to help those in trouble, because I believe that with Jesus there is new life and deliverance from any captivity and abyss.

I raised my daughter as a single mother, who graduated and got married. I like to go on trips and travel.

Erika Dévényi

Therapy assistant, nurse

I work as a nurse, a therapy assistant at the institution.

My education includes a Christian pastoral care qualification and several years of pastoral care practice in a Christian community, which is the basis for my work in the home - leading group sessions and personal mentoring.

In addition, I can use my qualifications as a publications editor and my knowledge of journalism to produce publications, flyers and invitations.

I also like to get involved in creative work.

What I also find valuable is that I can share my personal healing experiences here with others.

I too have had to face a problem in the past called OCD. Everything felt unclean, dirty. I was scared, I broke down, and then I locked myself in. I knew I needed help. I wanted to heal, not resign or survive. Then a Christian friend took me to a session where the pastor spoke about how we can have old wounds in our lives, pains that are deeply rooted in us and bear bitter fruit like my fears. But he also said that God has a solution to these problems: cut these roots and no more bad fruit will come. I understood that I cannot change the unknown I fear, but I can change myself by opening my life to God and letting Him in. I gave all my pain and rejection to God, because I understood that these were only wounds of the soul that had been covered up but not healed. Then I was also freed from my fears, because I found true love in God.

Here I can now help people in my work who are similarly in the grip of a problem they cannot solve alone. I know what it's like to experience shame, loneliness, rejection. I believe that if I can find myself and true freedom, others can too.

Today I am a much happier wife, mother of three boys and grandmother. 

I love nature, creative things and good movies.

Katalin Barabás

Nursing and therapy assistant

I am a qualified social worker, nurse and healthcare operator.

My responsibilities include administrative work, health care, teaching, spiritual guidance and mentoring.

My calling is from God, to use my faith, my best knowledge and my personal life experience to help people who need it and who will accept it.

Szilvia Kupai

Head of institution, qualified social worker, complex art therapist

From my earliest years I was deeply affected - engaged and occupied with my whole being - by a profound impression that later became a question: how does the process of transforming someone from being infinitely imperfect, corrupt, waste, useless, useless, into a valuable, productive, functional life, a miracle, happen. In my life, it has become a question that cannot be postponed, a question that needs to be answered, again and again, even today.  At first, I was looking for what I, as the deepest scorn of my dependent father, and I, as the deepest shame of my dependent mother, could do with myself. I chose - not consciously at all - to pretend not to exist, to be invisible, to hide. After a while, that didn't work, so I decided, and I decided consciously now, that from now on I wouldn't feel anything. This was more or less achieved. In the meantime, I became an addict myself. 

It was during my early adolescence that it became clear to me that God existed and that it was possible to have a relationship with him. I felt and understood that he loved me, that he accepted me. I realized that he was asking for my life. I said yes, I converted. At the same time, I understood that God has the deepest connection to what I am looking for, He is the one who "raises the dead and brings the non-existent into existence", He is the one who rebirths, recreates. That there is mercy. Thus began a lifelong adventure, and with it the search for who/what I could become in it, and what I could not. The process is ongoing. 

After many years of talking to God and myself, and with the help of people who inspired me, the desire to become a helper and to help addicts became clear to me. The culmination of this was when, during my college years, I came across David Wilkerson's Knife and Cross. From that moment on, every cell in my body knew I wanted this. At the same time, I was deeply saddened because I saw no opportunity to do so. But a couple of years after I "accidentally" came across a Wilkerson book, I "accidentally" came across a job advertisement, and "accidentally" got the job, at the place that was founded by Wilkerson and has been waiting for women with addiction who need help since 1985. 

My story involves a long process, a story of recovery, and it's far from over - as long as gravity is still on my side, it never will be. Heights and depths that include self-knowledge, self-expression, but also an infinite belief that God is the great restorative artist.