By Allie Schulte
Allie Schulte, “Free to Smile,” Ensign, Dec 2010, 63–65
After years of repression, Edit Kiss Kerbs learned from the missionaries to have faith in God. Her work at Deseret Industries helped her have faith in herself.
Edit Kiss* sat in her family’s apartment, staring out the window at the wide blue Hungarian sky. Suddenly, the eight-year-old was overcome with a feeling. “One day,” she thought, “I will travel far from this place, and I will help people.”
Nothing in her situation at the time made such a hope plausible. Travel to other countries was tightly controlled, as were many other things in those days—unless you were a member of the privileged class. Theoretically such a class didn’t exist, but Edit saw how some children received preferential treatment from the teachers while her own hard work went unnoticed. Even within her extended family, an uncle with government influence dispensed jobs and other favors to relatives but treated her family as being beneath him.
Edit’s parents were hard-working, charitable people whose actions could often be described as Christian. Yet they did not believe in God, and religion was not discussed in their home. Edit, however, influenced by a grandmother and other relatives who did believe, also came to believe that there is a God. Still, she knew little about her relationship to Him and had many questions—questions that would become more urgent in her early adult years.