Hungary Budapest Mission

Hungary Budapest Mission

Monday, April 28, 2014

April 28, 2014
 
Dear Family,
The 'Easter Bunny'
Well this week was pretty sweet, a whole lot happened. It started off pretty normal, just meeting here and there. Going on splits with Elder Brown for about 5 hours one day which was super funny, he was so worn out after we streeted and tracted, for our lunch break he fell asleep in like a minute. Other than that we met with Lin, Liz, Bart etc…
 
Story Time!!! it was a dark Tuesday night and we just finished our day and it was now dinner time, and somebody knocks on the door. When we opened the door, it was the branch president. He went on to tell us about a less active member who he just met with and he wanted to talk to us. So we go down and start talking with this guy and he is super cool! He has gone on splits with the missionaries a ton in the past and he just always remembered it being so great. He also loves basketball and ping pong, and he has these two super cute little girls. Were super excited to be meeting with this guy, he is legit.
 
Then on Palincsinta péntek a ton of people came that we invited and it was super awesome! There were 2 girls from English class, our Investigator B. and his kid and wife, Liz, and S. with his 2 girls. It was poppin! There were quite a bit of people there and the funniest thing was that all 4 of the little kids got along Super Well. It was super funny, I looked into the primary room and they’re all just beating up K. (the branch prez 14 year old son) it was the funniest thing I’ve seen for a while, until Sunday came, but that story is for a bit later.

We also went on splits with the APs which went super well. Flake and I went with Elder Miller, who was actually one of my first zone leaders!! It was super funny to see him again and go on splits with him, it was pretty fun. He’s also super good at tracting… I guess when you’re as far as him in your mission; you get pretty good at getting let in and being a missionary.
 

Feed My Sheep
Then on Saturday we had a picnic at one of our English class attendee's house and it was super good. A senior couple, the Flamer’s were there and it was pretty cool to talk to them. Then our sport nap that we were going to start was cancelled because of the rain, which was kinda lame. 

Now, Sunday was AMAZING! It was district conference so Elder Olsson (Swedish member of the 70) came and he was a pretty amazing man. The conference was in Szombathely, so we filled up a small bus full of investigators and members and headed off to conference!! It was super cool because I got to see a lot of people I knew in szombathely and was able to see our good friend Zsolt receive the Melchizedek Priesthood which was way awesome! The road trip was a super good bonding experience for many members and investigators. So, the Craziest thing happened. During conference a bird just flew into the building from an open window and flew up to the top for like half a minute, and the speaker is still going, but a lot of people’s attention was on the bird. Then it starts to fly around and then starts diving down coming straight towards Elder Flakes head and I was seating right next to him. So it went right over mine and then our investigator sitting next to flake put her hand out and the bird just landed right onto it!!! Then she put her hand over it and caught it!! And she was like "Szentlélek" or in English "The Holy Spirit" and we were just bursting up laughing, it was the most amazing, shocking, most random thing I’ve ever seen. Super cool, Lin really had a super good trip, and learned a lot from conference and even became the bird whisperer.
 
Well, that’s about all for this week. Stay tuned for more next Monday whooot!
 
Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

April 22, 2014

Dear Beloved Family,
 
Well, good to hear that Easter was overall successful. It was pretty sweet here; it was also a lot different. But because Easter is such a huge thing here, our work kinda went down and it was super hard to meet with people, so hopefully this week will be better. But we did get the chance to meet with Liz and Lin. Both were super good programs, especially with Liz considering her family is all the way over in Debrecen and she didn’t get to see them for Easter, which is super sad. We also brought them little Easter cards and wrote a little note, which they loved (because they’re sweet elderly néník). We have also been meeting with a lot of members lately and sharing a restoration message. One member named Marika was super awesome, I’ve only talked with her a few times, but it was amazing to see just by going over there, I learned sooo much more about her. We had a super good program and she had a ton of stories to share. It was kind of sad because we could tell that she wanted us to stay longer, because she is pretty lonely, but as missionaries we really can’t, so were just planning on alternating weeks to visit her.
 
Sunday was really awesome! The Hungarians don’t do too much on Sunday for Easter except for paint eggs and give them out to people, so of course we got quite a bit of Easter eggs. At church the other 2 elders and 2 sisters gave super good talks about Christ; starting from the preexistence until his Resurrection and they did amazing. Then we watched finding Faith in Christ, which was super awesome, especially since there was one of the sisters investigators who was a referral there for her first time at church. She was crying and you could just tell that she was feeling the Spirit so strongly. It was truly amazing. Then at 5 we had dinner with the Browns. They had a little Easter hunt waiting for us, which was really fun. We had a super good dinner; all in all it was a successful Easter…

But wait, there’s more!! The Monday after Easter is an even bigger celebration for the Hungarians. They do this really weird thing that I still don’t fully understand, even after was explained to me. Pretty much a guy goes up to a girl, says something to her and then sprays her with water or perfume. Well, a drunk guy actually asked us if we wanted to be sprayed, super random, super funny… we were just like… uhh… no thanks, and he walked off, super random. But it was super cool, there was a ton of festivities going on in the main square and there were even animals!! Super awesome! Got to pet some bunnies and touch a sheep.
But let us not forget the true meaning of Easter... CANDY!!
Just kidding that’s the true meaning of Halloween... The real meaning behind it, we are all familiar with; The resurrection of Jesus Christ, but sadly most people seem to only celebrate Christ’s Resurrection and Atonement on Easter. But it should be Easter EVERYDAY!! In fact as a missionary it pretty much is. We literally can’t go out the door without thinking about Christ considering the fact that we wear his name on our name tags. Let us always remember that we wear his name embedded on our hearts.

Hope yall had an amazing Easter, may your days be jolly and your bellies full of chocolate bunnies
 
Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

April 14, 2014

Dear Family,

Yup, I remembered her birthday. Sounds like yall had a pretty good week with Christie and Bray. That picnic table building sounds pretty sweet, didn’t even know there was a pool to drain… But sounds cool, sounds cool.

This week was pretty good, it was fairly normal except for our trip to Győr for zone training which was pretty good. I learned some things, so all in all it was pretty successful. We also met with Lin a few times which was really awesome! She’s so cool and recently got a computer so were teaching her now how to use lds.org, how to look up Mormon messages and listen to Mormon hymns, etc. She watched a ton of them and also listened to almost every hymn... Pretty fun stuff.

Then on Saturday night as we were heading back to our apartment, this random guy asks us if we know English and can help him and were like, yea! He asked us where this street was and we didn’t know, so we brought out our map and just started to talk to him. Turns out he was from Egypt and just got a job here in Sopron. We ended up finding the street on the map and kinda set him on the right path. We took a picture with him as his first American friends and got his number just in case he needed any other help; and we invited him to English class. We wanted to meet with him about religion, but he didn’t even understand what the word "church" is in English, soooo there’s a bit of a communication wall.

Other than that, pretty much a normal week. Although, we did make some pretty awesome Mexican food! Not to exciting, but next week will be better because we gonna crack down!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
April 8, 2014

Dear Family,
Who doesnt like babies slaying a dragon with a trident and axe
Well this week was a pretty crazy week, filled with success, failure, sadness, betrayal, vengeance, love and general conference! Really a lot of stuff happened, and now I have to jam it all into a tight little email.

So Transfer calls came and miraculously I am staying!! wooot, I’ve been here in Sopron for quite some time now, but I’m super excited to stay.

So the week started off normal as I recall, until we met with a member who is borderline inactive and as we went up we saw him smoking before he quickly dashed inside… it was really sad because he is like only one of the three active Melchizedek priesthood holders in this branch that is already super weak and full of drama (even hair pulling). But, the branch president here is such a good guy and is really working hard to keep it alive.

Then we went to go look of some RCLAs and we knocked on a guys door and it turned out that he passed away 2 months earlier… and nobody in the branch even knew about it... it was super sad. It was his wife (not a member) who answered, so we ended up asking her if we could talk. So we met with her for a few minutes and had a good little discussion, about him and life after death and were looking forward to meeting with her again.

Also on Friday a recent convert from Eger, k. is her name, came to visit Elder F. and Z. from szombathely (another recent convert) also came. We were trying to play matchmaker and hook them up with each other. But woo, it did not succeed. But it was still a fun experience.

Also this pretty cool guy randomly showed up to English class and he was pretty interested, so we had a pretty good program with him that day along with Zsolt. The only problem is he works a ton in Austria (like everybody here in Sopron) but we will call him Pete.

So, how was everybody’s General Conference Experience!!?!! I hope it was AWESOME. They normally broadcast it translated by some Hungarian who might be there at the conference, I assume so. Last conference, I just listened to it and almost got nothing out of it because I understood almost nothing. But this year we had the amazing opportunity to watch it in ENGLSIH, because of the Browns. SO we did, except for the priesthood session.... We watched that in Hungarian and it was mind blowing how much more I could understand, super funny. But yea, conference was super awesome and It really helped me a ton with a lot of different things that I can’t even begin to explain milyen csodálatos volt.

We’ve also just had a lot more success coming a lot easier for some reason… I’m not sure exactly what we are doing differently, but it is working for sure.
 
Eszterházy Kastély
Also, just today, we also went to this super awesome palace here on Hungary called Eszterházy Kastély and it was the most beautiful thing I have laid my eyes on… Utterly spectacular. I’m over exaggerating a bit, but photos really don’t do it justice, super pretty. I’ll send sum pics 4 sho!
Other than that Lin and Liz are both doing pretty awesome, Lin is especially doing a lot better with her foot, so that’s really good!Anywho I hope yall are doing fantastic! And loving life

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS
March 31, 2014

Dear Family,

Well it seems that you guys are doing pretty awesome; the petrified wood is pretty zsír. Yea I'm feeling a lot better, I'm not really sick anymore, so I'll be okay for a while.

Well, this week was super awesome!! We called a ton of people out of the area book of potential inv. list and we set up appointments with a few of them. We've also been meeting with our other inv. more and more and can really see them progressing. This next week were are going to put more focus on meeting with members and strengthen them. I think this is a great idea because the branch here is very small and a bit weak. We're also starting to plan a ton of activities that we could do for the branch and invite investigators to. Because one thing that I learned while on splits (oh yea we went on splits with the zone leaders which was pretty good. I was with Elder Thomas here in Sopron and the other 2 went to Győr. It was pretty sweet and I learned a ton) anywho, Elder Thomas talked about how ineffective tracting and streeting really is, so he and his comp have just been trying to think of some other creative forms of finding and that's what we have been doing as a district. Also, were trying to get the branch more involved with each other and with investigators. SO it will be interesting to see how everything turns out. Right now were actually trying to start up a sport day, which I'm stoked about!!

Really not too much fun stuff happened this week, just a whole lot of working and finding. Other than we went shopping last Pday and I bought some awesome shorts for like 9 dollars, Score! Then on Sunday the branch presidents family, the missionaries and Mike and Dorina all went on a picnic. it was way fun!!! We cooked szalona (it's kind of like thick fatter bacon) and it was super delicious. Way too fatty for my taste, but it was fun. Then we started a good ol game of pine cone baseball using a small wooden cutting board as a bat. It was hilarious; especially when sister brown fell down 2 times, the first time she tripped the second time she tripped on air. LOL she was fine afterwards and it was a really good bonding moment for all of us.

We also got busted by a cop for postering and flyering, which was kinda funny, but he was super nice about it and told us where we could go get a permit for it, sooo thats what we will be doing today.

Next week we actually have a transfer sooo that should be interesting. I'm kinda scared for it but all well. Other than that all is well in Sopron, being in a trio is just super fun and it works really well since we are co-senior (3 heads are better than 2) that's for sure!

I'll send sum pix

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS
March 24, 2014

Dear Family,

Oh I love being in a Trio, it is sooo much fun! We’ve had a blast so far, we are also getting super pumped for this week, because we the work here has been a bit slow, so were just putting our minds together… the work here is gonna boom! Also something super interesting about the TriShip is that Elder Brown (the senior missionary) wants to go on splits with us every single day. We actually went on splits last week and it was super funny, he is kinda like a greenie just because he is super motivated to get out and work again and he barely speaks the language, but he’s doing a pretty good job, especially for a senior missionary because most of them barely speak Hungarian. He also loves to tract, so we went tracting for like 2.5 hours on Friday which was pretty interesting. We had a ton of rejection, but it was pretty fun. He has a ton of cool random stories. Yea Elder Sterri is super awesome, he is from cali, I keep forgetting where exactly, somewhere up north, but he is an awesome missionary. He is by far the best streeter (talkin to peeps on the street) that I have ever seen! And Elder Flake is just super good at the language, like blows me out of the water! But even in the MTC he was way good at it. Yea, we are having a blast!

Other than that, really not too much has happened this week because on Wednesday we had to go to Budapest, eat, come back and then begin moving apartments. Oh yea the new apartment is soooo nice, IT’S HUGE!! It’s amazing and has a little balcony; it does have a tiny fire pit, so we might have a fire sometime once we clean it out. Also there’s like a ton of chairs around the apartment so I’m debating about building a blanket fort, but we need a ton more blankets, there’s like none in our apartment. But yea transfers were fun. I was able to see a ton of my old friends again like elder Raymond and Elder Spedding, from my MTC group. It was pretty fun.

Bad part about transfers though, is that right after I caught a cold and still have it. It’s not super bad, just makes my voice sound weird and I have the sniffles. But it reminded me that I’m running low on decongestant and Hungarian medical drugs aren’t the best. So next time you send a package, if you could just throw in some pretty good decongestants, I would be verily grateful and there would be much rejoicing, yea-yea!

Sunday’s are a lot different now. Mostly because with no senior comp, I have to do a lot more translating, which is pretty fun. One time it was just super bad when I was trying to translate what Elder Brown told me to the branch president, but later when I translated for Elder Brown to a less active member who randomly appeared in church, it was super easy. Sometimes I’m good at Hungarian and other times my brain just dies.

Not too much else happened this week...but...
Stay tuned for next week because that’s when the real party is going to happen. It’s going to be spectacular!!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
March 18, 2014

Dear Family,

The biggest news yet!!! It’s pretty crazy, are you sitting down? Yes? Well then, stand up and sit back down and get ready for this amazing news!

Well, turns out that I am STAYING IN SOPRON!!! And I’m going co-senior!! And were going to be in a TRI-Companionship, I’ll be serving with Elder Flake (from the MTC, woot!) and also Elder Sterri (who rumor has it, is an awesome guy!). And I’ll be serving as district leader.

Also this week has been literally insane. SO much has happened. I don’t even know where to begin.

First off we went to the chocolate factory place, where of course I had to drop some Willy Wonka quotes and songs, so it was definitely a success. I’ve also learned so much useless knowledge about coco beans, how chocolate is made and how the Swiss invented the milk chocolate. Also got to, of course, taste a lot of amazing chocolate that sent me down a figurative chocolate river of deliciousness.

This week has still been super hard for us, mostly because we were dogged and cancelled a lot, and we had zone conference on Thursday which completely destroyed that work day, but at least Lin is doing pretty good. Liz is going up to Debrecen for a week to divorce her husband (who wasn’t the best husband) so we hope that will be ok. We’ve also been meeting with this other lad and we will call him Laci. He’s pretty cool… he is this old guy who is pretty religious and really funny. He has met with the missionaries on and off in the past, but so far so good. He has 2 awesome little white dogs, one actually threw up on my pants and shoes, but we just went on with the lesson like almost nothing happened, it was super funny.

Also there was a Hungarian Holiday on the 15th where almost every place was closed. There was a little program outside and there were Hungarian flags everywhere, it was super sick!! I loved it and everybody wears this little ribbon that they pin onto their shirts. So we went to Petőfitér for like a half hour just to check out the celebration and I’ll send pics. We were super tired from the 6 hours of train travel, and all the dogs, and it was a holiday, and we just felt like pooop. but we carried on and we still went out tracting… and we met one of the COOLEST GUYS EVER! He answered the door actually with his shirt off and he had a star trek necklace on, so we talked about that a bit after we introduced ourselves. He is in his late 20s, really religious and when I was asking him questions, he was actually thinking about them and was really interested, so we set up an appointment with him and I’m stoked!!!!! That just proves something that Elder Dyches talked about at zone conference, (he had some pretty awesome quotes) "Do the hard thing!" Even though it will kinda stink at the time, it will be so worth it. I’ll talk more about zone conference next time because I have like no time. So much to do, we gotta move and switch apartments with the sisters so this is going to be fun again, ROUND 3.

We also went to the Pan American picnic or something like that, it was the place where people under the iron curtain broke out in Sopron and there’s a memorial there. It was super awesome! I took tons of pics and selfies too!

Wish I had more time, G2G

Love you all!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS
March 10, 2014

Dear Family,

Well that’s awesome to see that everything is going swell. Sister Brown is doing a TON better. I saw her bite on Sunday and it was super gross, but the last time I saw it, it didn’t look bad at all. I’m serving around sister Fowers and Sister Daniels still, sister Daniels was actually in my district in Szombathely, so I already knew her pretty well. Also super funny, I was looking at the pictures of you two and the sisters were both complementing you saying that I had "super good looking parents".

Fruit trees, that’s awesome! There are a ton of people here who grow their own fruit trees, like almost everybody who lives in a family home.

Anywho, this week was pretty sweet and a lot better than last week. First off… lately we’ve been trying to get more involved in the community so we went with Elder Brown to this hunting shop to ask about a hunting club, and we also of course looked at some guns. Super awesome! The guy showed us these 2 pistols and dad you would have loved them. The one was a Russian Spec Ops .22 that was just super sick looking, I should’ve took some pictures, and the other was an older Hungarian made 9mil and they’re both only 100 dollars and work perfectly. Elder Brown was asking if there was a way to bring them back into America, it was super funny.

Then we went to the Orphanage again which was super awesome! My comp played his Ukulele and let some of the kids play it. Aww, it was so cute. And I played with Lila (she’s my favorite one) we just looked at little pictures of people and tried to imitate their faces, super funny. I’m kinda sad though because that was probably my last time there, because I’m most likely leaving this next transfer (next week).

Then we also called an old investigator and he wanted to meet that night, so we met with him and he’s super legit, let’s call him Bart. He is from Peru originally, so he has this super funny Spanish accent in Hungarian and he is super religious. He talked about how he heard the word Mormon 3 times that day, twice from idk what and then we called… so he took it as a sign from God and he was super willing to listen to us and were meeting with him again today, I’m pretty stoked.

We also had a program with Liz and it was super good, we just shared Nephi 3:7 (because elder Brown suggested it) and it was super good!! she just barely moved and her new roommate doesn’t smoke so she can’t smoke inside anymore and then the weather also has been bad lately so she doesn’t want to go outside to smoke and then we told her about the word of wisdom and now she really has a desire to quit smoking and it was just a miracle. I am super happy; I knew it would happen; it just needed some time and a whole lot of prayer. Thank you all for also keeping her in your prayers.



The beauty of the várkerület
Then to top it off, I had my first translating all by myself. My companion had to go and translate for Elder Brown and I went to translate for Sister Brown who was planning a family history program with a member and I was surprised at how easy it was really. Sister Brown speaks pretty simply; for the most part, which is super nice and made it much easier, but yea it went really well I was surprised.
Then today we are going to a Chocolate factory. My goal… to quote as many 'Charlie and the chocolate factory' quotes as possible!

Hope you’re all doing Awesome!!!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
V.E.M.S
March 3, 2014

Dear Family,

This week took a little bit of a dark turn, first off Lin got surgery on her foot and wasn’t able to meet with us, but I called her yesterday and she is doing a lot
better, so that’s good. Also sister Brown got bit by a dog and had to go to the Hospital every day last week, that also is looking a lot better than before. Sister Brown is the greatest, most loving person ever. Even though she was in a ton of pain and her finger was super messed up and bleeding like crazy, while at the hospital she was still thinking about others. She saw a man who was really hurt and in a wheel chair and she just went up and tried to comfort him, even though she speaks no Hungarian. She would also give out cookies to children and also even still cooked a meal for Lin (their pretty good buddies, sis brown and Lin). She really is an amazing example to me and everybody around her.


Other than that this week was completely normal really, we mostly streeted and we also went "postering" with the sisters and browns, which is where we just hold up a free English class poster and then just flyer and talk to people which was way awesome and fun! One day for some reason we ran into like 20 Germans and Austrians, it was crazy. I’ve never spoken so much German in my entire mission. It’s funny because I can understand it so, so. But I can barely say anything, I couldn’t even remember how to say city. Also one guy the sisters streeted, turned out to be Speaking Russian!! I didn’t realize until he said "thank you, goodbye" and it suddenly clicked, looks like Sam teaching me some Russian came in handy after all, thanks Sam!

Also right after our district meeting we had a ton of random success, we were just walking and we pass this guy just standing on the sidewalk and he stops us and asks if he can walk with us; then goes on talking about how he would like some spiritual help and also would like to learn some English and we were just like:

wwwaaaaaaaaaaht??? It was totes awesome!!! Then we streeted this old bácsi who was super cool and kinda interested, then as we were walking we crossed the street and my comp was like . . . "wait, why did we cross the street?" and then I was like " I dunno maybe were supposed to be on this side?" then only a minute later we hear a honk and it was The super cool Jehovah Witness guy!! And he was super nice and we just talked for a min. it was pretty sweeeat!
Also there was a super cool cat that we keep seeing around our new apartment. We have named him snickers he/she/it is super cool, I’ll send a pic.

That’s all for this week stay tuned for next week’s update: Sopron: City of Fire!!

Hope you’re all doing swell

sok szeretettel,
Waldvogel Elder
February 24, 2014

Dear Family,

Well this week was pretty good, we met with Lin, Liz and Sophie and they were all pretty good programs nothing really amazing happened, but they were still good. This week we really just tracted our brains out, but it went pretty good. We had a couple ‘let ins’ with some super cool people. One woman who let us in actually told us that she saw me walking around a lot with my last companion and was kind of curious on what we were doing and that’s why she let us in. It was super cool and it went pretty good, so were trying to meet up with them again. We also were let into a Jehovah Witnesses house and he was super nice and friendly. He talked about what he believes and we just shared a tiny bit of what we believe. Because he was a talker, it was a bit difficult, but he also played us a song on his guitar and he’s pretty ügyes. We were also let in by this super cool guy, who didn’t really have a religion. We just talked for like half an hour about what he believes, his questions, about our church and the plan of salvation; it was a super amazing program! The only problem is that he works a ton in Austria and has very little free time so looks like we’ll just have to keep trying to meet with him. So finding this week was really good.

And now for something entirely different: Palacsinta Péntek!!! (Pancake [or krépe] Friday) We just invited a ton of investigators, members, strangers/hobos to come to Palacsinta Péntek where we just chill and eat Palacsinták, listen to music, make music, etc… but mostly eat delicious pancakes. It was super fun and quite a bit of people came, for some reason it was mostly the really old members who came, but there were around 20 people total so it was a pretty good success I’d say. Plus we also ate waffles with syrup and peanut butter which I haven’t had for like 8 months or so.

Then Saturday morning we met with Oliver, this guy who just recently started attending English class. He is super rendes and we went to his university department to see what he does and turns out he is a photographer and it was super sweet. I really should have taken pictures but I totally forgot. But we did have a photo shoot which was pretty sweet, so maybe I could get those pictures from him some time. Anyway, we just hung out with him, got to know him a lot better, saw what he does and likes, so I say it was definitely successful and fun.

Well that was the week so far… Oh I also found this super cool quote painted on a wall of some random hipster store.

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
V.E.M.S.
February 18, 2014

Dear Family,

Yea, my Hungarian has gotten a ton better and I feel like I can communicate what I want to say. We actually went to the Orphanage again and on Monday and I was surprised how naturally I could speak Hungarian with the little kids. But sometimes their super hard to understand especially when their talking about shooting off a firework (or something) into somebodies head and them screaming HELP, HELP and then it exploding? I think it exploded… still don’t know that word. But it was super fun playing with and getting to see all the little kids again.

Last week was not as productive, mainly because we had to completely clean the apartment and move it all to the branch house until we got the keys to the new place… then we had to move it all again to our new place... which is super tiny and we have almost nooo room! Woot! The walls are like paper thin… and there’s a giant bell tower which makes sure we wake up at 6. Other than that it’s pretty nice.


Yup transfers are today!! And I’m staying in Sopron with Larson; woooahsahhahaha. MEGLEPETÉS.

Saturday was a super good day though, and it was quite successful for missionary work even though it was very unorthodox. So in the morning we went with Elder Brown and Tibor (super cool guy from English class) to go build a little weaving tool (Elder Brown has just recently gotten into weaving) and it was pretty cool. We got to know Tibor more and he started to ask us all this stuff about Mormons that he saw in a movie that was anti Mormon… so we kinda cleared all that up. Then we went to lunch with Elder Brown, went around and streeted which was not successful at all. Afterwards we went to an English valentines program that was being held in a Lutheran church, which afterwards had a pot luck and we met some Americans who live in Sopron and got to know some super cool people. One Hungarian lady who was there actually went to our English class once, but talked about how it was super weird and I talked to her about how it was totally different nowadays and how she should come again. She seemed pretty interested so I hope she comes. I also learned a ton about the American community in Sopron which was pretty interesting. Then after that we went to English Klub and this new super cool girl, we will call her Sophie, was there and she just barely started coming to English class and she is super interested in the gospel. My comp kind of gave her a quick 1st lesson during English Klub and it went super well. Finally we went home pretty exhausted and we started planning out the next day when we suddenly hear somebody fall down next door super hard… so we got up and knocked on their door to see if they were okay and this girl opened and we asked if she was alright, she said she just slipped and fell and then asked if we were the newbies in the apartment, then we talked for like an hour and a half… just about everything really and why we’re here, life etc… and she said that she would be interested in coming to church sometime. Some Day Right???

Other than that pretty much a normal week, but now I am pretty exhausted. It’s nice that I’m staying so I can unpack and get everything set up in our new apartment.

Well, hope that yalls week has been mooooore thaaaaan good. . . its . . Grrreeeeeeeaaaaaaat!

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
February 10, 2014

Dear Family,

Yea we’ve heard quite a bit about the Olympics from people in our English class (they’re super cool). I hope a Hungarian wins an event so you can hear the national anthem its pretty sweeeeeeeeat. It’s good that your email had a coincidental theme involving charity, because lately I have also been trying super hard to work on being more charitable and sometimes it is really hard, especially lately. But charity is also long suffering and patient, so I have really been learning to hold my tongue and just try to focus on the positives. By far the best help can be found towards the end of Moroni, chapter 7 where it talks a lot about charity and how the best way is to simply pray for it consistently and it has really helped me tons!

Anyways this week was pretty awesome, we’ve been doing a lot of old investigator and less active look ups and it was really successful! We set up with a guy and met with him and he was pretty rendes. We were also let in by a member family who hasn’t come to church in around 10 years! She was showing us pictures of the old branch and missionaries. They were super funny and pretty cool, but I guess they had some hard times with the old branch. We told them it’s COMPLETELY different now considering only 3 people remain from the old branch. They didn’t come to church but we will keep trying!

Also on Thursday all 6 missionaries in Sopron, the sisters, the browns and us went to the orphanage with a super cool lady from English class who plays this old cello like instrument. It’s a bit smaller and has 6 strings, and she gave a little music presentation/concert to the kids and then let some of the kids play it and showed them how… it was so awesome and so much fun! The kids loved it and they were super funny! We already knew a few of them because their mom is one of the sisters’ investigators and we met them a few times and they’re hilarious. Then after the little concert, Elder Brown (older missionary) got up and gave a magic show which watching the children’s reaction to that was sooo funny, they loved it so much! This one little kid kept trying to figure it out and unmask the trick and actually succeeded a few times, pretty smart for a 8 year old. I freaking love kids, especially little Hungarians.

Then Friday was just completely demolished with the 3 hour train ride to Budapest for interviews and another 3 hours back. But interviews were pretty good; President Smith is a really funny guy. I would have taken pictures but the fog in Budapest was TERRIBLE. But we did find a place there where one can buy American soda, so I had my first mountain dew for like 8 months or so, it was like liquid gold.

I also realized that I failed at taking pictures this week…  Sorry everyone… I have brought dishonor upon mai famiree.

Anyway, stay cool!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder