December 16, 2014

Dear Family,

So sorry about last week, we had a TON of programs on P-day and I ran out of time because I received some new news (pun intended)!!!!

I am going to SOPRON!! wooohooo! I’ll be serving with Elder Becker. Sopron is the closest city to Austria which is pretty cool and it’s supposed to be very pretty during winter, but I’m kind of sad that I’m leaving because this transfer is over Christmas and new year’s and I really didn’t want to change companions because Elder Lynch is way awesome. But Elder Becker is pretty cool too and the other elders here are pretty awesome! Elder Cathcart is from Ireland!! yeeeeeaaaa. His accent is pretty sweet… I’m trying to teach him how to speak like an American, but so far it’s not working very good. We also have a senior couple here, Elder and Sister Brown. They are super funny, words cannot describe them.

Anyway, I have not received anything yet. I most likely will during zone conference when we go to pick up our mail at the mission home. As for Skyping, I know that we will be going to the Browns to skype because they have it setup, but as for the time, all I know is that Hungary is 8 hours ahead and we should be doing it on Christmas or Christmas Eve sometime. Most likely on Christmas though, and will be in the morning for you. I really don’t know yet, but the Browns are allowed to email call and text whenever to whoever, so I might have them email you or something. Either way I should be emailing next week on the 23 to finalize things.

Other than that I’m still working on sending the package. I’m buying lots of stuff today, but with all these changes I have no idea when I’ll be able to send it. It’s not going to get their by Christmas, but hopefully sometime around New Year’s.

Anyway, the last week In Szombathely pretty much kicked my butt. One good thing that came out of it was we met with that one woman who wanted the book of Mormon really bad (and we'll call her Liz). We met with her 2 more times and her sister is now in the hospital so it’s been really hard to meet with her. But when we do, she finds it all very interesting and she always says that she feels peace and calm when we come and talk to her. We tell her that that is the spirit and that it testifies of truth… we then taught the plan of salvation and a bit of the gospel of Christ and then gave her a soft bap challenge and she was like "of course I would, why wouldn’t I?" and we were like woooah… Rarely does anyone feel that way about being baptized again. The rest of the week we just got rejected and had almost no success. We actually got kicked out of a building while tracting by this man who wouldn’t even tell us why we were getting kicked out and he was just being super unreasonable. He started off by saying stuff like "nobody wants this, get out of here" and then my comp asked him "you’ve asked everybody in the building and they said they don’t want to hear what we have to say" the man was like "yes", my comp was getting pretty ticked at him and asked if he even knew what this was about, and the man just kept asking us to leave, it was really lame. Then we go down and start to flyer with English class flyers and then the man comes down and is like "did you not understand what I said??" Then I said "were just flyering" then he threatened to call the cops and pulled out the "I’m a cop" card and showed us his badge as he and my comp were arguing… we ended up leaving in peace but the guy was just so unreasonable and wouldn’t answer our questions as to why we were being kicked out. Ugggh it was really frustrating… then the rest of the week we just had no success at all.

But now I’m in Sopron and it’s a super cool city. We were just walking around and I look over and see ancient Roman ruins just sitting right there and I’m like dooooahwaaa? Then there’s a ton of Germans here. Even on the train ride over I heard a ton of German. Also on the streets I hear it spoken all the time. The best is when we went over to a recent member’s house with the Browns. At her house there was an old missionary who came back and is now living in Sopron. Her mom and dad were there and the old missionary is dating her now, kinda weird, but she speaks fluent Hungarian and German. Her English is okay and her dad is a native German and speaks pretty good English. Her mom is a native Hungarian and also speaks fluent German so the entire time I was so confused because there was so much German, Hungarian and English being spoken my brain was dying, but their family was super cool and really funny.

Also Sopron is best known for when Hungary and Austria were being split apart. Sopron is right on the border and had the decision to join Austria or Hungary, and clearly they made the best choice and joined HUNGARY! Wooot! So far this city has been pretty cool, but the weather has been super bad lately because its turning into winter… but all well. I also left all my camera stuff again in the apartment soooo… no pics… again sadly... forgive me.

I have never had so many feeding programs in my entire mission than here in Sopron, just yesterday we at lunch at like 2:30 and then had dinner at like 5. ugh my tummy was dying, but it was such a nice change because I remember in my greenie zone we were never fed, considering we opened up an area and started from scratch. Yea we most speak in English but we also speak Hungarian together quite a bit, so I guess it’s kind of like Hunglish. The language is going pretty good. My understanding is a ton better, I can normally get the main point of what people are saying, I actually had to translate for brother Brown for the first time and it was super hard, but I was surprised at how much I actually understood and was able to relay back to him. Except when the lady started talking super-fast and I couldn’t translate and listen at the same time and forgot half of what she was saying, it’s some pretty hard stuff. But yea I’m hoping soon probably the transfer after next transfer to go co-senior, I think it would be way fun to go with somebody from my MTC group.

Other than that life is going pretty good. I keep forgetting its Christmas time because it really just doesn’t seem like it to me, but I’m loving life and my mission. Stay cool everybody!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS