December 23, 2013

Dear Family,

I will be skyping at 6 o clock on the 25th (Christmas). We have a dinner program earlier so its possible (but not plausible) that I could be a bit late, but I should be skyping at 6 pm my time which is 10 o clock your time. I really hope that works for you because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to check… also I did get the packages, tell the relief society and the Sullivan’s thanks! And thank you also for the awesome stocking, my favorite part was the tooth brush surrounded by chocolate because it’s ironic. Also I Finally sent my package so it will probably get to you late in about 3 weeks or so.

Well this week was crazy and awesome, so much stuff happened. I can barely even decide where to even begin. I’ll just start from the beginning. So Tuesday we surprisingly had quite a bit of success while tracting, which was pretty great because normally we just get shut down. But this time we actually met some pretty awesome people. Like this couple who are in their 80s we starting meeting with. They’re super funny and very hard to understand, the second time we met with them we just watched "Finding faith in Christ" and the woman was just talking the entire time, telling us what was happening, it was really funny. Then later she went off a bit on the Virgin Mary which was pretty funny. Old people are sometimes rather challenging to teach, especially because they never stop talking.

We also were let in by this lady who is in love with our accents and kept on trying to imitate it. It was really weird, but super funny and then at the end of our lesson she asked if we would pray in English… first time that’s ever happened for sure.

We’ve also been meeting with this super cool lady "Liz" and I have never seen an investigator fall in love with the Book of Mormon so fast and so much. At first we were just giving her reading assignments and now she reads on her own and always finds something that she loves! When she reads it to us she just feels the spirit so strongly, she even showed us that she had Goosebumps which I thought was pretty cool. So we asked her if she believed the book of Mormon to be true, and she said Yes! This is a lady who when the missionaries first started meeting with her said, I have my religion and I will not change and she was dead straight on that for the first few lessons. But slowly that changed when she began tasting of the delicious fruit. So then we asked if she believed Joseph Smith was a prophet and she said Yes, so then we asked her to be baptized and she said… no? Yea I was pretty torn that she knew it was true but still wouldn’t be baptized, she didn’t believe she needed to be baptized again so we went over authority and connected it to Joseph smith, but still no. I’m positive that she will be baptized; it’s just a matter of time, so we asked her to pray and think about it. It was still such a good lesson either way just because the spirit was so strong.

There’s another awesome lady we have been meeting with "Lin"… She’s super nice and very funny. Every time we go over she cooks for us and always asks how we’re doing. She is always super happy and loves to just crack jokes and have fun. Words just can’t describe how awesome she is. The other day we had such an amazing lesson with her, she has already been taught several lessons, so we thought we would just go over the first lesson again and it was super good. The spirit was so strong and there were some parts during the lesson where I was actually getting a bit teary eyed (which as you know rarely happens). Also at one point she was talking about how hard it was with the whole communist reign and how big a toll it took on all of Hungary (and the eastern countries). It is really sad to see all of the aftermath and how the countries are still trying to heal even to this day. It had a huge effect on the landscape and buildings, but even more on the people themselves, their culture and religion. It’s really sad to see.

Now for a fun story of how my companion and I went into a store and we were just walking and suddenly part of this plant got stuck on my companions back. Unfortunately it was in a glass vase… and it tried to follow him… and it fell, broke and shattered across the floor. Everybody was looking at the two stupid Americans who just broke a vase… none of the workers said anything so we were just standing there, playing the stupid American act trying to get out of the situation, and it seemed to have worked because we left without having to pay for it, but it was super awkward and kinda funny.

Also here in Sopron we do a lot of teaching English. We have English class, then we have English Club and then we have family night which is where the profi speakers come to the Browns and we do fun stuff along with a spiritual message. There’s one woman named "Dora" who is super cool. In our English class we were just talking and my companion, Becker Elder said to her "hey maybe well knock on your door someday and you can let us in" than 2 days later… no joke, just 2 days we were tracting randomly, getting doors slammed in our faces and then we arrive at a door and see Dora on the name plate. My comp said wouldn’t that be cool if this was Dora from English class? We knocked and a man opened the door and we were just talking to him for a sec and then Dora’s head popped out behind the door and we were like "heeeey" it was super cool! So we taught her a lesson and it went pretty good. Later that day my companion randomly was like, I could really go for some refried beans, maybe some bean dip or something. Then for English club that same day, Sister Brown brought bean dip . . . . Mexican food is almost impossible to get here . . . COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!! So yea, my comp can predict the future, he’s that cool.

Yea life is pretty good here in Sopron, with lots of feeding programs, tons of success with finding new investigators and awesome stories and even an Irish kid! Oh yea we also went up to Budapest on Wednesday for zone conference where we had to bring a white elephant gift… so on Monday we went white elephant gift shopping and bought some amazing gift. I will send pics.

Yea stoked for Christmas… I am, kellemes karácsonyt kívánok

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder