Hungary Budapest Mission

Hungary Budapest Mission

Monday, June 30, 2014

June 30, 2014

Dear Family,


LoL, sorry we didn’t have transfers actually, funny story; I have no idea why! Egyébként, yea I’d say Hungarians have a pretty good sense of humor. It’s a bit different, but for the most part it’s probably the same on average as Americans. For the package some multivitamins would be nice. . . I ran out. And yea we do walk quite a bit to the places we tract, but sometimes we take buses, the street car or even the metro when we go "tabling". Nice to see that you guys are doing well, I verily enjoyed the picture of Brent… hehe classic

Well this week was pretty good… I feel like there’s really not too much to say considering we just do the same thing pretty much every week, but we had some good programs with Rose. It’s tough because her bap date is coming up, but we haven’t been able to meet with her for a while, so we are trying to get her ready. It’s even more difficult because she is sooo close, but still smoking is an issue. So far over my mission it’s been one of the biggest issues and one of the hardest things to get past; but it is possible, "for with God nothing is impossible" Luke 1:37 (Probably my favorite scripture). But yesterday we fasted for her and now we wait tell we meet with her on Tuesday.


We also met with the mother of 3 again and it was super hard to teach her, because the kids we just running around everywhere and when we tried to keep on topic she would ask us questions about America and it was just super hard, but still a pretty good program, hopefully next time will be a bit less hectic.

We had a super good program with this older man Laslo. We met him in front of an Ice cream shop and had a program and talked a lot about prophets, the book of Mormon and our church, so it was a super good first program I’d say.

Other than that we’ve just really been focusing on getting out and working hard. Also lately after Zone Conference, I've really been trying to focus on bettering my own testimony more, and focusing on personal study and it’s been going pretty well. I always read out of the scriptures, but sometimes it just turns almost into a routine and is easy to lose the real goal of reading out of the scriptures; to really build yourself and your testimony. So I’ve been putting more effort into it and it really goes to show me how you really do "Reap what you Sow".

One of the less actives we meet with talked about this older missionary who was super good at the language (even better than some Hungarians) and how he just talked Hungarian from the morning to the evening, then at night spoke English. So we tried this out once and a bit another day, but this week we really want to do it every day and see how well this idea works.

Yup, so investigators are doing good and progressing, we are finding new people, so all in all it’s going pretty well. Hope life is well with all of yall too!

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

Monday, June 23, 2014

June 23, 2014

Dear Family,

The Beautiful Parliment Building on the Duna - Budapest, Hungary

Good to hear everything is going pretty swell, if you could find out where Konner is going I would be verily grateful, because I’m just super curious. SD card isn’t really full, I’m really trying to get it filled and send one home, but I failed this last week at taking pictures sadly.

Anyway this week was pretty good it was also pretty challenging, just because summer has finally started and everybody is going on vacation, so It was super hard to meet with people. Rose kinda dropped off for a while, but we actually met with her which was very interesting. So we were doing a lot of finding this week!! Woot!!

But with a lot of finding, come a lot of super new cool people! Like this super awesome 70 year old guy who was a teacher and I’m pretty sure he was a professor, he is highly intelligent and very philosophical, yet he still feels like something is missing in his life and he is still searching for something. He also would like to know if there really is a God and just has troubles believing in him.

We met this mother with three super cute kids, who are 2, 4, and 6. One had some brain damage and it’s super hard to understand him when he speaks Hungarian, apparently it’s kinda hard for most, but it just kept tripping me out, super cute though and they gave us flowers afterwards.

Also we talked quite a bit with drunk homeless people, which is sometimes fun, very confusing at times, my favorite is when one tried to speak English and he tried saying knife, but he pronounced it literally as it is spelled and it was super funny. One must learn to enjoy the small things.
On Sunday, some Americans came to church which was super funny, talked with them a bit and also the other elders translated for them. I translated for a guy during priesthood which was super funny because this hilarious member Ernő just kept asking him questions and I was just translating back and forth. It was funny just because Ernő is like the funniest dude ever.

Other than that, we’ve been meeting with people, doing missionary work and working hard! I’ve been super tired lately, but in the end all the hard work is worth it. This week has really taught me to do the hard thing; when you feel like givin up, suck it up and GO! Because right then is when we start seeing the miracles and getting success.

Hope yall are having a fantastic week! Love you all!!

minden jót kívánok
sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

June 16, 2014

Dear Family,

Lol, where did you find this picture? So that’s my comp and I with the zone leaders and also some members and inv. who were visiting Elder Lynch (ZL). It was pretty fun and there are more pictures where that comes.

Also happy Father’s day to the coolest most hip dad in the world!!! (Father's Day doesn’t exist in Hungary but I’m still celebrating it in my heart) and in all honesty, I am truly grateful for everything that you taught me Dad (and Mom), it’s really made me the "man" I am today, and for that I will be forever grateful.

So this week was pretty good we went to this super expensive buffet last P-day which was pretty fun; I just felt horrible afterwards…
But, it’s SOOO gooooood.
 
Most of our programs were pretty normal this week, but we did have a super good program with this recent convert, who is dating this guy from Slovenia? Slovakia? one of them and she really likes him, but he is an atheist and she just really wants to share the gospel; but it’s very difficult especially since there’s a little bit of a language barrier, so trying to explain certain things are super difficult. But we had a way good program with her and I believe he will be coming next week to church, so we are pretty stoked.

Also we met with this one member who is super cool, he’s 21 and wants to go on a mission and is filling out his papers. We also met with his family and they are super funny. The mom is inactive and the dad and one of the daughters aren’t members, so I just talked a little bit about family prayer and family home evening; but they were just so funny, we hope to go back in a week or two.

We also met with that Older George Néni again and it was super funny. We also met her sister who knows the missionaries a bit and we actually had a somewhat good program with her.

We met with Rose again which went pretty good, but she dogged one of our other programs and since then her phone has been off, so we are planning on just visiting her sometime, hoping that everything is alright. We also played some basketball with one of Investigators which was pretty fun, even though I rarely play basketball, but I’m slowly learning the rules.


We also found this super cool guy, more like he found us… we were walking down a street looking for a house and we could not find it, it was like non existing, then all of a sudden this guy in a wheelchair, just asks "hey are you guys Mormons" and I’m like yea, and then he said "I have some questions about the celestial kingdom, and I was like wwaaaaaaa? but started talking to him about it and gave him a pamphlet. It was super good and we actually setup to meet with him again, so that will be good. He was super interesting and it was easy to see that he was really looking for the truth. He met with the Jehovah witnesses and was telling me some of the stuff they believe and then I told him what we believe.

Then we met with Benjamin again, and he did his research. He read the chapter in the BOM that we gave him and had questions about some things that didn’t make sense to him, so cleared those up. He also looked up Mormon’s on the internet and we started just going through a ton of questions. We talked a ton about the church, America and then about prayer and it was a pretty awesome program. I’m super stoked to meet with him again and he should be coming to English class so that will be good.

That was pretty much it. Have an excellent week!

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

Monday, June 9, 2014

June 9, 2014

Austin and another Sister were recently transferred from Sopron and received this wonderful email of support from Elder and Sister B. They kindly cc'd us on the email...

Great job on getting std. this week.

We love to see how well you are doing. You are both serving The Lord valiantly.

We watch your progress each week and love to see that you are meeting the mission Standard. The Lord will bless you for your efforts.

Keep up the good work!

Love,
Elder and Sister Brown
 
June 9, 2014
 
Dear Family,

 Well everything is going pretty well down in the Kispest. Actually where we go tabling is right next to the Duna (Danube) and we run into quite a few foreigners, I tried speaking German again but failed, also met some more Americans... it’s pretty fun and there are a ton of people here in Budapest who speak super well English, so hopefully we will be able to get some of them to our profi class.

We also found one of the coooolest people evers!!! He is this super awesome kid, let’s call him "Benjamin". It was seriously a miracle that we found him, it was super awesome. We first go and do some look ups and knock on this door, just say were doing a survey and he just lets us right in. So we start talking to him and it turns out he is an atheist, but his entire family is religious. Then his wife came in and started just asking a ton of questions of who we are, why we are here, etc... and then she left saying, oh I should go grab Benjamin, then leaves and we were like okay, now we can get back to religion and start talking again, then this 17 year old comes in speaking super well English and we just start talking with him. Then we asked the original guy who we talked with, if he would like to meet and he was like, no and left shortly after, but Benjamin and his girlfriend (who later came out at some point) stayed and he just started to ask us about our message that we had, so I started talking about the Book of Mormon and where it came from and he was like "yea that makes sense I never even thought about that" regarding it speaking about the people in the Americas and we just had an awesome program and set up with him for this upcoming Sunday, I’m super excited! And it turns out that he doesn’t even live there, his girlfriend does. It was a MIRACLE; I was over brimmed with joy and happiness.
 

Other than that, the week was pretty normal. Rose actually got out of the hospital and we met with her right after English class for like 15 min. because she had no time, but it was pretty good. Turns out that she read all of D&C and the Pearl of Great Price and we just gave those to her like 2 weeks ago. Now she wants MORE stuff to read!! And she wants more books on history or about Jesus Christ, so we are on the search for a Hungarian Jesus the Christ, that’ll keep her busy. Such a great example of how we should be diligently searching for more and more knowledge.
 
We also met with this super rendes less active family, and they were just like a normal family, super funny and just joking around a ton. They showed us pics of when they were in America, it was super awesome. I honestly just want them to come to church for my own selfish reason to hang out with them... teehee
 
We also met this older Néni who paints pictures of Jesus and she is super nice, but talks… so much... SO MUCH. I barely got in a testimony of the Book of Mormon! But she is super nice and wanted us to meet her granddaughter who was also super cool and interested in English, so hopefully she will come to English class!!
 
Last Pday we went to the Nagy Piac, where a ton of people just sell stuff to foreigners, it was super weird to hear so much English again. I didn’t buy anything but I was pretty tempted by another cool lookin Russian hat... They are my main weakness. Yea also we made some pretty awesome food this week once again, we even made "bull pasta" I highly advice against it, then later we ate "bread bowl pasta" which right after I then entered into a "food coma" good thing we ate it at night.
 
Any who everything is pretty good, life is poppin! We will probably go to some more touristy areas either today or next week and I will for sure take more pictures… Hopefully
 
Hope yall are doing awesome, Peace out!
sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS
 


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

 
June 2, 2014

Dear Family,

Well this week was pretty difficult, mostly because a lot of the people we were going to meet with cancelled or dogged us. We also did a ton of finding with not a ton of success, but we did end up setting up 2 programs so that was pretty good. We also set up with a guy that turned out to live outside of our area and lived over by Pest, so I just called up the elders there and was like "hey, what are you doing Saturday at 6?" super funny it was.

But we did have some pretty awesome programs. We met with this guy, well just call him Larz, and he has the most mind boggling questions I have ever encountered during my entire mission. And it’s not just like one question, he has a ton of interwoven into a single subject questions.

It’s insane, but he is really trying to find the answer and he really likes the gospel. He comes to church every week; he hasn’t really felt the spirit, but I can tell that he really wants to and is trying super hard. So we fasted for him this Sunday so we will see later what will happen. Then we also had this super good program with this woman, and the main reason it was so good was just because Panni this new convert was there and is pretty much a missionary and did a super good job and teaching and answering her questions, it was an awesome program. Also we met again with Rose in the hospital and it was kinda weird because there were other people in the room, but we set her on Bap date!! It was super cool, she was actually on bap date, but because of the hospital and the whole transfer… it kinda dropped through. We were going to have a lesson, but one of her relatives came in and so as we talked, Rose started teaching her the Joseph Smith story and it was super cool. She wasn’t super interested, but we gave her a pamphlet and she said she would read it.


Other than that, we just did a ton of finding, a lot of tracting, a lot of getting distracted by cats, this one actually followed us a couple doors down until it saw a dog and got super scared. But the main point is that we are trying and working hard, so it’s only a matter of time before we find a golden investigator.

Hopefully next week will be filled with lots of programs and we’ll be able to find some new investigators.

Love you all hope you are all doing fantastic

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS