June 2, 2015

Dear Family,

This last week has been crazy, filled with goodbyes, miracles and funny stories. The coolest one actually happened with my companion. We were rushing to a program and jump on this super crowded bus, so I’m kinda far away from my comp on the bus and can’t get over to him, so we were just waiting and then apparently this guy got on the bus right where my comp was... now my companion already ran into this guy a couple times before I came, and this man literally spat on him and cursed at him the first time, then the next time even raised a fist to strike him;  my companion raised his fist in defense and he kinda ran off… and now that same man got onto the bus and walked straight up to my companion, and asked "do you remember me from the last time we met on the bus?" Adrenaline is just pumping through my companions blood as he answers "yes" . . . . . then the man just simply says "I’m sorry" . . . . . . My companion was so shocked; especially since earlier that week he was like "if I see that guy again I swear Ima mess him up and stuff like that" he was just shocked and it was such a great story to be there for.

Other than that I’ll see all you guys in a couple days and tell you more stories... Pretty crazy.

Yea, this is super weird writing my last email. I don’t really know what to say other than I know that I was supposed to come to Hungary; and I love it here and the people soo much. Serving a mission was for sure the best decision that I have ever made in my entire life. Now it’s coming to an end, which is super sad and kinda hard, but I know that life goes on. And as long as I put my faith in God, strive to be better day by day and do my best to help others around me, listening to the promptings of the spirit that I can still be a missionary wherever I go.

Over the past two years I have learned and experienced so many things and I’m so grateful for all my blessings and all of the trials that I’ve had on my mission; and for everything that I learned from my trials and hardships. The gospel has helped me so much… To understand life so much better and help me want to become a better person and actually be able to achieve that. And most of all my mission has given me the opportunity to help others in the best way possible; which is to share the beautiful message of the gospel and to be able to help others change their lives for the better; to help support them in their trials and help them build their relationship with God. And it’s just the most amazing thing ever; there’s nothing like it. If anyone reads this who has their doubts about going on a mission, I will tell you right now that it will be the best thing in your entire life, no matter what.

Words can’t even describe how much I’m going to miss the Hungarians and all the friends that I have made here; I love them with all my heart and know that I will meet them again someday. minden magyarnak azt akartam mondani, hogy szeretem magyarországot és mindig lesz irva a szivemben, annyira hiányozni fog az egész ország meg minden magyar. és pontosan nem tudom amikor visszajövök de vissza fogok térni mindenképpen hiszen most ugy érzem hogy ez az otthonom. köszönöm mindent. és Isten áld meg a magyart!

It’s weird, but a part of me is still denying that I’m really leaving.

Hope yall do well, god be with you till we meet again

sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

VEMS örökre

May 25, 2015

Dear Family,

That’s super cool to hear about everyone getting their mission calls! So exciting!! Anyway, this week was pretty good, difficult because it was just pouring all Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday which made finding a bit more difficult and less effective because literally when the weather is bad, so is everyone’s mood.

But we had some super good programs with E. which was awesome because we weren’t able to meet with her for a long time. We talked about a ton of stuff, but when I asked her if she read out of the Book of Mormon, she was like "well... no... but I realized something!" So I asked her what and she went on talking about how ever since she stopped reading out of the Book of Mormon that her life has kinda gone downhill and overall she just isn’t as happy. It was sad that she had to experience more sadness, but it was good to see that she realized the power that is in the Book of Mormon; we talked a lot about it and also about fasting and repentance. Then later in our next program, we talked about the law of chastity, the Word of wisdom and really just all the commandments and about baptism. She was like, "okay... so what are all the commandments that I need to keep" so we went through them fast and picked out the ones that are most difficult for her so we could work on them first. The spirit was just so strong during the program, which was by far the best part.

Also N. is doing super good; she actually came to church for the first time which was super good and for the most part she liked it... except for the last hour... but the second hour was super good because she had a ton of questions and really got into it.

Other than that, not too much else to report; we did see this dog stuck in the Duna (the Danube river) and then his owner jumped in and saved him which was pretty cool and totally random...



Other than that, everything’s going pretty normal; except next week will be my last email sooooo yea.. .kinda weird.

Anyway, hope you are all having an awesome week!!

Sok Szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS

May 18, 2015

Dear family,

Well this week was super crazy and intense; I don’t even know where to start...

We had the coolest opportunity to be able to take Elder Leimer (from the quorum of the 70) to one of our programs, which was the coolest thing EVER!!! We had to pick him up from Buda and take him on a 1 hour trip to our program. On the way we got on a bus and while looking for a place to sit, this super nice guy got up and let us sit down together and then sat to the right of me. After a while Elder Leimer hands me a pass along card, and looks at me... then looks at the guy... and so I caught what he was hinting at, so I wrote our number on it and gave it to the guy... it was super awesome. He was way cool and one of the nicest Hungarians ever!! We just started talking about a ton of stuff and a bit about religion while just getting to know him; and then this lady in front of us starts talking to us and is like... Hey I went to your English class before, but I’m super busy. Is there any way I could skype or something like that with you guys? So we started talking to her about how we could meet up sometime. Then she asked us what we are doing here, and why Hungary. So I talked a lot about what we do as missionaries and such to both her and the other guy and it was just AMAZING! We talked for about 25 minutes or so until we had to get off. And we got both of their numbers… super awesome!

Then our program was great; it was with a recent convert who is way awesome and he just shared a ton of experiences and stories that were super cool. We mostly talked about the Book of Mormon and the power within it.

Then on the way back we did some more finding and he was teaching us just a ton and we learned so much about missionary work. He told us stories from his mission and now I’m super stoked to be able to go and find in a different way; because it’s much more natural than the way we were doing it and we had so much more success! Literally, nobody actually rejected us! It was seriously a miracle and I’m so grateful for the opportunity that we had to go with him and be able to learn so much; especially just form his example... it was awesome!!

Other than that, we sadly weren’t able to have a lot of programs this week. Our main progressing investigator E. got super sick and I felt bad for her. We’ve also had to give quite a few of the people we meet with away because of the boundaries, which is sad. So this week we had a ton of service projects which was super cool. We helped move some furniture for like an hour and we were going to paint a fence but it got cancelled. Then on Saturday we went and cut trees for like 4 hours and it was pretty tough, but super fun.

We also met this super funny kid while basketball finding who was like 10 years old and ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and teaching him a bit about it. Pretty funny kid.

Also we got to meet N.'s family which was super cool. Especially because at first the dad was kinda sketched out about us and didn’t like the fact that were missionaries; but we got to meet him and he is super cool. We got along super well and now he seems to be a lot more open. So that’s cool.

This week were going to have a special emphasis on finding and also meeting and finding less actives and help to get them back. Hope yall have a supa dupa week!!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS

May 11, 2015

Dear family,

Well Skyping for the last time was super awesome, kinda weird considering I’ll be home before I know it, but I’m glad that we still got to talk a bit. Really I already told you guys most of what happened this week, but for those who I didn’t get to skype… here... we... gooooo...

SO this week was crazy! We had quite a bit happen. First off while at Burger King on P-day this girl comes up to us and starts asking where were from in Hungarian and later we figure out she’s an American who has lived in Hungary for 6 years now and speaks perfect Hungarian. We talked with for her for a while and she was super cool and invited us to her concert. It turns out that she was on rising star (some TV show here in Hungary), supa cool and we invited her and her boyfriend to come play basketball with us on Saturday which was super fun. We got to know them pretty well and they are super religious; it was cool to see, because you don’t meet too many people here who are striving so much to follow God, so I’m super excited to see them again.

Also we had some pretty good programs and some pretty normal ones; we did meet with this 14 year old recent convert who is super cool and way funny and we really just talked to him about preparing for a mission and just trying to get him to read at least one verse a day out of the BOM.

Also on Saturday there was this ridiculously Drunk guy at English class... who of course came into our beginner class and was making it super hard to teach; so my companion is like , I got this and takes him out to the hall and starts just talking about his drinking problem and teaching him the WoW. Which was super funny because he was out of his mind, but my comp Elder M. did a super good job and was really trying to help him; which was cool, because the man really was sad and his life was hard. SO my comp has been a good example to me.

We also had stake conference which was awesome because I got to see a ton of amazing people (from other cities where I served) that I’ve missed like L, B, A, P, Z, the list goes on and on. The conference was AMAZING which kinda made me sad because E. said she was going to come, but ended up not and it would’ve been super good for her. So I’ll just have to tell her about all the awesome stuff she missed.

Anywho love you all and hope your all doing awesome!

sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

May 4, 2015

 

Dear family,

 

Well this week was pretty tough, but we had some really good programs. Really we just got dogged and had a ton of programs cancel this week which kinda stunk, but we had some really good programs with E. and with an other RCLA.

 

It was super funny though; on our way to the RCLA program my companion turns to me and is like... "aww I hope she made palacsintas!" and then I just turned to him and was like "if we believe and have enough faith there will be!" then we just kept joking about it . .like "I can smell the palacsintas from here." Then when we got there I just started busting out laughing, because she really did make PALACSINTAS!! So flippin funny; even funnier is that we planned on teaching her about hope in all things. Really small thing but I’ve learned to enjoy the little things and the tender mercies of the lord, even if they come in the image of little palacsintas.

 

Then we met with E. a couple times this week and actually made rakott krumpli with her which was super fun. But we also had a really good program with her. She has been worried about her best friend, who we also meet with sometimes, but she has been going kinda downhill lately and it’s super sad to see. We really want to help her, but she kinda is just avoiding us a lot; but once again we had another really good program on Hope, which kinda seemed to be the overall feel of this week considering it’s been so hard. We’ve really had to just keep on going and focus on the positives; keeping hope that it’ll get better.

 

So we hope this week will be better and I hope that you guys are all doing well and I hope that you all have an amazing may 4th.

 

May the 4th Be with you . . . always.

 

Sok Szeretettel

Elder Waldvogel

VEMS

April 27, 2015

 

Dear family,

 

Well this week was pretty good, weren’t able to meet with as many people sadly, but we had some super good programs; we had a super good one with D. and his girlfriend. We taught the word of wisdom because D’s girl did not understand it; but we brought this member who had a super strong testimony about it because he converted 3 years ago and before that was a super hardcore partyer and drank all the time and he was able to answer all their questions and just did an awesome job.

 

Everyone else is doing pretty well. We had a good program with N. where she brought one of her friends who already met with missionaries like 15 years ago. Super cool it was.

 

Other than that, everything else is going pretty much the same. Finding was interesting; we went tracting for like 2 hours and had no success at all, just nobody talked to us. One older lady did for a coupled minutes until she read our nametags, then just turned around and left without a word . . . awkward. So we decided to go do some basketball finding randomly in a park nearby (because my comp is super good at it) and we found these 2 kids and played with them; and they are hilarious, super cool, C. and B. So we invited them to sport nap and told them a bit about why we are here as missionaries and got both of their numbers, super cool.

 

Anyway, hope that your all doing well, also yea I can skype for Mother’s day, don’t even know how I’m going to do it, but we will somehow.

 

Have a fantastically awesome week!

Love

Elder Waldvogel

VEMS

April 20, 2015

 

Dear Famiry,

 

Yea it was seriously a miracle I got my passport back, pretty sure it was stolen, but the lady who I talked with was super nice and kind. Apparently she just found it sitting on a park bench and called the police; super lucked out, except I don’t believe in luck.

 

This week was pretty crazy and awesome, I got a bit sick and was kinda stressed out for a while about my passport, but now I’m feeling a ton better. We met with a ton of people, really nothing too different, but our Saturday was super crazy!!! So much happened.

 

In Hungary, two times a year they have this crazy cleaning session where for an entire week they just throw all their old trash and junk onto the sidewalk (next to a street) and then it just MAGICALLY disappears. A member asked us to help her mom throw out a ton of junk that was left over from her ex-boyfriend who was like a hoarder; so we go and there’s a giant pile of junk. And as we start throwing stuff into a pile on the street, some gypsy guy comes up all excited and calls his buddies and as we go back there’s 5 of them digging through the trash, and helping us unload junk onto the pile; they were even telling us where to set stuff down, so flipping funny.

 

Then while digging through trash this kid who is helping us opens this suitcase on a chair and finds a mouse . . . so we all gather around to look at it; I start digging through all the junk to find the mouse and I see its tail underneath something, so I slowly lift it up and there’s just this super cute mouse chilling there . . . then it runs straight towards me and just suicide jumps at my face . . . scariest thing of my life. . . I literally just screamed like a little girl for like 10 sec. straight, while it hit my belly, then fell down and ran off. LOLS! Then later we punched through some old windows we were throwing out, pretty fun stuff.

 

So we did that most of the day which was a nice change up. Other than that, normal missionary stuff trying to help people come closer to God even though some of our investigators are atheist and are very adamant on not praying. Yea, story for later.

 

Hope you’re all doing super good!

Love,

Elder Waldvogel

VEMS