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

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

 

 

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

May 26, 2014

Dear Family,

Well, the first thing I should probably say is that I was kinda wrong on my previous statement, for some reason I thought Kispest was on the outskirt of Budapest, but it’s actually further in than I thought and our area is HUGE! We cover to the downtown area of Budapest which is pretty nice; there are some super ghetto areas which I’m super looking forward to as well. But the biggest difference here is that it is just so flippin big! We take the villámos or tram, the Metro and buses pretty much everywhere we go, unlike Sopron where we literally walked everywhere. The ward here is super big and it’s just mind boggling, because in Sopron I knew everybody super well; and my comp doesn’t know too many members yet, so I’m just completely lost with the people and where we are, it’s pretty crazy! But there are soooo many little kids here, I freaking love it, so much better than the 1 primary kid that we had in Sopron. LOL

But being in Budapest is pretty sweet! The downtown area where we go tabling is super pretty and full of tons of people. I even met some Americans who were super nice and one man really respected Mormons, it was pretty cool.

My comp is super cool, his name is Elder R. and he is from northern Idaho. He is probably the best cook I have served with yet, so we have been eating pretty well. The apartment here isn’t quite the best; our washing machine broke, and there’s no microwave!!! I don’t know how we are going to survive much longer.

The investigators here are super cool; I’ve only met with half of them so far, but so far so good. One of the coolest ladies, M. has 2 daughters and a husband who doesn’t really want her to be baptized which is a huge obstacle for her and she also smokes, but she has a super solid testimony and really wants to grow closer to God and increase her faith. Then there’s this super cool guy from English class who speaks super good English named B. Also, there is this lady who broke her toe and is now in the hospital for the next two weeks, R, and she is very interesting and really wants to move to Ireland, but she just loves the gospel and wanted to get a tri combination, so she could read the D & C. Then there’s C, a 16 year old tennis pro and his Mom J, who are kind of new, but super cool! C. is super interested and apparently wants to serve a mission. Then there was this lady M... which we had a program with. We also set up with this referral and he was super legit!! Super rendes and really just feels kinda lost and loves to help others. We have SO many cool peeps!

Also this week we had a TON of weird stuff happen to us, I was beginning to question whether or not this is real life. A few examples… we leave our apartment, oh yea also we live in a 10 story!!! Finally! but this guy is literally coughing his lungs out and or throwing up in this other apartment and we just hear some lady yell "Mit csinálsz!??" or "What are you DOING??" super funny then as we are tracting these 2 dogs escape from underneath a fence and just start running around the neighborhood causing havoc, then we found 3 little birds that looked like they were unborn or just barely born and 2 of them were dead and the other one was slowly dying… it was one the darkest things I’ve seen, I wanted to put it out of its misery, but I didn’t have the guts… on a happier note we also tracted into a guy who was a DJ... He’s a super cool guy who believes in Taoism or something of the sort.

I am still a district leader in Kispest, but it’s funny because the only other companionship is the zone leaders… so it’s more like going to be them teaching us during district meeting, but all well. Plus I love serving around Lynch again, its sooo much fun! I’m really thinking about helping him with the halado (Advanced) English class, twill be sweet!

So all in all, a super good, weird week, especially since now we are in a super ghetto email place, with some pretty scary people… but this is gonna be a fun and fantastic next week, keep me updated on life and such. I hope you all have a wonderful week full of rainbows and butterflies!

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
V.E.M.S.

May 20, 2014

 

Dear Family,

Well Transfers are a pretty drastic change, but I’m kind of looking forward for it. So first off I am leaving Sopron and heading to Kis Pest!!! woooot, I don’t know too much about KisPest other than its the land of 10 stories and it’s on the outskirts of Budapest, so this will definitely be a different experience. I’ll be serving with Elder Redford who just got in the country 9 weeks ago, so he is still a bit new, so I’m going to have to step it up a bit, but I’m super excited about it. Plus it turns out that I’ll be serving around Elder Lynch again who is now my Zone Leader, woot!!

 

So this last week was fairly interesting because we ended up going to Budapest and went out to lunch after our interviews and we may have gotten a bit lost which cut out an hour and then we missed our train. So we didn’t get home till 9 o’clock, which killed our entire day. Tuesday was filled with a lot of finding and wasn’t super successful sadly, but Thursday was awesome! We had a ton of programs, even though we had a couple people dog out on us, we still had a super successful day. We met with Liz and Lin and had 2 super good programs with them. We had the biggest turn out for our English class and there were a ton of new people. We were setting up with people like crazy afterwards and it was AWESOME! One lady came up to me right afterwards and asked to meet and she was super cool, and I just had a super good feeling about her, I don’t know why, but I just felt like she could go places. On Monday we met with her and the program went super good!! She was pretty interested in learning more about the church but the interesting part was how she learned about English class. She said she found one of the little posters we put around town and she took a little flyer and told her husband about it and he was all like "ah that’s bull crap" and then like 2 months later she just had a "thought" come into her head that said "go and learn English" so she did and then we met with her; and at the end she was so thankful. Before we could even ask her to pray she asked if she could give thanks… We were all like, yes of course go ahead! Super awesome and she wants her husband also to come and learn and we gave her a BOM and she was interested. We also offered to give her husband one and she said it would be a good idea because they normally fight over reading from the Bible since they only have one… we were just amazed , in awe at how awesome and prepared this person is. What an Awesome way to leave Sopron!

 

Also turns out that we had the opportunity to meet with one of our investigator's named Réka (who we also found through English class) parents and they were super funny. It was a super good experience, because it turned out that we tracted in their building before and I just gave them a little English class flyer which she gave to her daughter which led to us meeting with her and now we were able to meet with the mom, you can’t run away from Us!!! But seriously it was super cool to see how English class made the entire situation so much better and how one little flyer can change someone’s LIFE!

 

Then on Friday we had zone training which was pretty poppin lockin, but also destroyed like half of our days’ work since we had to go to Győr and back. But it was definitely worth it because it was amazing and I really learned loads.

 

Also super cool fast story, were just going tracting and trying to think of which 5 story building to tract and Elder Flake is like "let’s do this one" then we get in to the building super easily, first door we knock on, let in!! Shout out to Elder Flake the Spiritual Beast!!!

 

Then on Sunday we had quite a few people come to church which was super awesome, but by far the one I’m most excited about is Sándor and his two little girls!! He came a bit late, but the important part is that he came and is now showing some real desire to change his life! It was such a good last church meeting in Sopron; I’m really going to miss a ton of people here! I’ve had soo many good memories here, but I’m just thankful that I had the opportunity to serve in Sopron and for all the amazing people and friends that I got to meet with. I’m also super grateful that the work really started to pick up and hopefully Liz will be baptized at the end of the month.

 

So, I’ll let you all know how kispest is next week and stuffs . . . cool cool cool

 

I also lost my camera for a while, but then found it, which is why no pics were sent last week

So here they come . . . . soonish

 

Anywho, hope that yall are doing awesome, have a great week.

 

Sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

May 6, 2014

 

Dear Family,

Well I have some good news and I some bad news. Sooo I guess let’s start off with the bad; one of my companions was emergency transferred out of Sopron and is now in Erd. We are super sad about it, because we still had so many awesome things we were planning to do, but it happens. We were pretty surprised by it, especially since the good news is... this last week was probably the most successful week of my mission!

 

It was a super crazy week. After conference, Liz and Lin grew tremendously spiritually and now Lin really wants to be baptized and is fighting with her family in order to be able to. She is now 100 percent ready! It’s truly amazing to see the progress she has made. Then Liz's baptismal date has moved from early August to the end of this MONTH!! So pretty much whoever stays here this transfer is going to baptize her. She is super excited now, more excited than I have ever seen her. She’s already planning it all out and who she is going to invite. I’m super grateful that I have had the opportunity to help teach these wonderful people, I’m so excited for them.

 

Also, since we have been able to go on splits with Elder Brown so often, we have been able to get a ton of work done and have been finding a lot more people and getting more let ins. It’s crazy now the amount of success we’ve been given. We’ve also just starting meeting with these 2 girls from English class and they are super cool. We were pretty surprised by them; one is only 16 and she was asking us super intense questions like, "are the Jews still gods people?" and "doesn’t it say in Revelations that none should add to this book? " and we were just super surprised at how religious this girl was, but we explained it all and it went super good. Then her friend that we also met with came to church and it seemed to go pretty well, other than a few things . . . That I dare not talk about . . .

 

We also met with Sándor, the super cool Inactive who wants to comeback, and also with his 2 little girls who are freaking hilarious! It was a pretty good program and we really want to get him to start coming to church again and be able to become a priest so that he can baptize his daughter. Man I love this guy and his family, he has had a pretty rough life and is working super hard, such a good guy.

 

Also on Saturday we went to a member’s home who is a bit poor and she had a ton of mold around her kitchen. So we went through (us missionaries) and cleaned it up with a whole lot a work, sweat, and bleach. Afterwards we had sport nap so we smelt like chlorine/bleach for a while, but it was pretty fun and it was really good, especially since we got to meet the rest of the family. It was totally wicked!!

 

Also we met with another guy who actually first heard about us from his girlfriend who got an English class flyer and was talking to him about it. He was interested and streeted us as we were tabling. He is super cool and speaks really good English and wants to go to America to do volunteer work and practice his English, he even looked us up on Wikipedia!! Super cool!

Also in other news, the Egyptian guy (who streeted us) came to English club and now we are trying to get him a Book of Mormon in Arabic. Super tight!!

We also went bowling on Monday, wooot, I’ll get sum pics later hopefully.

 

Well I hope all of your weeks are filled with rainbows and butterflies!

 

Sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

 

PS so as far as Skyping goes, we should be doing it around 4 or 5 o clock here, so it will be 8 or 9 o clock for you guys, yes that means in the morning . . . Sorry