March 31, 2015

Dear Family,

Well pretty big news . . . TRANSFERS CAME!!! This is my last transfer and my last area and it looks like I am LEAVING Eger and going to Pest now!! Budapest is literally broken into 3 parts and now I will be serving in the last part. Super funny, but really sad because I’m super going to miss the people here in Eger, even now I’m super sad just saying goodbye is like super hard, also I have a ton of stuff to do today and we are emailing at a new place so I can’t really send any pics . . . sajnos.

 

But this last week was super good; we had really good programs with C. and also with A. and his family. We taught the family the restoration and the dad had tons of questions that we answered during the second program with the Plan of salvation. It was amazing to see because it answered every single one of his questions. And he has been reading out of the BOM a lot so we are super excited. C. was having a really hard time but we met with her twice and she is now doing awesome!! Especially the last one we watched Jeffery R Hollands talk "broken vessel" and it was sooooo goood. Then she came to church and Klinger Gábor came (the prior stake president) and he gave one of the best talks I have ever heard in person and the entire talk was practically dedicated to C. It was amazing to see just how much the spirit helped him know what to teach.

I seriously have no time. . . I’m sorry . . . but I would like to get a summer job if possible when I go home. . . so pleez keep your eye out.

Love you all!!

Waldvogel Elder

VEMS

March 23, 2015

Dear Family,

That’s super sweet that you sent in the info for the apartment, I’m super stoked! As far as classes go, I did get a 4 on AP US History so that should fill that requirement and I did AP calculus also, but I think I want to retake calc 1 and then take calc 2 next semester just as a refresher; because I forgot all math that I knew. And of course physics and computer science sound fun!!!

Anywho this week was super good, because first off we found this super awesome family who I already love, they’re sooooo funny! We tracted into them and they wanted to meet, but didn’t have time, so we set up for a later time and finally got to meet with them this week; which was AMAZING!!! The Dad A. hurt his leg really bad, pretty sure he tore his Achilles heel and now is bed ridden which was super sad. But he is hilarious and had a ton of questions; and we just joked around a ton. It was super funny. Later we helped them move houses which was pretty fun just because we rarely get chances to actually do service, so it was super fun, and we got to meet more people during our first program with them; their mom came in and she already knew us from when we tabled and it was super cool because she read a pamphlet and saw some of the references to the book of Mormon and also wanted one. They are just the nicest people; we will also meet with them next week.

We only have a couple more minutes so I have like no time... sorry. But the rest of our investigators are doing good, I'll email and send pics next week.

Love you all!

Elder Waldvogel

VEMS

March 16, 2015

Dear Family,

Well this week was super, super busy and super, super awesome too! Mostly because we had elder Patrick Kearon give training at zone conference which was by far the best one I’ve had ever! He also gave a talk at stake conference last year that I also loved. So he is one of my favorite 70s!

We did have another super good program with C. where we went through some questions she had, and in the end it turned out super good! Later that day we set up with a new inv. and then go to meet with him 5 hours later; we walked over there which took us an hour, call him and he isn’t there and going to Budapest or something!! I was so mérges. We also had a super good program with the Trio where at least one of them started to read out of the BoM a lot which was super awesome; and we super stoked because he’s starting to progress and is really close to baptism. I’m just super stoked about him because he would make such a good missionary!! We also met with S. which was pretty average but always good. Also had a super good játék est with a lot of people and went to family night which was good. Then we had an awesome program with the sisters investigator who wanted to meet with us for some reason. But we really got along with him and it was super fun. It was really helpful to him. Then we had zone conference and district conference on Sunday, so over all we were super busy and barely even able to get any work in this week sadly.

The zone conference was soooo amazing I was so pumped afterwards. Kearon talked a lot about the real reason why we are out here and our job in bringing God's children back home and really just loving our investigators; and to not even use the word investigator and instead use friend. Because they really are our friends; and we want to help our friends and know the gospel will help them be happier! He also talked a lot about choices and deciding right now to simply be happy and if we know who we really are and where we are going, then that knowledge is really what can help us be happy. So we want to really focus on the plan of salvation this next week and hopefully we will be able to meet with some more people, especially since last week while tracting we were able to do some look ups and set up with 2 super cool people; so we hope that that works out well.

Well hope you all had a great week! That’s super cool that you got to see Ryan and the Zacchillis! Do you know where Ryan is going for college? Also hope you have another fantastic week!

Love you all!!

Elder Waldvogel

VEMS

March 9, 2015

Dear Family,

So I’ve decided that USU is the place to go. As far as rooming, I will most likely room with Elder Lynch who is now there; because he is living with 2 other missionaries and they still have one room open. I will email him for sure and see if I can stay there. You can also try and contact him if you want. Also WHEN DOES IT START? Just out of curiosity, I would like to know because I believe I was signed up for summer at BYU.

So this week was super intense, just because so much crazy stuff happened and we were super busy, especially on Thursday and Friday and church was pretty intense also.

But we had another super good program with C, where we just talked about hope, keeping positive and that she can do this. We also talked a bit about baptism, which was super good. Then we had an amazing program with the "the gang" where it was all of us missionaries and them and we just bore a ton of testimony and talked to them about baptism and trying to get them to commit to pray about the church to find out if it’s true or not. The spirit was just so strong, it was super amazing. Sadly we’ve been so busy we haven’t been able to meet with them since, but I’m super stoked to be meeting with them again.

On Thursday we ran into "Yo man!" G. and set up and met with him, which was super funny; not really interested in learning more about the church, but hopefully soon with time. Then we had a couple other good programs, taught English class then had to hurry to the train station to go up to Miskolc to go on splits with the ZLs. Super funny because one was Godderidge and the other was my boy Raymond who I knew really well in the MTC. We went on splits together which was super sick. Raymond is a flippin amazing missionary, so of course we had some super good programs, my favorite was the last one, because it was this super cool gypsy family and there was a TON of them in this tiny apartment. They were just flipping hilarious and we had a pretty bomb lesson with them. Overall the splits were super good and super fun!

On Saturday we kinda took it easy because my comp was still sick, so we didn’t do tooo much, but we went streeting a bit and then we got a call from a member inviting us to family home evening so this young member could teach a lesson to us so she could get her young women’s medallion. It was super funny, because were just like sure, not really knowing what to expect. So we go and talk for a bit and the one girl looked super nervous and then I figured out why… when she started to speak and said the she was giving the lesson on the law of chastity. Really for us it wasn’t bad, but she was pretty nervous at first. But it actually turned into a super good program and they had quite a few questions that we were able to answer; so in the end it turned out pretty good.

Also on Sunday after church I was just dead. I had to translate a talk for Elder B. which really wasn’t too bad, but then the Sunday school teacher didn’t show, so I ended up teaching which I actually really liked and it turned out to be super good and it was pretty fun. But then for priesthood I also had to teach the lesson and there was only one other guy there and it was F... who is almost deaf and it’s almost impossible to understand because he talks super-fast and groggily (like there are Hungarians who can’t even understand him sometimes) so I just tried teaching a lesson to him which turned into him trying to teach me and talking for 30 min straight; which wasn’t bad, but it just gave me a headache, lol. In the end it was really good and I learned a lot and was able to better my language skills... it’s just tiring.

Any way, hope you guys are all doing amazing!!

Sok Szeretettel

Waldvogel ELder

VEMS

March 2, 2015

Dear Family,

Well this week was an interesting one. Work is slowly picking up, but we still have a ton of people who are sick and I’m pretty sure that I’m also getting sick slowly... but hopefully not. We met with J. and his family twice this week which was sweet (I also ordered Dad a super sick whip) and we had some good programs with him; but J. is also sick :( which stinks because he’s been so happy and smiling a lot, but during our last program he wasn’t feeling so good.

We did have a super good program with Sz. which was sweet because we just taught him how to pray (using the prayer burger, which he loved) and he has never before prayed so we are really trying to get him to pray and he said He would try it out, but only by himself, so I was pumped for him... He is just super cool.

We weren’t able to meet with C. because I accidentally called the wrong C, like 3 times!!! And I was confused why her phone was always off... then I finally figured it out; but it’s cool because she ended up coming to FARSANG; which is a Hungarian tradition (similar to Halloween) where they all dress up and dance and have a feast. SO we spent most of the day preparing for it and helping set up… AND I also made Brownies!! It was super fun and we had quite a few people show up.

Also on Thursday we ran into this super awesome dude who spoke fluent English and was super smart… He came up to us and was like "Mormons? More men and More women!" Super funny and he talked about how religious he was and also talked about a ton of stuff…especially about the original diet and how it can cure diabetes; then talked a ton about how bad most religions are, but he likes us and we gave him a book of Mormon so hopefully he will read it.

Gotta go soon, but we also had quite a bit of success with finding this week so that’s good!

Send more stuff next week

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

February 23, 2015

Dear Family,

Well this week was pretty crazy, but overall pretty good. So last week we had interviews with president and he gave us a lot of ideas for finding, so this week we decided to apply what he talked about into our finding, and it was actually super cool because we actually had quite a bit of success. We found some people who are okay with us coming back next week; most of them aren’t super interested, but there is one really cool couple that seems interested, so I’m way stoked to go and meet with them. We also went streeting kinda late at night which really stunk and was pretty hard, but we kept going and it was super awesome because we met this lady who was SUPER interested and had a ton of questions, so she invited us into a little coffee shop to go and talk. She was super nice and ordered us some hot chocolate and we had an entire first program with her, which was super awesome! But we couldn’t get her phone number because she said she would just call us when she wanted to meet. But it was still super awesome, especially since we were dead tired.

This week was still hard because once again we couldn’t meet with a lot of people because they either got sick or they were super busy. But the programs we did have were pretty good; not too much change really, but overall good programs. We ‘re really hoping that this week will be better for meeting.

Yea, I think the ENTIRE mission knows about sister Moffat and Elder Ekstrom getting engaged, because we were just soooo shocked and did NOT see that coming!

Hope you guys are doing awesome!!

Sok Szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

February 17, 2015

Dear Family,

So this week was pretty intense for many reasons, one being valentine’s day, the other is that we had to go up to zone training in Miskolc and later on Sunday and Monday we had to go up to Budapest for "new Missionary training" so Winegar could go to the most wonderful place on earth . . The Hivatal. It was super fun though because we got to spend the night for a while with the other trainers and just talk for hours and then Elder G. (another trainer who is also half Hungarian) and I went to the Secretaries house to spend the night which was super fun, because I already served with B. and C. Elders… We just ate palincsintas and played some board games. Overall it was super fun, but the train rides were super tiring, but Elder W. is a beast and on the ride back he would just start talking to people on the train in Hungarian and ask if he could practice Hungarian because he was new and he would practice and hold conversations for like more than half an hour. THAT’S MY BOY!! He’s really starting to learn the language now, it’s super hard to teach him, just because I want to teach him everything at once, but he has such a drive to learn this language, he’s going to be an awesome missionary.

Meeting with people was pretty hard this week just because like everybody cancelled :( but on the bright side we did meet with some new people and we had some success tabling too! my comp and I felt like tabling so we head out for 2 hours and during it D. and H. (the B's granddaughter) came up and chatted with us for a while, then left. I thought it was noteworthy because it was valentine’s day and D. has a girlfriend who he wasn’t with and instead was hanging out with another girl, LOL. Then our land lady comes and starts talking to us and so does this super old néni who is like 70 and she pointed to a Joseph Smith pamphlet talking about how she read it and asked when he is coming to Hungary . . . whelp, I told her he passed away, but then I likened it unto the modern prophet and our landlady was also talking us up and was like telling the lady to take some pamphlets and we gave her a BoM; she also talked about her daughter who is also looking for the truth. Super awesome!

Also Valentine’s Day was a bit hard just because literally everybody was in couples and not super willing to listen; but we did see a dog who was WALKING ITSELF!! In America you walk the dog, but in Hungary, the dog walks himself! He seriously had his own leash in his mouth. LOL gotta enjoy the little weird things.

Also we met with another band of nénis from the area book, which was super funny because as we got to know them they had a BILLION questions about missionaries and what we do and what we can and can’t do. Super funny, and later the one wants to take us to go shopping for some old time kézimunka (Hungarian traditional dresses) that Elder W. wants to get for his mom because his mom is Hungarian; she was born in America and speaks very simple Hungarian. It was a really fun program.

Also church was super good, we had a church leader from the district who gave a talk and then Priesthood was super awesome!! we talked about making good decisions and later shared a video by Jeffery R Holland which was the super awesome one where he talks about getting in our faces a bit with just enough heat to singe our eyebrows, just like a coach does towards the end of the game; and the spirit was just so strong, and we asked our inv. and a young member if they liked it, and they really did and so then we asked why they liked it . . . and you could tell that they felt the spirit and even our one inv. said that he just couldn’t describe it and at the time there was also a super cool leader in the stake that was there and he talked to them about serving a mission and our inv. asked about what they need to do and we just testified and it was super amazing.

Well, that was pretty much all of it. Have a spectacular week

sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

VEMS