February 03, 2014

Dear family,

Wow, that sounds like a pretty crazy week and a pretty interesting super bowl… It seems like it wasn’t even a competition.

Yea, there’s quite a bit of snow around here now. On Sunday we actually walked one of our Investigators to church because she’s kind of older and was scared of slipping since there is ice literally everywhere! It was crazy! I was just ice skating everywhere because it was easier.

This week was pretty tough, mostly because we have been looking for a new place to live. Its super hard to find a place for sale/rent here because there’s so many people who want to move here from Austria. It’s much cheaper to live here, so they work in Austria making bank in euros, then live here. So far we’ve found only one place that hasn’t been sold because it’s tiny and overpriced, but it’s the best that we can do. Plus my companion got sick on Saturday and threw up so we didn’t do too much working after that; it lasted through Sunday, but now he seems a ton better, which is good because on Friday were going to Budapest for interviews with president.

Anyway this week we tracted into this super funny old néni and her son who has some sort of mental illness. They’re really nice and funny. Teaching them is super hard just because they don’t really pay attention and we will be talking about Christ and the plan of salvation and then she will just randomly ask us unrelated questions like "does your family speak Hungarian?" or just other random questions about America. It’s really funny and random. Other than that not a lot happened this week, lately things have been really slow… and not much is going on.

Well hope all is well! Over in the west!

Stay cool

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
VEMS

January 27, 2014

Dear Family,

I kind of know how to make nokedli, but I do not have the recipe, I’ll have to get it. Anyway, sounds like it will be a fun trip to go pick Hailee up . . . without . . . me! Yea the book thief was a pretty good book from what I remember. I read it in middle school, so I don't remember too much. But it’s nice to see that you are doing awesome. Your new callings sound like they will be way fun!

Well it FINALLY started snowing here in Hungary which kinda really stinks especially since I left my beanie at the zone leaders place in Győr, so it’s been a wee bit chilly. But this winter so far was so much nicer than last year from what I’ve heard. Last year there was like a huge snow storm and it snowed from early December through March. Woot!

Well splits in Győr were interesting. We worked really hard which was nice, but we pretty much were just finding all day. We had to take a train there and back which was fun, but I learned quite a bit and Elder Squire was super cool. It was weird leaving our area completely empty and both of us working in Győr, but it was fun. We really focused on praying for something very specific, so all together we prayed to find a family that would be able to get baptized. Then as we were tracting we ran into a lot of cool families; one in particular was SUPER cool mostly because when we opened the door she immediately smiled! That almost NEVER happens. She was super nice and really interested. SO the message of the story is: prayer works.

Also some big news! We're getting kicked out of our apartment! Don’t know what is going on but I guess that our land lady wants the apartment back, so now we have been looking for a new apartment which hasn't been going very well. We found one place but it was TINY, and quite expensive for such a small apartment, so we are still on the lookout. But it wasn’t all bad, while waiting for a lady to show us some apartment’s we played with a giant flock of pigeons that we found around some old bread so we broke it up and got them to go crazy! We got super close to them and I kept touching some of them with my shoe and they were so into the bread to even care. Then we startled them and it was the scariest thing, like a hundred pigeons started flying right at us and I was just like,"ahhhwhahshhawhhahwa" . . . and saw my life flash before my eyes, anyways I took pics to send.As for the work here in Sopron, it is going pretty good. The new sisters are doing super good, and we actually found and met with this super cool lady, let’s call her Sziv (which means heart in Hungarian) she is super nice and has a baby that’s almost 1 year of age. She is super cool. We met with her and talked to her about the restoration and also about family and how we believe the gospel can help the family. Turns out she is having some family issues at this time so I really hope that we can help her.

And Lin is doing pretty well; she really likes Elder Larson, they get along pretty well which is really great to see. Then Liz isn’t doing the best right now mostly because during our last program with her, when we started going through the smoking program she straight up said that she had no desire to be baptized. This was super sad to me, because she knows that this is true and she told us that she knows the book of Mormon is true and wanted to be baptized, yet she refuses to quit smoking. . It just makes me super sad.

Well so my week this week really hasn’t been too exciting, just a lot of knockin on doors and trying to save souls. We also attended a funeral which was a bit different, but for the most part it was the same as in America. It was for a member that recently passed away. She was in a retirement home and was about 81 years old, so it wasn’t much of a surprise, but it was still pretty sad. I didn’t know her at all, but it was sad to see others in so much pain. Plus it was also snowing outside which adding to the sad atmosphere already in existence.

Sok Szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

January 20, 2014

Dear Family,

Well this week has been pretty interesting, mostly because of transfers and such, but it’s been pretty good so far. It’s definitely a lot different, but still good. Lin and Liz are both doing really good. Liz has been on vacation to Debrecen but she just returned yesterday so we will be meeting with her on Wednesday. We also met with Lin and she’s doing pretty good. It has been super hard trying to set up with her this week considering we are going to be gone all day tomorrow… were trying out this new split schedule where we go to Győr for an entire day and night with the zone leaders… so hopefully nothing bad happens while we're gone.

Ya the Browns here are super awesome and super nice; they feed us a lot and Sister Brown is a super good cook and really loves to cook too. Whenever we go and eat with them it’s like the closest thing we have to TV just because they're sooo funny. It’s fun to see the sisters and how well they get along with sister Brown and how much Sister Brown loves them. The first day they got here the Browns invited us all to dinner and afterwards Sister Brown just started giving us a ton of food, it was really funny! Then she was offering to help the Sisters clean their apartment (another funny side story, the other elders apartment was a disaster and they spent all day cleaning it before they left and we took out like 5 giant bags of trash because we ended up helping them a bit, then even after all of that the sisters came in and were talking about how disgusting the apartment was, and I was like, "you should have seen it before they cleaned it" oh it was funny, it was just so nasty, so many health code violations). Also she offered to take them to the store and get supplies etc. But it’s good to know that Sister Brown finally has somebody to go on splits with because she gets stuck in the home a lot it seems. 

Also before the Elders left we had a nokedli party and it was so good, I will have to send some pictures because it was so tasty good. (nokedli is like this super amazing homemade noodle stuff that is also super addictive because it tastes so good).

So transfers were pretty sweet because we all went up to Budapest and I got to see a lot of elders from my MTC group and Finally got to see Elder Spedding from my MTC group whom I haven’t seen since I arrived in country. It was way fun getting to talk to him. That and I also talked to Kovács Nővér from my greenie area and I was surprised that I could actually understand everything that she said in Hungarian which was really awesome to see the difference from when I was a greenie to now. So, its super funny because I’m the only one left in Sopron who knows anything about this area, even though I really don’t know that much. I took my companion on a streeting/tour of all the important places in the city which took forever because we walked literally all around town which was pretty intense especially since we almost got lost on the way and ended up in some random field at one point, but we found our way! Hoorah for Happy Endings!

Other than that nothing really too exciting happened, other than just a lot of tracting and looking up old investigators and such, because most of our progressing investigators are gone on vacation, so yea. Fun stuff, Fun stuff!

Well hope that you are all doing GREEEEEEAAAT!!

Sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
V.E.M.S

Jaunary 14, 2014

Good greetings family,

Well I am glad that you liked the package, I worked quite a bit on it so it was definitely worth it. That’s way awesome to hear about all the family history work! I really miss the temple, it seems like forever since I last went. So, how was Enders Game? That is one of my favorite books, in fact it was the first book that really got me into reading so I’m kinda nervous about the movie. Did Brent like it? He read it also, so he should know.

Anyway, this week was pretty fantastic. We worked super hard and we also met with Liz almost every day because she is leaving on vacation to Debrecen and we won’t see her for a little over a week which is kind of sad, but we have just been finishing up teaching her all of the lessons. So she is pretty much ready to be baptized, but her only problem still is smoking. She is doing better, but still having a hard time giving it up… it’s a super challenging challenge. We also met with Lin and we finally were able to commit her to a bap date. The only problem is that she is scared that her family is not going accept her decision and she says that she won’t be baptized if they don’t accept that. So we have been praying every day that she will be able to be baptized on the 15 of February and that her family will accept her decision, so please keep her in your prayers.

Other than that we haven’t had too much success with finding, we did a lot of tracting but didn’t find too much success from all of it, but maybe it will get better.

Also, TRANSFERS HAVE COME: and I am staying is Sopron and my companion Becker is leaving to Szombathely which is pretty cool, and I am getting a new companion, Elder Larson. I know almost nothing about him so hopefully he’s pretty cool. Then the other 2 elders her in Sopron are being replaced by sister missionaries which is kind of funny, but also super weird especially since we used to go to the other elders apartment a ton because it was literally right above the branch house and was extremely convenient. So I’m the only one staying which is really weird, but I’m pretty stoked, yet a bit sad because this district was super cool. But it happens. Gotta make the best with what you’re given.

Anyway, hope you are all doing amazing. Life’s going pretty good in Hungary, I shall send some pictures.

Love you all!

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

January 6, 2014

Hello Dearest Family,

Well this week was pretty fun, full of adventure, fireworks and rejection and also a Baptismal Date. Wooohooo!

So firstly we’ve been meeting with Liz a lot and she is progressing like crazy! That and we asked her to be baptized and she completely rejected it, but 2 lessons later she said she prayed about it and feels like she really does need to baptized! Her only real problem is that she has been smoking all her life, which is super hard for most people to give up, but she has been smoking less and less frequently, which is really good. But please keep her in your prayers; she is the coolest person ever!

 

Then on Saturday Elder C. and I went on normal splits for 24 hours so we had another adventure! It was pretty fun because I learned a ton more about the UK and also it really made me practice my Hungarian more which was pretty good. It’s pretty amazing to see how I can actually understand mostly what is going on and I’m able to reply, it’s weird, but super cool. I really love this Language… because it’s so crazy, complicated and one can just simply invent words and it makes sense, its awesome! We also kind of got kicked out of a building, the lady didn’t exactly kick us out but she scared us and was hostile enough… she kept watching us as we were going downstairs, so we decided to leave. After we left some guy followed us and asked us what we were doing. I said we just want to talk with people, and he was like whateves and left, it was really weird.

Also, New Years was pretty Intense! Considering there were fireworks everywhere! Outside was just trashed the next day and there was like nobody outside, most likely because of all the hangovers and such. When Hungarians celebrate, they Party Hard.

 

Really not too much else happened this week mainly because it’s the holidays and everybody is busy, so we didn’t really have much success.

 

But I hope that all of your new years were completely awesome! Love you all and wish you the best!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder

December 30, 2013

Dear Family,

Wow that’s a pretty intense story, Ill definitely have to keep him in my prayers. Yea it’s pretty crazy to see how fast life is going now . . . sometimes I just want to be like, life . . . slow down . . life . . stahp. But I’m pretty stoked for the New Year. Apparently it’s supposed to be INSANE here in Hungary. They shoot off fireworks in the streets and they are selling all kinds of masks, hats and little horn things on the streets, it’s pretty cool. I want to figure out where they sell the fireworks.

Anyway, this week was pretty awesome I hope everybody’s Christmas was spectacular!!! Mine consisted of hanging out with the Senior couple here in Sopron, the Browns and also going to a couple of members’ homes, playing a lot of Uno in our spare time and we took a 2 hour nap at the Browns which was pretty funny, Other than that, this week was verily interesting mostly because one of the other Elders is Still sick. He’s now on his third different illness in a row. He’s been sick since arriving here and he’s training a greenie, so president called us and asked us to take him in a triship during the day while the other elder stays with the browns, It was pretty fun. Then yesterday my companion also got sick . . So I was promoted to senior companion for a day . wooowhhoooot! We got in a lot of interesting discussions with people just trying to figure out what they were saying, especially since that day we met with like 2 nénis which was really fun, they’re super cool. That was pretty much my Christmas and now for new years . . I have no idea what’s going to happen. Hope yall r doing siiieeek.

Oh yea, we also went to the Roman Ruins, I’ll send some pics!

ok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder
Kellemes ünnepet kívánok!! 

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