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

April 13, 2014

 

Dear family,

This week was super good, we had a ton of programs and next week we will probably have even more. We celebrated Easter at this older ladies home, who was super kind and rather lonely, because both her sons already left the nest. But we had a pretty good program with her and talked a lot, pretty fun.

 

Honestly there was so much we did this week, I’ll just tell you the highlights. We were able to finally meet with our bap date D. who is super cool and flippin hilarious. he is like 20 and speaks super good English. Really here in pest most of our programs are in English. It’s super weird and I don’t like it, mostly because I can finally speak Hungarian and now barely use it anymore, super weird. But we had a good program with him. Also had a good program with E. where we just helped her with some of her questions; she is super cool too. Also I promised to make some brownies for another investigator tomorrow since it’s her birthday . . we’ll see how they turn out.

 

Also there is this super legit girl who is 13 and comes to church all by herself since her mother passed away and she lives an hour and 15 minutes away. Her dad came to general conference and is now willing to meet with the missionaries, so we went over there and got to know them and really answered a ton of their questions. We had a super good program with them mostly because the girl has a super strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the church. She was seriously one of the best members that we ever had at a program and she is only 13!!! It really just showed to me the power that the youth can have, especially since there was another member, V. who is 14 or so and he also had a rock hard testimony and is just such a stud!! Really I love it here, there’s a ton of awesome people that we meet with and it’s amazing.

 

Pretty much other than that just doin missionary work. The work here is super good so we don’t do as much finding.

 

hehe super funny story, so we were just flyering and streeting people in this super busy area and this drunk guy who’s like 25 comes up to me . . Super close and puts his arm on my shoulder and says "love the lord! Go and preach the good word of love to the people" and stuff like that and then he just straight up kissed me on the cheek . . it wasn’t like the whole puszi thing it was a straight up kiss on the cheek, super gross but pretty funny.

 

Hope yall have a good week and such

Sok Szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

VEMS

April 6, 2015

Dear Family,

 Yea it’s kinda weird being back In Budapest, but its super cool. Its seriously my favorite city úgy hogy . . . But luckily we did have the opportunity to watch conference and this time we could watch it in English; which was awesome, because Hollands talks just aren’t the same in Hungarian. We got to watch all of the conferences except for the Sunday afternoon… but we were just happy that we got to hear Uchtdorf and Holland and the Prophet. It was way good and helped me a ton. There were so many good talks and the priesthood session was especially good! But it was super funny that the first session we watched was just all about families and getting married, almost made me kinda trunky.

So my new companion is Elder Murdock from somewhere in northern Utah, he is super cool, pretty athletic too so I’m super excited to have some sport naps, with him. The work here is super good!! We already have like 16 or so programs planned for this week. But super funny stories already, My first day here we just did some area book work which was good because we found a couple people. Most of them can’t meet for a while because of Easter, but we did manage to set up with one guy name C. who speaks English. Super weird because most of our programs are in English here, kinda mad because I can now speak Hungarian fairly well and now it’s like Useless!! lols

 

C. was a very interesting man who is very talkative and is very obsessed with reincarnation; he believes its evil but is scared that it might be true. We tried helping him out but he keeps on focusing on the negative and repeats himself a TON. Told us like 10 times that he won’t change religions, but we will see. Hopefully we can help him. We had another program after his so we left him kinda fast only to later hear him in the hall arguing with a member. So we ran and tried to get him out but he had to go to the bathroom, so we went back to our program. . . long story but pretty much took him about an hour to leave after our program because he just kept loitering around. . .super funny.

 

Also we went tracting one day, just randomly and some lady told us we were already there earlier. . . so we just kinda shrugged it off. Then later we were let in from these 2 girls who also spoke English. They also told us we were there earlier and we just totally thought it was like Jehovah’s Witnesses or somebody. Then we continue on and run into a néni who was like hey I already got a card from you guys; she showed it to us and it was for sure a Mormon card, so we call the other elders and they were tracting the same exact building literally 2 hours before us . . . what were the chances!!

 Not too much else happened other than conference and meeting some new super cool investigators. We also teach a lot of English classes here which is pretty cool, but pretty new to me, cuz we only did it once a week. But its super fun. Other than that like nobody can meet because of Easter and they are all going home to some random falu. Anyway hope that you guys are doing awesome, make sure to reread your general conference talks and notes!! And have a very merry kellemes and happy Easter!!!

 

sok szeretettel

Waldvogel Elder

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