May 26, 2015

Hihetetlen hogy már itt vagyunk Május a végére! Az idő mindig csak gyorsabban és még gyorsabban megy. Múlt hét is volt az én hat holnap jelem a missziómban... olyan furcsa gondolkodni arról! Remélem hogy tökéletesen jól vagytok mindenki és hogy eddig minden szuper volt a heteitekben. Ha olvashatjátok ezt az email-t gép fordítás nélkül, akkor annyira ügyes vagy és adok neked egy nagy pacsit és mondnék neked "gratulálok" ;)

We've had lots of fun this week going all over the place. We had interviews with mission President Smith in Budapest on Tuesday, and we've been to lots of new part of the city and outlying villages that I've never been to yet. We worked a lot in people's gardens... I think we probably must have had about 20 hours of gardening and helping people till ground, rip out weeds, build posts for plants to grow on, spread hay, straighten fruit trees, and spreading manure over fields. All really good opportunities to do service for people! I've got some pretty mad calluses on my hands now, and we got some pretty gnarly sunburns, but it was a lot of fun!

We also had the super cool opportunity to host a family night activity at the home of a family from the branch here who hasn't been to church in 15 years. It was such a neat thing to see that they had so many people over to their house to have a szalonna cookout and to share their hospitality with all of us. I made chocolate covered strawberries for the party, Sister Whittaker made MnM cookies, and Sister Wilson and Elder Weaver made Nutella fudge. After we all finished eating, we shared a great message with them about turning to Christ and becoming selfless and converted. It was such a neat experience. :)

President and Sister Smith came to Nyíregyháza for a relief society activity on Saturday, where everyone from Nyíregyháza, Miskolc, Debrecen, and Eger came together to take a tour of the square in the city here. After that, we all headed just north of town to a recreation area in the forest, where they cooked "bogrács," a traditional soup done in a kettle hanging over a fire outdoors. It was fun to translate for President Smith, and we enjoyed meeting all the new people from the different cities in the area.

Loving life here in Nyíregyháza! Crazy that the transfer is almost over already and that Elder Weaver is going home in just 9 more days... we'll see if that means I'm staying or leaving Nyíregyháza! Have a great week and do lots of good things to someone else! :)

This was everyone at the családi est activity

with the szalonna cookout and motorcycles.

Look at this monster

Szalonna cookout at the Petrován's house! Basically, they grill

bacon and pig fat over a fire and put it on bread with some

onions and vegetables. Actually super good but I'm sure it's

probably not exactly the healthiest thing in the world.

We were the judges of the "suti" (shoot-y) contest at the

relief society activity... everyone made sweets and baked 

goods, and I swear that it was just like in the Grinch when 

they made us try it all. They sat us down in the chair of 

cheer and shoved it in just like the movie.

Helping out Corey, a Hungarian man who was baptized

here in Nyíregyháza, in his garden. He worked hard, 

left to live and work in America, England, Scotland, Finland, Egypt, 

Thailand, and all over the world. He's a carpenter and he makes 

fancy kitchen cabinets for his customers. He came back to Hungary 

for a few weeks to put some affairs into order after his aunt passed 

away, and we helped him work in the garden at his aunt's house to 

prep it for sale. It was crazy too that he is best friends with Steve, our buddy 

that let me sit on his Harley! They've known each other since high school.

Passing Tokaj wine country on the way back from Budapest

This is just a small piece of the escalator that takes you down

to the subway in Budapest... it takes MINUTES to get to the end. 

It's so deep that it was also used as a bomb shelter during the Hungarian 

revolutions, and they have to force fresh air down into it with huge fan turbines.

Went to Budapest for interviews on Tuesday this week... 

This is a McDonalds inside a train station in Budapest.

CRAZY beautiful building with crazy normal McDonalds food.

May 18, 2015

Super cool week this week! We had the baptisms of our good friends András and Zoli on Saturday, and on Sunday they were both confirmed as members of the church. So neat to see the changes that they've made as they totally turned their lives around to be closer to Christ. Very special time.

The priest at the Roman Catholic church here in Nyíregyháza came to our family night activity this past week! We'd met him a few different times, and we are really good friends with him, so he thought he'd come to see what our church was exactly about. It was cool because we had been to visit him a few different times in his masses at the Catholic church, and we were excited to see that he also visited us in our church building. He's such a nice guy, probably one of our best friends here in Nyíregyháza.

One of our other friends here in the city wants to let us try out his 1500cc Harley Davidson motorcycle that he rides every weekend. Pretty sure that's not allowed, but the thought is nice anyways. That thing is BIG. He also wants to take us up north to try out a luge track that they have up in the mountains. I guess he's for sure an adrenaline junkie, because he wants to take us on all the most intense, crazy things around! He's ridden once across the whole Route 66 already on his bike, so I told him that maybe when I'm done with my mission I'll find a motorcycle and we'll go for a roadtrip through the desert on big bikes together. He's totally down for that. Soooo just keep that in mind, okay Mom? Missionary work, after all ;)

I hope you're all doing great in Arizona or wherever your adventures are taking you! Be good and be happy! Help someone and be a good Samaritan to someone that you meet this week. :)

Sok szeretet, boldogságot, egészséget, és biztonságot kívánok nektek ma!

Priest Elder

Lots of birds. Decided it would be cool to chase
 them all away. Then found mud all over myself
 from running after them. But it all
 washed out, so all's good in the end. ;)

Big group program at a member's house to

welcome Zoli and András into the branch!

This stray dog followed us for almost 4 hours on our hike!

I named him "Kolbász" (Sausage) He was way nice. :)

Me and Elder Weaver in front of the 

"Resurrected Hungary" memorial in Tokaj.

With András and Zoli right after their baptism!

I baptized the one on the right (Zoli)

At lunch in Tokaj with the sisters and the Vierneses

May 11, 2015

Hey!

Not a ton of time to write this week, but everything's going super well in Nyíregyháza! We've had lots of adventures going to the hospital to visit friends, helping people learn Spanish and English, and all the other things we do on a regular basis. Just overall a good week with some good work done here!:)

Had lots of fun getting to Skype home yesterday for Mother's Day. It's a little bit weird seeing and talking to people 10,000 miles away, but it was great! :)

Happy Mother's Day to everyone back at home! Be good this week, and I'll write more next week!

On splits with Elder Dellenbach!

Rare sighting!!! American-sized Dodge truck!!!

May 4, 2015

Hope Arizona's doing super well! Magyarország certainly is! :)

Nyíregyháza has had some pretty rainy weather for a lot of the past week, but we've been having a lot of fun meeting with all of our cool friends here in the city!

We took our Hortobágy whips out to the park here in the city and started whipping super loudly earlier this week, and we actually got the attention of a group of five landscapers working on the trees and bushes! They looked kind of rougher on the outside, but they came up to us and asked if they could try as well. We said of course, and they proceeded to take turns trying out whipping. It ended up being way cool because a couple of them were very strong and really good at loudly cracking the whip. Afterwards, they asked us why we were here in Hungary and what we were doing so far from "English speaking territory." We told them that we were here to help people be happy, and we are missionaries from our church. They were all super interested, and we ended up talking to them for a few minutes on the spot in the park! The Lord works in mysterious ways to guide His children back to Him. :)

I also had a pretty big miracle happen to me earlier this week, when we were biking back from a program a little ways out of town. We left our friend's house and headed back towards the downtown area, but I didn't realize until we had gotten almost all the way home that my name tag had fallen off somewhere along the way! I felt certain that I wouldn't ever see it again, since odds are that it probably wouldn't be found by someone who would want to take the effort to return it. I felt a little foolish, too, that I hadn't been more careful to make sure that it didn't fall off while we were biking back. I called the mission home in Budapest to ask for a replacement tag to be made, still kind of sad that I had lost mine. I was surprised, though, that a few days later, someone called us to say that they had found my nametag on the street and that they wanted to return it to me! It was no one else than our friend that I had been teaching Spanish to on that same day that I had lost it! She had been walking on the street and found my nametag, and wanted to make sure that it was given back. It was definitely an answer to a prayer, and I was very grateful that Heavenly Father had helped me in a thing as seemingly small and insignificant as a lost missionary name tag. :)

Anyways, I guess that's about it for news in Nyiregyhaza this week! Love you guys lots and look forward to talking to you again next week! Be good!:)

A cool place to take a picture before the 

train brought us back from Dankobokor

Making Coach Selby proud out here!

"Beware, it bites!" Funny sign in the zoo

Inside the giant biosphere, the indoor rainforest

 inside the zoo here in Nyiregyhaza! It was sooo big!

This rhino will make anyone's day better

Monkey train

With Margit in front of the zoo's entrance! She's the nicest old 

lady who loves to have us over, but she hasn't been to the zoo 

since she was a little girl because it's too expensive by Hungarian 

standards. So, we bought her a bus ticket and a 15 dollar

admission to the zoo! She was so excited and had

the funnest time with us at the zoo today.

Anytime you think you're not pretty, handsome, or good

 enough looking, just remember that at least you are not

an awkward little chicken thing with a blue-colored 

skin mask over your face I guess.