Now the REAL WORK begins...

Our Christmas break from many things was wonderful!! We spent some fun times with family and thoroughly enjoyed them. Christmas Eve found us all together for dinner and a presentation of the Nativity by mostly grandchildren, and a round of gifts. Being together is what Christmas is really about. Grandpa was able to say the blessing on the food in Hungarian, which did bring a few snickers from the children and grandchildren. At least we are trying.

Our Christmas couldn't have been better...we had all our family together. Brent and I received many wonderful gifts, and one that was not so wonderful, but just keeps on giving. Several of the children had colds, and they shared it with us. I have been really miserable for a couple of days.

On Wednesday night all the girls had "Grandma's Night". We watched Hairspray, and had pizza and did hair. It was not as eventful as they have been before, as we banned makeup and nail polish for that night. It is fun to have them all together. Next year they are on their own, but the following year, we will be ready for that night again.


That same night, Dave had all the boys over for "Boys Night Out" They too had pizza and watched movies and played games. Lucky Paulina got to work the night shift that night so she missed out on the fun. I am not sure how Gala did, but she probably rolled with it. Speaking of Gala, she is really doing well with the English language. She has been practicing and studying the language. I am impressed with her abilities.

Liz and Brian emptied out the storage closet and disposed of a lot of junk for us...Brian took one load to the dump. We have a lot of old records, so Liz set up the computer and we found what each of them are going for. Unfortunately, if we sold them we would not be instant millionaires. Too bad.
It was good to get that closet pared down. Today, Becky came down for a couple of hours and helped go through things in the storage room. We have another DI run ready to go. As soon as our language lesson is over they will be on their way to DI.

We have now begun in earnest to pack things up. This week we will have the movers come and pick the first load up and take it to storage. We hope that whoever our buyer is, will come by soon and buy the house. We have set ourselves a goal to be out of the house the end of the first week of February, so we will be packing diligently, and sorting things and tossing stuff. We will be going through boxes that have been in our storage room in search of Grandpa's Shoe. I surely hope it is in one of them. Grandpa's shoe is the shoe of Great Great Grandpa Clayson. We have used it for years as a prop for talks and presentations. I hope that it will turn up. We didn't find Grandpa's show today.


We are still showing the house, and looking for that one buyer. We delivered one big box to Anne's storage area, so she can keep an eye on that. We should be able to get the packed boxes out of our garage in the next couple of days, so that we can put more out there. I think that in the end, we will be more than happy to have the professional packers move everything out.

We are really getting around to looking at what we really are going to take with us. I even have piles of stuff that is to be packed. Once the house sells, and I don't have to clean every day, just in case someone comes, I will leave the suitcases out and begin to fill mine.

We are continuing with our language training, however it has been slow over the holidays. Our trainer went home for Christmas and so we only had one session, and then Brent couldn't get home of that one, so I got to practice conjugating verbs by myself.

We were so glad to have the Sullengers with us over the holiday week. I know that they missed their friends in St. George, but they were able to see many of their old friends in Bountiful. It was nice for them to spend time with other family members.

We were recipients of many wonderful gifts to use on our mission and are most appreciative of them all; journals, suitcases, books on Hungary, $$, special pillowcases to take with us, etc. We will put them all to use.

I wasn't a very diligent picture taker and thus all you have is words. I will do better later.

Moving on to Christmas

I can remember when Christmas looked like it does this morning. Rob was on his mission; Duke (our dog) was so small that we had to shovel paths through the back yard so he could move around; Brent and Dave climbed up to the roof to shovel the snow off so that it wouldn't cave in on us all. Brent remembers that he gingerly went up and back down the ladder, realizing the potential for accidents. Dave, on the other hand, bounded up on the roof and shoveled and then jumped down into the snow. Fortunately he can still walk and talk.

This morning I think that we have almost a foot of snow, light and fluffy. Well, I just measured it and it is only about six fluffy inches. Brent got up early and shoveled the driveway and sidewalks, and is prepared to shovel again this afternoon. I am not sure he will get to do it. He always does some of our neighbors driveway. I just looked outside and found that one of our neighbors, who happens to have Parkinson's and is very tentative in his walking, was outside shoveling again.....our driveway and walkway. I was so touched that I took his picture without him knowing it. This is to remind me of true charity, and that everyone wants to be able to help and we must let other help us, as well as we need to help others.

We have been making some progress in our language training. We can now recognize many word in Hungarian, and know that we have seen them before, but some of them we have no idea what they are in English. The training is coming along, and I continually marvel that we are attempting this difficult language, and can see some of our progress. Elder Martin, who has been home from Hungary for 4.5 months (my girls would have said he is pretty normal by now) is being so patient and positive with us that we can even believe that we are doing a pretty good job. We are learning some basic sentences and trying hard to memorize, along with trying to understand sentence structure and grammer. For a couple of old birds that is hard!!!

Earlier this month we spent a wonderful evening with friends in Midway at the Creche Display that the community does each year, and then had an excellent dinner with the Lamberts in their new home. It was a good opening to the Christmas Season, and put us right in the spirit. We will miss eating and visiting with those friends for a while, but the time will pass quickly.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Sullengers to spend a week at our house. I think that we will be party central, as we need to have the Girls Night here and I heard Dave talking to one of the boys about boys night out. We are looking forward to having all our family together for Christmas Eve. I know that some of the children are planning to do a Natavity for us, which is always a treat.


As soon as Christmas week is over, we will be right back at major preparations for the mission.


However, this morning we received a schedule of our branch training for the next year, and it is almost all filled in for us. My we will be making lots of preparation for talks and training all over Hungary. This is getting us all excited. We notice that we have a training about a week after we arrive in the country. I am putting together information for talks and perhaps will have a draft or two prepared prior to entering the MTC, so that we will have a little less stress when we arrive there. Watch that not happen.


To any and everyone reading this little blog, we wish you a most wonderful Christmas with your family and friends and hope that you New Year will be a exciting and properous as you can possibly wish.


Love


Brent and Nan

The Hungary Gudgells

I may be able to make this work one of these days. Like all new things, sometimes you have to try more than once. Here we go again. I don't know where the last one went.

We received our mission call to Budapest, Hungary about six weeks ago, I think. We have been on the run since that time, trying to make decisions, learn the language of Hungary and figure out what we want to take with us. We have a very big decision in that department, as we only have 200 lbs for luggage between the two of us.

So far we have determined that a couple of our suitcases are going to be just fine for our travel. We have bought sturdy walking shoes and some new shirts for Brent and are now trying to decide what to leave home.

We have begun to pack up some boxes and now have taken a break from that to get ready for Christmas. I am personally having a hard time to realize that Christmas is much closer that I thought. I will have to work hard this week concentrating on getting some things finished up and wrapped.

We are anxiously awaiting for the arrival of the Sullengers, who will bring a feeling of Christmas Cheer with children this year at our house. It has been about 10 years since we had "little" ones in our house for Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve will have all our family here. I keep trying not to get too sentimental about it yet, I don't have time to do that, yet. I remember the Halloween when Liz was a Sr. in High School and I started to cry when I realized that she would not be home for Halloween the next year. I am trying not to do that for Christmas and Halloween and every other holiday that comes up now. I have got to be a good girl.

The week following Christmas we will have to have time to have Grandma's Girls over for our annual slumber party. After that we will take down our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree (You can see David and Brent deciding on our tree below) and pack away all our Christmas and get into some real action of packing up to make the trip to Hungary, and put all our stuff away for storage.

We have been receiving almost daily memos from Hungary telling us about what is going on in the mission. It is making us feel like we are part of the mission already. We already have an assignment for something in May. I hope by that time we will have learned what we are expected to do. It appears that there is a lot of leadership training that needs to be done.

Needless to say, we are excited about all that is happening and are looking forward to going to Hungary. I am sure that you just can hardly wait for the next installment of this saga.