Another Month gone…..

Today is the last day of June. It is hard to believe. As I wrote a letter to Ashley for her birthday, I was reminiscing about spending her last birthday with her and 12 gazillion of her friends and cousins at Blue Bunny in St. George. My goodness a year has gone fast, as well as the last four months.

Tuesday of this week we had a zone conference in Budapest. The conference was very good and we got to see many of our friends here in Hungary, both old and young. Of course, most of our friends are missionaries here. It was good to see them. Our Elder Sears had to give his swan song. I will be sad to see him leave. He has been a great missionary and leader for us. Besides no matter what I fix for him, even if it is really bad, he eats it and says how wonderful it is. There is a lesson there somewhere. After the conference, we thought that we might be able to do a little house hunting, but no, we were whisked off in a bus, a van and a couple of cars. We drove north to a replication of many different kinds of village home from all over Hungary. They were just beginning the season and there were not too many people there. We walked and walked from house or small village to the next one. I certainly would not have liked to live in the thatched roof houses. It was very interesting to see. It also was drippin’ sweaty hot!!! We seem to stay in the 80% or above humidity; that is wet! ( today it is 100% humidity) We all took water and then bought more. Following that most everyone went to another place that is supposed to be really beautiful and they have lots of shops, etc. You know I would like that. However, it was not to be. Our driver wanted to get back home, so we had to leave with him. We ended up having more people than expected, so we couldn’t make a switch….the extra people did. Oh well, it could have been worse. We will get a chance to go up there while we are in Budapest. We actually can take a boat up there and probably will. Have you noticed that this is all narrative? I thought I should charge my camera, and forgot to take it off the charger and left it home on the day of Zone Conference. If we have anyone send us pictures, I will be sure to send the good ones on next week’s blog.

The rest of the week was just pretty regular and not too exciting. We had Angol Ora on Thursday and had one person in our class. It is time to beef up the classes; find new people who are interested.

We had Outreach on Friday and had a repeat investigator there. He also came to church on Sunday. That was great. We played some game that looked a little like kick ball, but you hit it like a volleyball and then run to bases, but to get put out was a little different too. They all had a good time. You can see that Gudgell Elder played with them until his leg got too tired.

Sunday Gudgell Elder and Gudgell Nover spoke in church in Debrecen. We gave our talks on the Atonement. After the Branch President danced up to us telling us that he wished that we had more talks like that more often in the branch. We lovingly described the Atonement and what it means and what our personal responsibilities are because of the atonement. We had four investigators there. That was wonderful.

We had the missionaries over for Lasagna in the late afternoon. I guess that I worry that they don’t eat enough protein. We love our missionaries. We just keep finding more room in our hearts for them. I can only hope that when our grandchildren (and it won’t be that long from now) go on missions they will be loved as much as we love these kids.

I have saved the best news of all for the last!!!

We found out on Tuesday that we have a new couple from Salt Lake City coming the end of August to be here in our apartment and be the Outreach Couple here, so that our program can continue!! I am sure my blood pressure has now gone down, as it was a worry as to what would happen when we left. Now we shouldn’t have to worry about that.

Since finding that out, we have had to re-contact our landlords and see if they would let us keep the rental going here for another month until the new couple arrives. I think they were happy about doing that.

Why do we sometimes doubt that the Lord really knows what is going on and will see that things will turn out right in the end. He makes us sweat a little bit and then comes through with what is best for us. We wish we could let the new couple know what a wonderful ride they will have here. Missions are great!

Next week is going to be a very busy week, and we are always glad for that. We will try to remember the camera this time.

Life Happens and We Just Move Along

This week was a good week and a bad week.


The good stuff was that we had several good programs with Elders Sears and Beers. I am tempted to do a Dr. Seuss book about them, but will forgo it, at least at this time. Elder Beers is a greenie and is progressing through the adjustment at a reasonable pace. He is doing well.

The programs we had were first with a darling family. The mom is a dental assistant, the dad is an engineer for the railway here, and the daughter is 11 years old. They were so nice. We baked banana bread and took to them. They have a concern for their sweet daughter and want nice friends for her. We discussed that with them. We invited them to church and the mother and daughter wanted to go, but the dad was hesitent. As we were sitting in church, just waiting to get started in they walked. They waved at me and were excited to be there. Just so happened that a family with an 11 year old daughter chose this day to come to church. They are a good family also, but it costs them a great deal to attend church, as they live outside of Debrecen and have to travel on the bus to attend so they don't come all the time. The girls found each other and went to primary together. When the investigator parents decided to go home after the second hour, the girl didn't want to leave. Oh my, are we all excited about that. They look like members of the church. The members were wonderful with them and ralllied around them to help them understand what was going on. The next program with them our friend Roberta will be going with the missionaries.


There was also another pair of investigators, who came from Busermein. I think that they are two 17 year olds who think the missionaries are cute. The missionaries think so too. They are a smart pair, and will pay close attention to that situation. We have offered to go to programs with them, and will do so if they need us to be at the ones they teach the girls.

The other program was with a man who comes to the English Class and wanted to learn more about the church. He didn't come to church.

We had another program with the elders out in Hadjusansom. We had been there before and enjoy going. I think it is llike home teaching there. Zolt is always nice, but wants to discuss the branch and its shortcomings. Unfortunately, he doesn't come to church, so to me it seems that he is part of the problem and not the solution. We invited him to come back to church.




Friday night we had our Outreach. Not so many people there, but we did have a good time. We broke into teams and chose a bible story to act out. Everyone brought props from their apartments. It was very funny and we laughed good and hard. It was a nice evening and ended with fruit pizza. It wasn't too bad. This one is Noah's Ark. Brent was Noah. It was a musical, so now you know why we laughed so hard.


Have I told you how good the produce is here? It is wonderful and there are a million fruit stands all over. We had corn on the cob on Sunday and it was good, but not like the "peaches and cream" corn that we get at home. The corn here is just starting to come on, so we will get more.

Now the bad part. From Friday, last, on I started to not feel well and took measures to solve my problem. The first of the week I was feeling better. Then on Wednesday, I was really sick and in pain. I, of course, self diagnosed and treated with lots of water and walked a lot. I thought I might be passing a kidney stone. If I did, I didn't see it, but come Thursday I was feeling better. I am just a little tired still, but able to keep going.

Today we drove to Hortobagy and stopped and picked up the Elders that have not gone to Budapest. They bought, what else, whips. We picked up the ....I'm not telling....things we had ordered for some of the children for Christmas. I hope you like them. We also found a birthday present for Ashley, whose 11th birthday is in 17 days. We sill be getting Ali's after she gets home from camp. We took a few pictures out there. I decided to help the relief society sisters with their work today.












The middle picture is the Elders that went with us, Elders Plowman and Whiting. Brent is standing in front of a bridge takes the traffic up and over Hortobagy.

Tomorrow we head to Budapest for Zone conference. I will charge my camera up, as in the afternoon we will have sightseeing time.




All in all, it has been a good week, in spite of things......and we do feel blessed!

WHERE IS THE TIME GOING?

I thought that I just did the last blog and here it is time to do it again. Time does seem to fly. So much so, that sometimes, I can't even remember what we did yesterday or this morning. Today I am not feeling so well and offered Elder Gudgell the opportunity of doing the blog for the week, but he declined, politely.

We did get four new missionaries this week. Yesterday we had the district over to fix dinner for us all. They made pizza's. They weren't too bad. We just spent a little time and then sent them off to programs. We felt that we all needed to get acquainted. We have had quite a number of them from Utah valley, and from Washington. But a fair share from all over the US. It is very fun to get to know them. I will tell you more about them, when we get pictures of them.

One of the highlights of our week is Outreach, always. We had a picnic planned at the forrest, where we could roast hotdogs and play soccer and such. Unfortunately it started to rain about Tuesday afternoon and continued daily until today, and I am not sure it is not going to rain again today. We had to quickly change our plans to stay indoors. Some of our regulars didn't come. That was too bad. We had some come that we didn't expect.

This is Sr. Tanner, Aggi, and Andi talking to Elder Muir's father. His parents came to pick him up and dropped by our branch for Outreach. They loved it (the parents). Elder Muir was a missionary in Debrecen as we arrived. We took over his first apartment....the Ukky one, apartment, not the elder.

We decided to do a potato bar and it turned out good. After they all wanted to stay andjust sit around and talk. That was fine with us. It was Aggi's last time there. Now we have Zita and Andi running the show. We hope that in the next few weeks we can give them insight into leadership skills. After a while they played a game and then it was time to lock up the church.

The big highlight for this week was traveling to Nyiregyhaza for a baptism on Saturday evening and then again on Sunday to speak in church and do some training. While there we did apartment inspections. We go to the missionary's apartments and have a check list to see if they are keeping them clean. We had one mishap. The missionaries who have a dishwasher, just had it fixed the other day and decided that they needed to do up some dishes. Elder Gudgell opened it and look what happened. The elders got a lesson on what soap to use and not use in dishwashers. Elder Gudgell was able to teach it because of his past experience. I promised the elder, who will go unnamed, that I would try not to let him forget this great lesson of experience. He'll never do tht again. They really have a nice, newly remodeled kitchen. I wish that all the apartments were that nice.

We loved attending the baptism of three little girls. One comes from a family already in the church, and the other two were convert baptisms. The grandmother of one of the girls is a member and the other girl and her mother live with the grandmother but are not related to her. Both of the girls have been coming to church with the grandmother.

We met at the branch house, which is on the third floor of a building, that is shared with businesses. We had the opening part of the baptismal service and then left to walk over to the "font" which is about 2 1/2 blocks away. There is a little oblong hot tub with a small building behind it so they could change into the baptismal clothing. They were baptised, and got into their regular clothes. We then walked back to the church and finished the meeting. Afterward they had suti for us all. It was the first baptism we have attended since we arrived in the country.

It is wonderful to be here. I can't possibly imagine why anyone would not want to do what we are doing. I won't say every day is fun, but enjoyable. We do love being here.

I have just realized that in two weeks we have to go to Buda to begin our training. Then we will be back here for a couple of weeks and then move away from Debrecen. Time is moving by so fast we can hardly believe that we are now into our third transfer.

Pre-Transfer Week

This past week was pre transfer time. We are losing four of our six young missionaries. We are "whitewashing" an area and bringing in two new missionaries to cover that area. Interesting, this mission language. This was the first time we had heard whitewashing. We are going to be sad to lose those that go. We have been a terriffic group. As you can see they got a little silly last week. They tried to trade hair-dos with each other and some got a little carried away. The Blond, Sister Ringling, the one hugging the silly guy, Elder Wilson, and both of the others are leaving. We are getting two greenies, one straight from the states and the other is Whitney Gasser, who is the President's daughter. She will be here for only one transfer. She is actually in her last year of high school. This will be a great experience for her. I don't know the other two elders that will be coming.

We had a pretty busy week. Regularly we visit with inactive members, and sometimes with members. This week we had several of those visits and they were good. One lady Irenekinaini, that is her name, Irene, family, old lady. I am also one of those Nanek, or Gudgellekinaini. Naini is old lady. She got so excited about the family history. We have more stuff to take to her very soon.

I am getting excited about getting a computer, finally, for the branch Family History Library. I have all the disks to load it and the branch will be off and running. They have even called a family history specialist to over see it. I know that there are many here who are so interested in doing family history. It should be a big plus for the branch.

We visited another man who also lives outside of Debrecen who cannot attend church because his job requires him to work Sunday. He is a dynamic man. He is the only member of his family who is a member of the Church. We had a wonderful visit with him and his family.

One day as we were traveling, we found lots of storks nests and here is one with the babies. We are still fascinated by them.

Soon they will be flying away. We watched one of them stretch his wings just before I took the picture. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera out and ready.

Friday we had a great Outreach program. Brother Kucskar, the CES person for Hungary, came and gave a great fireside on building your own firm foundation. We had a good sized group and they all really enjoyed it very much. The pizza he brought didn't hurt either.

We were pretty busy this week with a few programs with the missionaries. One of them was very very difficult. I hope we don't ever have another one like that. We had to refuse to enter a person's home as he was very inebriated. He is a really fine man, except that his drinking is getting the best of him. We hope that he can get help for it.

Sunday we had a great adventure. We traveled to Miskolc again, this time for East Area Conference. The mission is divided into areas rather than stakes, as much of Hungary is not part of the only stake in the country. Hopefully, before too many years, there will be at least four stakes. The picture is the branch house in Miskolc. Notice that the steeple has a little bit of an Eastern European flavor. It is a nice chapel, with real benches. It was a nice trip, meeting and day.

Yesterday we had P day and went to the big Reformation Temple in the center of the town. It is very interesting. A huge landmark of the area. What you see above right is the main pulpet. the pews come straight back and also go to the right and he left. They charged us 300 fts to go in. It is in desrepair. I think they still have services, but I felt so bad that the condition is so poor. It contained much history of the area and of their church. Brent climbed to the top and got some really great pictures. When you see the picture of the stairs half way up, you will see why I declined.

I found a few pictures on the walls that I took pictures of because they are so cool and just a little bit like the Book of Mormon. . The church is right across the street from the Best Western Hotel that we stayed in the very first week we arrived in Hungary.....remember the getting lost story. This is the stairwell.

Below is the second tower, taken from the first tower. They are identical. Below is the hotel, within the arches you see. The villamos tracks are in the street.

The other picture is one that was on the wall, and I thought it looked like pictures out of the book of Mormon. It said it was Egyptian, however I really couldn't read anything else it said. The glare on the glass was bad, so I hope you can see it.

Monday night we had a dinner invitation at the home of one of the members. Pictures tell it all. I recall Elder Martin, our language missionary, telling us about the fire pit, the FAT, and how you drip the fat onto bread. I swore I would never, ever, eat it, but I did and it was good. It was a great night. One of the big pluses was that Misi's wife came out and visited with us. She never does that, and she had a good time along with the rest of us. This was truly a Hungarian experience. If you look to the right you will see the fat, the sausage and the tomatoes an the paprica, both kinds. We also cooked onions on the skewers, and sprinkled cut up ones on the bread. I was a trooper and ate two of them. It really was good, but as predicted, the fat took its toll on the intestinal system of everyone.

We will all be better this week, I am sure.

June Has Arrived

And what a lovely June it will be. Our temperatures are about the same as Bountiful, however, our humidity has been in the 80's. Today it should be a little lower.

We know it is getting to be summer. The Sun comes up at about 5:00 and goes down at about 8:30 and we still have time to hit the max on both ends. We have metal pull down blinds and that are on the outside of the window, but controlled from the inside of the window. They have tiny slots in them to let in air, but on a hot night it is not enough air. So, if we open them we get lots of air and bugs and noise, and whatever else. We do not have screens on our windows. Last night was hot for most of the night. We do manage a few hours of good sleep, but are up at about 5 or 5:30.

A week ago we headed out to Hortobagy and look here we are on the bus. The bus only runs out and back twice a day, so we had to conform and actually we were lucky to get on the last bus coming home, as we had barely gathered and the bus came about five minutes early. I don't know that you can pick out many of the missionaries from the pictures. Some of them are in front and some across the back of the bus and inbetween.

It was really interesting to watch the elders at work trying to see which of the whips worked the best and made the loudest crack. They are very intense in what they do. We were disappointed that there was not a program going on to see the cowboys perform. I hope that we can see it another time, but maybe not.

Some of them are better than others, meaning the Elders. None of the sisters even tried them. The sisters didn't even bring money to buy anything at all. Probably the smartest of them all.

I am amazed at how many whips some of them have bought. One had two that I know of and bought two more because his dad sent him money to get more. The dad wanted one. One of the elders had been given money from quite a few elders that cannot go to Hortobagy and so I think the total number of whips purchased that day was about a dozen. That was worth it for the vendor. There were a number of tour busses that came by and checked everything out, but not one whipped like our boys did.

They also had other vendors and some of what they had was really good and some was just ok. Some was tourist junk. I found a beautiful hand embroidered blouse that goes with the blue skirt that Becky sent the material for. We ordered some other things for Christmas, but we aren't telling what they are.

I hope that you can see in the background the pots. They are stew pots that you can cook over a compfire. The copper and the stainless steel are the ones I would buy, but they too are very expensive and very heavy, so I don't think we will get any of them. That really isn't a good picture. Sometimes we see people selling them along the roadside. I will try to get a better one.

We went into what we thought was a store. They had a museum in the back and this picture is of the costume that I want to replicate. I now have a skirt and a blouse. I will be looking for the apron. It actually looks a lot like a table runner. I don't suppose that after we leave Debrecen we will have time for embroidery, so I hope the open markets in Budapest will have some.

I wanted to hold a street meeting and not many people would listen, but these good people didn't have an option, so it was just me and them. Actually everywhere you go there are statues. They commenorate any and everyone multiple times. Except, we have been learning that they pulled down the statue of Stalin in 1956. They really didn't like him. They do have his boots in one of the parks in Budapest. We will see those some time later.

We had a very interesting meeting with the Elders and one of their investigators. He has been meeting with them for several months. He has had lots of troubles. The meeting was really good and he was very intelligent and interesting to talk to. He speaks just enough English that we could communicate just a little. He has been ill, and so I don't think we will be meeting with him again for a while.

Our outreach was good and we had a great time. I forgot to take pictures. We had a service project. Aggi, our local outreach leader, chose that we would make finger puppets to take to the school of the deaf. The children in the school are between three and five years of age. We bought felt and found some patterns on the internet and made some up from a book that Sr. Guiaque left here. Everyone sewed, including Elder Gudgell. We ended up with some very cute puppets. We used the little spools of thread that Becky sent. Another great contribution to missionary work here.

Next Sunday is our District Conference and the branch has chartered a bus to take us to Miskloc. It will cost us about 500 forints for the round trip. That translates to about $3.00 each for the trip. It will take about an hour and a half and we will leave Debrecen at 7 in the morning and leave to come back at about 2 in the afternoon. That will take care of our day.

Last night the Boszormeny Boys, that is what I call the Elders in Hajduboszormeny, a small town about 18 k outside of Debrecen, missed their bus again, and so at about 9:30 they called to see if Elder Gudgell would take them home. He did. They are coming to wash and clean our car for us today. It does need it. I think that they feel guilty a little because this happens quite often. It is hard for them to leave when there are other things going on. We had been watching conference sessions and had to make up one from last week, so we had been here for quite a while. We bring stuff for dinner and create a nice dinner to eat. Usually we purchace and fix the meat, that way we know they get some protein at least once a week. Yesterday we did a big meat loaf. (Brian, I know you wish you could have been here for that one.) One of the interesting things is that it was mostly pork and a little beef. It turned out really tasty. Elder Gudgell and I chose to do it here, our inivation, as we have an old TV that comes with the apartment and a small DVD player that is really cheap, but it does the job. It is much more comfortable for us old guys to sit for so long on our furniture, and eat while we watch. The President has all of us watching the sessions of conference.

President and Sister Gasser came to Debrecen this week to do interviews. They went well. We are for sure be losing two of our missionaries with the transfers next week. Next transfer there will be at least three and maybe four of us leaving. We do manage to do a lot of transferring. It is amazing that as they change, they just seem to fit in and be part of the family. We really enjoy working with the young missionaries, even if they do wear us out sometimes. I haven't had so many car doors opened for me for years. It has been amazing for us to watch the growth of the two missionaries who will be leaving. They are ready to stretch a little more now. Both of them are really good, faithful missionaries and this will be their first change in location (not that the others aren't).

We will be having a very busy week this coming week. That will be nice. It is good when we can be busy all day long. Though when there is not as much to do, we get a lot of studying done. We are now working on our talks for this month on the Atonement. Luckily, just two years ago I gave one in the 23rd ward, and I still have mine, so I will be reworking it for this occasion. I am hoping to get permission to take Roberta, from our branch in Debrecen, to Nyiegyhasza to be my translater. It is less than an hour away from here and she is such a good translator. She was just put in the Relief Society Presidency here. She is really an asset to this branch, and I don't think that they totally appreciate what she can do.

We received the discs for the new church family history program. We are now waiting to the computer, which should be here quickly, but our purchaser told the branch president that it would not be here until fall. I am not sure why the delay, but I hope that will not be true. The fire is lit under some of the members here, and I don't want it to go out before they get started on their family history.

Today is starting out to be a good day, so we will wash and hang the clothes out to dry on our balcony. They dry faster out there.

Life is still good here. We hope it is for you too.