And the Work Goes On....

This has been an exciting week, with lots to do. The biggest event was that we were able to get moved.

This picture is the top of a church in Debrecen. The Rooster is gold. This plays a role in the history of Hungary. I just read where in the 500’s (that is years) that they had them on the churches. Some conquering “foes” came to conquer, and saw the gold rooster on the top of the church and decided it was worth handling. Two men lost their lives trying to get it. I am not sure what the significance is of it , but one day I may find our. It just intrigued me.
All week long, between other commitments, we were able to get packed and clean the apartment. We are planning to be out there again on the 16th, we hope that happens. We had outreach on Friday and after a busy day of finishing up stuff, we were happy to not have to cook for them. We bought the food and the Busermain boys cooked Paprika Chicken. It was pretty good. We did have to clean up, and then ran on to meet with our landlords. We got paid up till the end of August, and then the Canaan’s will be going there. They don’t know it yet, and for certainty, we don’t either. The President indicated that will probably the case, but he often changes things. I have noticed in my working life that happens often with the “boss”.

On Saturday we got up early and got lots done and thought we had everything done. But alas when we went to pack the car we found that there were still more things to do. Amazing! We did have to drive to Nyiregyhaza to pick up the van. Then quickly back to finish up. We finally got off around 2:00. The trip in was uneventful and quite pleasant. We got to the apartment and were met by the landlord. All I can say about the apartment is there are not 81 stairs up to it, and I am glad that we will not be here for the next year. This is just a temporary stopping point, until we can find something that is closer to the mission office. I went to bed being very homesick for Debrecen and that big nice apartment. Oh well. Life does go on.

Today we moved our stuff out of the way. There is nowhere to put it away, as this is a vacation apartment and they used all the storage for keeping extra bedding, etc. We did fine today and will continue to do so. We are looking at two apartments tomorrow.

Today we went to church at the Buda Ward. It was nice. We didn’t know much of what was said, but caught on to some of it. There were two confirmations. They had two baptisms yesterday. There was supposed to have been another one, but she said she had to work.

There was a man sitting behind us in church. We said hello to him. After we were talking to Sr. Wood, who told us the name. Now you all will have to look at the Church News a couple of weeks ago, when they had an article about a Street Musician in Sweden who was baptized a number of years ago, I think the story was in a very short period of time. Shortly after he returned to Hungary. There was also a picture of the first LDS chapel in Hungary, a big brown and white building. The man sitting behind us was the street musician. He is a really nice man and very faithful in the church. He passed the sacrament to us today. He has been in the Mission Presidency in the past, for several of the presidents. The other interesting thing about the article is that we live two buildings up the street from the first chapel here. The church has sold it, and it is not kept up at all. That is a shame. For those of you who don’t get the Church News, you can get it on line by going to Deseret News and you can get to it from there.

We met lots of nice people, including Julia (remember from two weeks ago). She wanted us to come to dinner tomorrow, but we have to be looking at apartments. I hope we can see her again before she leaves.

Following that meeting, we stayed for the 2 hours block of the American Branch. That was fun. It was weird to be singing in English with real green hymnbooks. After the Woods had us over for dinner. It was yummy. Now we are home and getting tired, but it is too early to go to bed.

We only had three casualties from the move. I packed our washing supplies and put them in an old backpack that we had collected from our first apartment. Somehow the lid came off one of the plastic bottles of very mild bleach. When Dad picked it up to carry it in, it got bleach all over his black pants. (The $15.00 ones from Wal-Mart.) He must have also carried his winter coat up with it, because it got on the coat. As soon as we saw it we got them in cold water, but alas not soon enough, so lucky Brent will we a new pair of inexpensive washable pants and we will also have to look for a winter coat for him. It is lucky he didn’t wear his suit yesterday. We found nothing else that it got on, thank goodness. My bad, I should have put them in a plastic bag with a twist tie. The other casualty was that we drove the van down to the mission office to attend church, and in driving inside, as we are supposed to do, he misjudged the space on the right side and we took of a piece of trim. Then he decided that he wanted to leave the car on the street. The Car CZAR drove our old car into the mission garage and saw the van on the street and we immediately got a call from him. I can hardly wait to her what he will say when he sees the missing piece of trim. The interesting thing is that Brent is training to become the car czar.

It has been a good and very busy week. We were sad and happy to leave Debrecen, but of course we did and we are going to enjoy being here. We have some friends who want to play with us here. That will be nice on P Day.

Addendum: We have made arrangements to move into our permanent apartment on the twentieth of Auguat, so we will be here until then. This week has been very, very busy. We have gone in to work early each morning and have worked hard each day trying to be sure that we know how to do things. I finally asked who I should call for help. I think that Elder Gudgell will be getting more involved in some of the financial stuff than we thought he would. But then I may get more involved in some of the stuff he does.

We had transfers and that was a wild day. We processed what we thought was a record number of reimbursements to missionaries. That was almost all we did, besides having lunch. We have found that we have to take a break to eat lunch or we run out of energy.

This is a picture of a member who lives just outside of Debrecen. She has some health issues and doesn’t often come to church. We visited her pretty often and she was very interested in genealogy. We obtained some family group sheets and pedigree charts for her and took them out to her the last week we were in Debrecen. She looked at them, and said this is no coincidence that you you came today, I am leaving for my sister’s tomorrow. We knew that all her family records were with her sister. She didn’t know that we were coming, until we were almost to her house. Wow.


We have a busy weekend, and will tell you about it in the next week’s blog. Same time, same station……

This is the district that we will be leaving. Four days after we leave, three of them will be leaving, and possibly four. We have enjoyed this group and will miss them, but we have learned when we loose some we gain more.

Why do all the weeks go by so fast? I have to look at my journal or my appt book just to find out what we did this past week. Our time in Debrecen is drawing rapidly to a close. It seems like we just got here, but have been here forever. I guess this will always feel like our home in Hungary. Perhaps Budapest will also feel that way as we get to know people and find our way around that BIG city.

We had to take our car in for some work on it and were without our car for two days. The first day we just kind of holed up and did stuff around here that we needed to do, the second day we walked to the vilamos and took care of things on public transportation and our own two feet. It actually felt good. I hope after several weeks of only that (public transportation and our feet) we can still say that. Our last trip to Buda, I came home with a big blister on my toe from all the walking.

One of our Angol ora students (it is actually a couple) just had their new baby. We are all excited about that and hope that they will soon be ready to hear the Gospel. I have made them a little blanket which we will deliver to them before we leave. The sisters will follow up with them in teaching them.

For Outreach we had a nice lesson given by the Sisters, and then had two activities. First one was making paper airplanes and flying them out of the windows on the the church property. They all had fun doing that. Then we played a game that was a group game and everyone had a really good time with that one. We always have a hard time to get everyone out the door at the appointed time. We had chips and dips and boy did they like the onion dip. Some of these tastes are very new to the Hungarians and they really like them. Mostly though they like the drinks. IT IS SO HOT!! We have been getting into the lower to mid 90's a little this last week and the humidity is in the 80's or above and one feels like a wet rag most of the time. We are all drinking a lot all the time. In our house we are so lucky to be able to keep ice in the freezer and so we can always have good cold water.

The highlight of our week was that the President asked us to have Saturday as our P day and we met the Gassers in Hortobagy (hortobadge) along with our district. This was our third trip there, but the first time they were doing a program while we were there. We really had a good time! I have a gizillion pictures, but have only included a few of them. The Cowboys were awsome. I am sure that they were much more comfortable in their skirts than our men were in their pants.

We spent about two hours in a wagon that took us all over the property to see all sorts of different things from animals, like water buffalo cooling off in the muddy water to hairy pigs, big cattle with very, very long horns. The man is our driver. He always had his littl e hat on with the feather in it. He smoked a lot too. That was fun. Everyone here smokes a lot. We caught a little sun on our arms. Dad remembered to wear his straw hat. We purchased a whip at Rob's request. We will send instructions when we mail the whip. The missionaries are really good at doing it. We didn't even try to do one. If I can't golf or play tennis again in my life (like I did before the shoulder) I will not even try to do the whip.

Yesterday we spoke in Nyiregyhaza. Our subject was Scripture Study. After we each trained. I got to work with the Primary. We had a great time, they were so excited about learning some things that they were not doing. Elder Gudgell got to work with the Priesthood leadership.

Last night we had a new experience. We met at the Branch House and did the half year audit. Brent was pretty savvy about it, and I just tried to learn. Next time we will both participate doing different jobs. We had a good time with the Branch President and Clerk. The Clerk speaks good English, so we did fine. The President understands more than we think he does. We are invited to his home on Tuesday evening for a good bye program. We all survived the audit. I even signed for part of it. I always thought women didn't do things like that.

We are not sure that we will have all the equipment for SKYPE or the internet set up for us next week. But then again, we might. We will have to see what is in the apartment. We are scheduled to stay in the temporary one for a little over a month. We will take a bus to the office, as it is up in the "hills". We received an e-mail requesting that we look at the apartment that President Hauck and his family lived in to see if it would work for us. We will look at it on Monday the 21st when we get to Budpest. We have been told that it is a wonderful place and very, very close to the mission office. I am sure that we will land in the right place eventually.

Today our big job is to help the sisters find a new apartment. I hope we can do that. The other big thing is to get our packing underway and make lists of things that we need to be sure we do before we leave. We have been invited to several members for dinner this week. They want to say good bye.

My Aunt Eva Jean Nelson died last week and I had promised her years ago that I would speak at her funeral. I sent a talk on to Anne, who volunteered to give the talk for me. I have heard from a number of people this week, first what a good job Anne did, and second what wonderful children we have. I agree! They are all doing a great job of holding the fort down while we are having this wonderful adventure. Here is the preaching again, any of you wanting to go on missions as Sr. Couples DO IT!! This is one of the best, thought sometimes hard, experiences we have ever had. Hungary is great, if you want to request it.

We will be back in touch through this blog as soon as we can, but will still be on line for the e-mail. We won't dismantle the computer system including SKYPE until Saturday morning for us, for you it will be Friday night.

Busy Week for Us

We had interviews with the President this week. We talked about our move to Budapest.

The following day we drove to Budapest to train for two days and then to also look for apartments. On the way in we saw tons of fields of sunflowers. I kept try to get good pictures from the car. You cannot believe how many fields of sunflowers there are. They use them to make to make sunflower oil for cooking.

Going to Buda was a good exercise for us to have to find the apartments, see who we could actually talk to ourselves and who we had to have the elders talk for us. We know how to do it all over Hungary now. We will be doing this for the young missionaries, sometimes frequently. They are looking for about four new apartments right now. We decided that for us we will go back to plan A, which was to move twice. Once into an apartment that we will have to bus to the mission home from and stay there for about six weeks, until the Dukelows vacate their apartment. They will not do that until after they have traveled for about a month. Their apartment is close to the mission office and so we can walk there. That will be good for us. It should also save us some money, as we won't have gas, or bus passes. We could have stayed for one more day, as we didn't get everything done that was on our schedule to learn, but that will come. We are discovering that we will be very busy while in the office, but we are determined to interact with the missionaries far more than our predessors. We are already talking with the Woods about how we can contribute to the FHE program, etc. I do think we will enjoy it. We have less than two weeks until we go.

In the meantime we have to do the financial audit on the branch here. Brent has paraticipated from the Bishop standpoint on these audits. I have no clue and I am the one training for the financial part. We may make changes about who does what after we learn what we do. We had to go to the bank to get our names and signatures on all the accounts for the mission. WOW did we get VIP treatment! I guess that they want our business.

When we got back to Debrecen we had to prepare for our 4th of July Celebration for outreach. We had sloppy joe hamburgers, chips, potato salad, carrot sticks, zucchini strips, and papricas of all colors (that is peppers). For dessert we had apple pie, banana splits and the sisters forgot to bring their cookies. We had four members, six investigators and the rest were missionaries. It was a great time and we had a hard time sending everyone home. They all wanted to stay and keep playing games. They loved the balloons that Anne sent and played with them. All the girls had bows in their hair with the ribbon that Anne sent. It was very festive. The girl in the picture is Marti. She is older than she looks. Thanks Annie for inspiring our Outreach for the 4th.

Saturday we had invited two ladies from the branch to come and have dinner with the missionaries. We tried all day long to confirm with them and couldn't get them on the phone. Apparently their phone was broken. We will try to have them again, but we have to find a day to do it. We had the dinner anyway. We made good use of the time and tried to plan for outreach after we are gone.

Sunday was a record day for attendance in church of both members and non members. We had one family come for the second time. They are really warming up to the branch and the people in the branch love them. We had a young girl who is on date to be baptized on the 19th and another gentleman who came also. They all stayed for the whole block time and were actively involved in what was going on. We also had a lady from Florida, who I will write more on later, but she came back to Debrecen to take care of her dying mother and they had the funeral on Friday. She invited Elder and Sister Gudgell and the young sister missionaries to her home here for dinner. What a dinner, what an apartment, and what a woman. She is Auntie Mame all the way. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening, and she wants us to come again. We will go. She wants to have the young family of investigators of the Elders to come to her house for FHE. Oh, my goodness.....

I have pictures here that are: All the group, except for Roberta who was taking the picture.

Elder Gudgell carving the Rib roast that she cooked. She was so thrilled to have a priesthood person in her home. Her husband died about six years ago. They were sealed in the Bountiful Temple. She taught at the University here in Debrecen languages and then got a job doing the same thing in Miskolc. Her personal card says under her name, polyglott, which means teacher of many languages. She speaks about six and is working on Italian. The university in Miskolc had to talk her into taking a sabbatical in New York. She didn't want to go and they made it so that she couldn't refuse. Long story short, she ended up joining the church there. A friend of mine from my missionairy days, John Bailey from Australia, was the mission president when she joined the Church and she is planning a trip to see him and his family. So she whips out her video camera and says into it, "President Bailey, do you know this young woman.?" Loved the young part....After she had joined the church maybe four to five months later, the missionaries came across this man who was actually looking for a wife and had visited all sorts of churches looking. They got him to come to church, and had her teach the Gospel Essentials Class. The rest is sort of history. They ended up getting married. He came from a family with lots of money. He had never been married and so when he died after they moved to Florida, she inherited. She is like Dolly Levi, spreads it around like manure. Her intent is to use it for the Church in many ways. She has supported missionaries, and done lots of stuff to help missionaries and others. We had a wonderful time with her and hope that we see her again. She has a 14 year old grandson, who is living in Florida and is a member of the church. She was asking for a "friend" for him and we gave her Drew's address to write to him. She actually offered to fly him out to spend time with the Baggetts and then fly some of them to Florida. I think that writing to him might be good. Are you up for it Drew?

We love weeks like this that are busy and full of good things. Our sadness this this is the passing of my mother's sister Eva Jean Vincent Nelson. She unfortunately has had Alzheimers, and about a month ago took a bad fall, and just couldn't recover. I know that she is better off with now, but I am so sorry not to be there. I will be writing a talk and send it to someone to read for me at the funeral. She was a wonderful, giving person and I do miss her. However, life does go on and this is the principle that we teach so often to our investigators and we believe that totally and it softens the blow of death, as we have all learned so many times.

Life in the missionfield is great!