A Most Exciting Week!

The Old Gorlitz Meeting Rooms (above) . See narrative below.

The second car in is ours.

This week started off with a bang and didn't quit.

The below picture is one of the countryside in the Czech Republic. The Colors were spectacular, but didn't show up that way. Rob, it must have been the stuff from Iceland.

As you might remember, we returned from Poland on Monday last. We had much washing, etc. to catch up on and we did take care of that in bits and pieces.

When Tuesday morning arrived we continued to rejuvinate and get the laundry dry, etc.

At noon we went to the mission home for a very light lunch. After, of course our hostess had to do the dishes. Naughty guests.

Following lunch, we had a meeting with all the Senior Missionaries in Hungary. It was really good. They all introduced themselves and so we all became better acquainted. I think we had met most of them previously. Because we don't do much with them, we were very interested to see how things are going in all the branches they are assigned to. It appears that there has been a great deal of success and improvements. It is nice that there are so many senior couples here. It makes such a difference in the growth of the branches.

One of the highlights of my day was receiving a new companion. Isn't he cute? He was made by one of the senior missionaries. He and his family own and run the Ripleys in Jackson and he made it for Pres Baughman. They left for home, the end of the mission, the following Thursday.

After the meeting we took the Metro and went to an all you can eat restaurant, with quite a variety of food, including Venison. You know who didn't eat that. The young missionaries love to go there. I am sure they lose money on them, but we made up the difference, as we all just don't eat that much. It was a fun adventure. After they all went up to the Castle area, and we went home, as we still had much to do and planned a busy day for Wednesday.

Early Wednesday we met at the Mission home and again took the metro over to the Duna and bought our two for one tickets for the boat ride to Szentendra, a nice little village that caters to tourists. The ride was very leisurely and relaxing for us all. Picture below is of the shore as we were going by.

This is of all the boys. You can see the castle in the background.

Elder's Bailey, Hartwell, Bagozzi,Folster,President Baughman,Gudgell,Williams,Rollingson
Here are the girls. This is just prior to boarding the boat.

On Thursday we got all packed up and late morning we headed to the Czech Republic. We spent the night there. We won't stay in that hotel again.

On Friday morning we did two things. One was to go to Dresden and thanks to the Barlows we had the coordinates of the place that Pres. Monson, then Elder Monson, dedicated Eastern Europe to preaching of the Gospel. It is a very sacred place for the Saints in that area.

Below is the plaque that was placed on the wall, which you will see in another picture from a distance.
Ah ha, Brent standing by the plaque. That is to prove that we were there.

This is the park-type area there with benches so you can sit and look out over the valley and ponder the importance of what happened there. You can see most of the wall in this picture.

We also we able to go to Freiberg to the Temple. We went to a German session. It was a wonderful experience and everyone was so very nice to us.

I didn't put in any pictures of the temple. So sorry. Another time.

You might think this is the temple below, but is the Chapel in Gorlitz, which was our next stop. We stayed in a lovely old hotel, where the management was so soliticious and eager to tell us about the history of the hotel. We found a cute little restaurant not far from the hotel. When we got there the host told us that we could not use our visacard, but he took Brent in his own car to an ATM. We had a very nice dinner and both the host and the cook were very kind to us.

The chapel here was dedicated by President Monsen with President Uchtdorf, then an Area Authority 70.

This is the inside of the chapel.

There was a CCM meeting that Brent attended under the direction of Elder Schutze. He is a lovely man with a great sense of humor and is a powerful teacher. I helped his wife just a little in the preparation of a lunch following the meeting.

Later we all went by car to the old building where the saints had been meeting since before WWII. You can see pictures of it in President Monson's biography. The picture at the very top of the blog is of the building today. It has new owners and they are little by little fixing it up. The church used the top two stories up to 2/3's of the way back.

So sorry to make you go back to look at it, but I am not having much success with moving pictures.

This is the old entrance, and Pres. Lehmann is pointing to where the sign was.

This is inside where the chapel was. You can see that the old podium is still there, but probably will not be for long as they are quickly working on that room, and have replaced the old windows.

In this picture are 2 mission presidents (Nielsen and Irwin), 4 district presidents only three in the picture, two from Poland and two from Czech Rep. and the branch president and Brent.
All of the things we saw were very inspirational to us. We might suggest that you each read the Biography of Pres. Monson, especially about the all that went on in Eastern Europe.

The branch in Gorlitz was established in 1899. That date is not a mistake. The members met in the old building all during the war. There were three men who held the office of Priest who ran the Church during the war years.

We are feeling very blessed to have this opportunity to meet these great members who in their own right are today's pioneers, as well as some who have lived during and through some remarkably difficult times and remained faithful.

Poland Trip....

We were ready bright and early on Thursday morning for our first trip to Poland. We drove north out of Budapest.l Once we are out of the big cities the scenery becomes so nice. The small houses along the roadside are mostly quaint. They have subtle changes as we travel from country to country. We also saw a few mountains, and lots and lots of rolling hills.

Many of the roads were two lane "highways". We always find lots of trucks along all the roads. It seems that the biggest means of transport is by truck. The one below is one of the "mountain" roads we traveled....right behind these trucks.

We saw several castles as we drove through Slovakia.

On the way we stopped at Auchwitz. This is the only picture I will put here. We took many pictures and I will take more time and put them all together in one blog so you can choose whether or not to read it. It was a long, hot tour in and out of buildings. We also went to another camp close by. Parts of it was very, very emotional. The parts that were so emotional for me personally were places they asked us not to take pictures. Glad we went, but will probably not go again.

Brent and one of his new friends. That was outside the place we had lunch at on our way home.

We arrived in Warsaw in time to travel by bus to Old Town Warsaw. The buildings are colorful and the cobblestone streets hurt your feet, but look great.

We stopped at a sidewalk cafe for dinner. The boys (Eric and Brent) had stake, but I had Salmon. It was so good. The rice was rather bland.

We stopped for ice cream. It was ok, but fun to have.

The Training: Eric and Robert during the training.

We headed to the Branch house where we met with several people to do some training. Mostly Eric did the training, but Brent and I learned a great deal. There was also a meeting given by the District President and we were invited to come in and introduce ourselves to them so that when we send messages or call the Branch Presidents or clerks they will know who we are.

Two Primary boys at the Primary Party, which was to happen in a short time. These boys were early and were having a great time..

Primary Training was also happening during the other training. They pack a lot into one day. Such really good people and so dedicated towhat they are doing in the church. The lady in the blue is going to be moving to Budapest and so was very glad to meet us. We will put her in touch with some of the people over in the Pest Ward, where they will go to church.

We then drove to Wroclaw (Vorclav). On Sunday we went to church at the Wroclaw Branch. Amazing people there too. Following the bloc time we again met with the district clerk to talk about what he is doing. He was so great. It amazes me how so many people have been so prepared to receive the gospel and how quickly they have big responsibilities. It was interesting to hear everyone talking Polish and we couldn't understand very much at all.

We keep running into tunnels all over outside of Hungary. This was on our way home on Monday. We drove back to Budapest today and it wasn't too bad of a drive. We had some pretty big roads to go on today. It was a good drive.

This is to prove that we were in Czech Republic.
We drove through a small part of the Czech Republic. It was the only place we got stopped at a border this trip. It was very random. We were parked for about 25 minutes. Lucky we have all the documentation that they want.

It was a good trip and very worthwhile for us, and we hope for those who we met with.

It was really nice to get to know Eric much better. He is a person that we interfaced with many times when we were in the office in Budapest. Now we know him much better and we also work very closely with him again by phone and e-mail mostly.

We are heading into another busy week....tell you about it soon.

XOXO

Not so exciting.....

You can tell it has been a slow week because I am giving you a picture of some of the girls and one man at Burger King last Saturday night after conference. From r to l: Sr. Baughman, Sister Smith, and Sister Bagozzi and Elder Bagozzi. We did have a nice time and then all left and went home. Seems reasonable to me.
We had a good stake conference meeting on Sunday. One of the topics was about wearing dresses/ skirts to church. More on that in a minute.

Tuesday we went with a lot of missionaries and some members of the church to see Phantom of the Opera. It was the first time Brent had seen Phantom. It was good but not our favorite play. The President gave all of the missionaries around Budapest the okay to come into Pest and see the play. We sat in the upper level but near center stage. We went to dinner at a little mexican restraunt that Liz and Brian found when they were here two years ago, called Arriba's. Next time we will share one something rather than eating the whole thing.

During the week we received the last of the audits for our countries. Hooray!! We hope that they come in sooner next time around.

The rest of the week, until Friday was pretty mundane...nothing special. A trip to the grocery store, and things like that.

Friday night we went to Gofri Est (Waffle Night) for the first time since we arrived. They introduced a new YSA missionary, who is here temporarily here with Sister Smith. Sister Smith's companion had to go home for health reasons. The new sister is currently serving in Germany, but has been asked to fill in for a couple of months until a permanent sister can arrive. We also had a sister missionary from Budapest come home that morning and she was royally welcomed. Following eating we went with the Baughman's upstairs and played Blockus. We discovered that it is not much fun for two people to play, so we were glad to have some others to play with. We all thought that the Bagozzi's and the Sisters were coming up also, but I think they were rather late is getting done with the waffles. They had about 60 ysa's there, so that was very good.

Saturday morning Brent decided that he wanted to be sure he could find the best route out of Budapest for our trip to Poland this week, so we drove north. This is the bridge we drove across. It is really beautiful. Whenever we see these bridges we always think Grandpa Gudgell would really like this.

This is a further away picture of it.

As we came off the bridge this is the hillside before us. Just thought it was beautiful.

Today we were able to attend both the Buda Ward and the International Branch. We had been asked to speak today at the International Branch, but we cancelled and then found out that we would have been uninvited anyway. (We thought we were going to be out of town today.)

Buda Ward was nice and they had several speakers. Our little (6'5" maybe) Dutch elder sat by me and sometimes told me what they were talking about.

Later we came back for the International Branch. President Klinger was there and his purpose was to dissolve the International Branch. All the members will now go to Pest, unless they want to stay and go to the Buda Ward. There is more room in the Pest Chapel and they also have access to the translation equipment. Those who spoke about it were very positive. I think the transition will be a good one both for the English speakers as well as the Hungarian speakers. Some of the children were a bit concerned, however, we all know how adaptable children can be and they will be fine. I think that of bigger concern are the ladies who come in pants to church. After last week's talk by Pres. Klinger, we could have a few who we might not see over there. It will be sad in a way to not have that little tight knit group of those who all speak English, though we have Korean, German, Russian, Canadian, etc. people in the branch.

Pres. Klinger explained his reasons for desiring this change to occur and it seems very valid. He of course, had to discuss with the Area Authorities who concurred with him. He said that the decision was long, hard, and prayerful. I can see that President Klinger has really grown in his calling as Stake President. It is so good to see how the Church is growing in numbers and strength here.

We were able to "sit in" on the ordination of two young men to be Elders. One is a professional basketball player from the US who has been playing for Hungary. He had a girlfriend he met over here who was playing for a Hungarian volleyball team. He wanted to marry her and she said that she would never marry anyone who was not a member of the church she belonged to. He decided to investigate and the rest is history. They are now married and probably going back to Canada. The other young man is also a recent convert and I was suprised because he just seems like a seasoned member. I don't know his history.

We hope everyone has a good week coming up. We will be busy and hope to have good tales for you next week.

Love and stuff...

Adventures......

This week has been interesting. The first two day we prepared to go to Romania. Good we planned. Most of the things we prepared to do, were not done. We had such good weather. We are grateful for that. The roads after we left Hungary were narrow, two lane "highways". There was lots of construction, even through the big towns, and lots of trucks and accidents with trucks. We really travelled slowly. It took us nine hours in what should have taken us about six, and that was without many stops. Up to now, we have depended on roadside McDonalds for essential stops. There weren't any along the road side. Mostly they were in the big towns with little or no parking.

It still was a very interesting trip. We do enjoy seeing the countryside of each country. There is a distinct flavor for each one we have seen, and yet there are many similairities in them also.

Above is one of the traffic jams we got into. It is old meets new. Some of the others we got in were really bad. The roads were being torn up all over and it was very difficult to get around not only on the country side, but in the cities too. Many trucks on the roads, which were mostly two lanes. It made driving very difficult. We were happy to arrive.

Lots of little houses like these. Most of them have a satelite dish on them. Up in the hills I am sure it is a hard existance. They all have animals and gardens and we saw many of them working hard. The women were out working as well as the men. We would see them walking along the road carrying their implements for farming, or carrying their bags of groceries. Most of the women in these areas wore scarves on their heads, dresses with an apron sort of dress over it and a coat, along with dark, heavy socks and very sturday shoes. In the cities they did not dress this way.

This is a cobblestone road that we drove on up through a small city. That was some drive of about 10 kilometers.

This is the hotel we stayed at. It is on a walking street. It was very nice and most reasonable. This is in Sibiu. While we were there, Brent and Elder VanOrman and Elder Patton when to the branch house to meet with the branch president and his counselor to find out what was happing there. The spent a long time doing whatever they do to see if they could understand where things stood with the branch.

While they were doing that, Sisters Van Orman, Patton and Gudgell walked around the walking street. Stopped for a bowl of chicken soup and went to an old church, and then on to an art exhibit in the square. When it got too cold, we went inside the lobby of the hotel and sat on gilded couches and just really got acquainted. The Van Orman's will be leaving very soon and the Pattons will be there for another 17 months and we will see them again, probably several times.

When the men came back it was late and so we said good bye and went up to bed, as we wanted to get an early start to head back.

This is a castle on top of a hill. See the sheep grazing. We found lots and lots of sheep grazing all along the way, complete with a shepherd. Some of them looked just like some kid sitting around, and others were dressed like they were real old world shepherds. Most of the sheep had extremely long wool. I think it must be getting close to shearing time.

This picture is in Oreda, just before the border. You can tell the pictures are all from the car.

Our trip home was pretty good, as we drove through the mountains to come back into Debrecen. It wasn't as stressful from a time standpoint, but there were lots and lots of curves in the road and as the day wore on there were more and more trucks on the road. The trip home took 8 1/2 hours because we stopped in Debrecen for about an hour.

This is the last picture we took before heading to the border to cross. That is the Romanian flag flying in the middle of a round about.

We found that crossing at the border we did that they had very tight security and delayed us for quite a while. It was the hardest country to get in and out of so far. Fortunately we had all the proper paperwork. When we went to Austria and Germany last month we were not stopped at the boarder in either country. We will see what happens when we go to Slovika, Czech Rep and Poland later this month.

Friday we were really tired and just stayed home for the most part.

Saturday evening we went to the Adult session of Stake Conference at the Stake Center in Pest. It was a good meeting that discussed a number of concerning issues for the stake. We had earphones to hear what was being said....translated. That was good. After we went with the Bagozzi's, Sister Smith, and the Baughmans to Burger King for dinner.

Today (sunday) we went back to Conference and the room was filled to capacity. Again the topics were germain to what some of the needs here are. Pres. Baughman spoke at this one and gave a really good talk. He is quite an incredible man with a lot of savvy.

When the stake president talked he spoke about proper dress for church, doing your calling well and a number of other important items that already had been spoken about.

We were very excited to see that there were about 9 or ten men who were sustained to become Elders. That is so thrillling because the church here needs more men. Mostly there are women who have been joing the church. I was suprised to see so many families there. Of couse, it was good to meet old friends again.

One of the old friends were the Schnebleys who were missionaries here while we were here before. They have missionary papers in again, hoping they will be called to Hungary. They now live in Arizona and will be going back and hope that they have their call when they get there.

Today it was raining, but looks like it is about over.

Hugs to everyone.

A little bit of this; A little bit of that....

This has been a much busier week than the past few. That is good for us. By busier, I mean doing what we are here to do, rather than making up stuff to do.

Here are some of the people at the dinner after the meeting today. Some are my friends and others I don't know at all. I am having trouble with moving the pictures around. Not able to move them at all, so we will just keep experimenting until I figure it out. Until then, you will just have to look further for the real dialogue. so sorry....

If you were to go back to our old blog, you would recall my little opera singer who was baptized. She was at the Single Adult Sacrament meeting. Just had to have another picture.

Nan, Whitney Gasser and Mike Casper. Down by the Riverside. Love the Duna.

Brent, Whitney and Mike. Same place, but without the little princess.

And here is the plant!!

Last Monday we went to Holloko to spend Easter Monday. It is the quaint little town that we have been to twice before. Had interesting food and saw lots of stuff. I want to show you a picture, but I forgot my camera. I didn't take my purse and that was a problem, the camera is in the purse. I have to get a smaller cross pack purse to take with me. We had a great time and then went to Baughmans for a little game time. So nice to have good friends to spend time with.

We bought the cute little salt and pepper shakers.

Tuesday was pretty ordinary. We always have a conference call in the morning to see what everyone else is doing. There is a lot going on in Eastern Europe and it is good! Later in the week we had to get the child protection part of the air bag in the car fixed. They really treat us nice when we go to the dealership. This is a recall on the bag.

Thursday we did a lot of work in the office and in the evening we were able to go to VaPianos with Whitney Gasser and Mike Casper, one of our missionaries from before who is here going to school. Friday we worked hard in the office and got a lot done in the afternoon and early morning. However, we had to take time to watch the Royal Wedding. We watched them get in the carriage and then came back home.

Ok, on one of the days, I think Wed, I made some great chocolate cookie dough. We went to light the oven and found that it doesn't work. That is a real bummer for us. that was going to be the royal tea and crumpets. I asked Marilyn if I could cook them in her oven. Well, I forgot the royal crumpets. Does that worry some of you? It should, however the good news is that I remembered to tell you. We have been able to schedule some upcoming activity and are looking forward to some of that. I will have the camera with me.

This week our new Christmas Cactus bloomed. It is very nice, and we now have three plants in our house. Our goal is to get some for the balcony. We are not moving too fast with that project.

Saturday we did some shopping and that was good. Today we went to the International Branch and then to a special sacrament meeting for the Single Adults (old). Saw a lot of friends and many new people who I don't know. I helped with the food and then we had to leave because Brent was getting a headache. Yes his sugar has been good almost every day. He is trying really hard to be a good boy.

We can see that the Church is really growing in Hungary when you have a Single Adult group and there are more men than women. Most are active members. That is such a great change. Saturday one of the branches had four men baptized!! We need Priesthood holders so much. I think this mission is being blessed.

Look for us to be visiting other places soon. Love you all!!