Friday, April 29, 2011

Kaposvár Stole My Heart... (email 4-26-11)

Ok, well.... yes, i dont want to leave kapos, the place that was so hard, has stolen my heart, i could stay here for the rest of my mission! We have Brownies and peanut butter cookies for the english class students..... Hungarians worship our desserts. hahahahaha especially brownies. ha. My new comp is an elder from Holland. We will be serving in Budapest, it will be an interesting transfer. He speaks english fine, his parents are almost english speakers. Im gonna try and turn both of our focuses on the work and the people.
Medveczky Elder, is the Hungarian who is going to Ogden. He is still in the MTC, will be for a while, he really cant quite speak english that well yet so they will keep him there till he passes.
Doin ok,. my legs are dead tired, from biking, hiking, (i have pictures just not today, remind me next week) My back is good no pain, but my left back strap is still huge, and tight all the way up my back. but doin good really.
Here, Easter is Sunday and Monday, EVERYTHING closes. We rode bikes in the evening, and the morning went on a hike with an eternal with who i am pretty good friends. It was the best P day ever!

Really, Really Cool Sunday... (email 4-18-11)

Hey Mom & Dad,
We are just getting ready to go to a program at 9.
We had a good Sunday, a really good Sunday. We had a baptism with the other Elders. Now we are a Tri-panionship because the Hungarian went to America (he will be in Ogden). So that went really good, he is a really good guy, got baptized really fast, a guy who just really, really cares about it. He will be a really good priesthood holder for us. We had a really good Sunday, we had 24 people there including missionaries there so it was a really, really, cool Sunday. We didn’t have too many at his baptism but we had a lot of people like investigators one eternal investigators who came. It was really good to see everything.
I also wanted to share something that was a huge revelation for me.... The reason the Law of Moses existed was to create equality. An eye for an eye. etc. if you killed, you got killed. it was fair. it was the only way to make their lives fair. to make up for their losses until someone came to take the inequalities of life upon him. Now he takes the pain more than we understand, and thats how our lives are fair now. it still makes me spin but i was reading in the old testament and it hit me. Thats why it was so "barbaric" that was the only was to make life fair. Now we forgive, he takes our sorrows, we share the burden, and now through him all losses will be made up in this life or the next.... this still blows my mind, but thats the exact reason. this life is meant to be joyful, but with inequalities, its impossible so there had to be a revenge, or now, a mediation.
I met with a really cool guy from English class. I called him up and said “We often meet with people separately and tell them why we are here, can we meet?” He said, (something in Hungarian?) “Naturally, like of course.” I was confused and wondered if he had like met with the elders like a bizillion times and just likes meeting with us? So we met with him and he is a doctor and we talk and he complimented me on my Hungarian which helped since I haven’t been feeling so well on it lately. He specifically complimented me on my grammar. He said if I could ever speak English as well as you speak Hungarian I would be fine. He said it is a miracle that you guys can learn Hungarian. He asked about our families and what you like to do. Then he came to the point, why did you want to meet with me? I said we like to help you with your English and wanted to talk to you about why we are here. He said, “Okay, alright, because your religion interests me, seriously. I’ve got a friend who lives in Australia and his wife is Mormon. This really interests me but you need to tell me how long we need to meet so we can do this right.” He has two little girls and a wife and he is super legit or “rendesh”. He has a job, he listens, he reads… That was really really nice. To me that was someone who cares.
We painted eggs at family home evening. (I think this was a branch activity…I could be wrong.)
Thanks for caring and listening, i miss you guys a lot, it’s hard being here especially with this, without anyone close to lean on. Thanks for your prayers. I got your letter Mom. Take care, i love you very much, ne felejtsétek el!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Haven't had Conference Yet...April 4

I know I will have a lot of emails about conference. Just so you know we will be lucky to see conference by next week. We are hoping we get the tapes soon and I am also hoping I will be able to download it from the internet to my Archos to use for study.
I got some bad news that one of our investigators is checking out another church. Tithing might be something that has her thinking twice, she is not in the best of financial situations. Another of our investigators is doing great and we plan to set a baptism date with him soon. Our Sportsnap this week did not work. We do not know if it is because they figured it would rain or what.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Sportsnap (Sports Day) - March 28, 2010

Saturday, March 26, 2011
We decided to do a bunch of flyers for a Sportsnap inviting people to come to play basketball, soccer and it says Come play with a couple of American players. We had only put up about 10 flyers before one of our investigators called and wanted to meet. We also told a few kids that we were going to start having a Sportsnap and to bring all their friends. Today we went and bought a soccer ball because we already had a couple of basketballs. We went there early today to make sure that people wouldn’t get there and leave. There was this one kid playing in the court next to us he reminded me a lot of Brock almost identical, the freckles , eyes and hair and he had his Toronto jersey on, really jazzed up, they really don’t do that here a lot. Then another person came then another person, then the other Elders came …then we had just groups of 2, 3, 4, here and there come. We ended up having 35 people come to this! We had 4 teams of 4 for basketball and they had a big soccer game going too. It is probably the most spectacular thing I have seen on my mission. I am just really really happy right now. I just called President to tell him how it went and I can just say he was excited and absolutely shocked that we had 35 people come to Sportsnap and we only talked to 4 people about this. I am in awe, I have never seen anything like this. I feel good, my back feels good. We are getting bikes sometime this week. I played pretty good and I threw the ball down 3 or 4 times…where the heck was this stuff when I was in high school? I have acquired a way to just get myself around and finish it. We have a basketball game to go to tonight. I love you guys a lot. Talk to you later.
Sunday night
We went to the basketball game and a lot of the kids who were at the Sportsnap. We actually taught a lesson to their coach and his wife when I first got here to Kaposvar. The little kids came over and sat by me, it was really cool to have some friends, we may just be planting seeds right now but whatever. We were there in our suits.
The doctor called me last night and encouraged me to work out…back lifts, work out, then back lifts again. My back feels pretty good, just sore muscles. No worries there.
I just got Allie’s letter. The mission office came to speak today in church and brought it. It was great to hear from her.
My comp is really awesome. He reminds me a lot of my cousin Ryan. He is just a really funny, really cool kid. We have our entire transfer written out on our window with dry erase markers. You can keep track of what we are doing. We are hoping to get into the schools and teach some English, get in touch with the mayor and have a service project that our branch can take part in and also get some tabling permission so that people will come up to us. It is impossible to street because people are in groups and just won’t talk to us. I hope these programs get things going, it would be really good. We have Zone Conference on Tuesday in Budapest.
I heard BYU lost. In fact, we talked to one of the basketball players, the one who’s a member and he told us what happened. Then the doctor that called me last night he wanted to talk to me about it… Did you hear about what happened to BYU, Jimmer Fredett and everything. BYU got a bad call and they were passing it in and the ref put it up at 4 seconds instead of 5 and that lost the game for them. I don’t know for sure. He called when I was asleep because of the time difference and I didn’t know what was happening, I was pretty out of it. He told me to start bending forward and backwards.
How’s the family? Jared, Jeff. Tyler how is he doing coming out of the rut. Angie? I keep expecting you to answer back, I feel like Jocelyn.
Love Ya!