We received our flight plans!

October  25, 2017

Sziasztok barataim es csaladom, (Hello my friends and my family)

This is my last e-mail in the MTC. I am so excited to finally leave. I tell people I have been here since August and it's funny to see their reactions. On Friday we received our flight plans and it was possibly my favorite day here in the MTC! 

Hungarian District holding their flight plans to Budapest

Originally I thought we were leaving October 31^st, but it turns out we leave October 30th and we arrive in Hungary on October 31^st.   We leave the MTC at 10 am and I think we take the frontrunner up to the Salt Lake City Airport. Our first flight takes off at 3 pm and is a direct 10-hour flight from Salt Lake to Amsterdam, but we travel 8 hours ahead in time zone difference, so we arrive in Amsterdam 8 am local time. We have a 2-hour lay over in Amsterdam, and then we take off on a 2 hour flight from Amsterdam to Budapest. I think we will be met by the APs (assistants to the mission president) and maybe the Mission President. They will show us around the city on Tuesday, and we will sleep in the mission home Tuesday night. Then on Wednesday we will find out who our companion will be, our first area we will be serving in, and then we will hop on a train and off we go. In our missions our p-days are on Monday. So my next e-mail probably won’t be until November 6th. 

This past week here in the MTC we moved back to our original classroom which is nice because I can enjoy the terrace once more. Also this week we Skyped members in Hungary again, and we talked to Dorottya again. It was cool, I guess she is a return missionary and served her mission in Arizona, but we only spoke in Hungarian so I don't know everything she said. 

Also this week Dalziel Nover, a sister in my district, told her mom to make us shirts and it was a big surprise for me. On the shirt is a map of Hungary and words that read "Phantom Dragon Rising" with a cool picture of a Dragon. That is because one of our teachers, Haws testver’s, email address includes the words Phantom Dragon Rising and we thought it was the geekiest thing. Then on the back of the shirts we each have our own Nickname. My nickname is "The Wrappper" which actually has a double meaning. One, alluding to the fact that I leave a bunch of mint wrappers on my desk each class because I probably consume between 10 and 20 lifesaver mints during class (not an exaggeration). And the other reason is that I have freestyle rapped, and my district seems to enjoy it. My companion, Morgan Elder’s, nickname is "The Nebraskan" because he can't stop talking about how great the Omaha Zoo and Nebraska are.

Back of T-shirts

Front of T-shirts

On Tuesday another apostle came and spoke to us. This time we got to hear from Elder Stevenson. He talked about the history of missionary training and developing Christ like attributes. Currently in the world there are 15 MTCs (missionary training centers), and 421 missions in 162 different countries speaking over 60 different languages. The restored gospel of Christ is truly being spread to all the Earth.

Also this week I was reading a church news article that says they plan on increasing the number of missions that use mobile devices. Currently there are 87 missions with mobile devices, but they plan on increasing that number to 162 missions which makes me think that it is likely that we will receive tablets in our mission at some point.

Hungarian Flag

I bought a 5 dollar phone card that lets me talk for something like 470 minutes. So I will probably call sometime from the Salt Lake Airport between 1 and 2:30 mountain time. If anyone wants me to call them I can, I just need their phone number e-mailed to me. I got the post card of the Snake River which was pretty good.

Sok szeretettel, (Lots of love)

         - Udy Elder