Winter is finally here, wing night, and "Az elnök"

February 26, 2018

Sziasztok mindenkinek, (Hello everyone)

This past week we stayed busy doing our regular thing of teaching and tracting. We got a nice lineup of 3 families we are teaching and a handful of other people. Hopefully we can get some baptismal dates out of them this coming week. Also this week we had our apartment cleaning check. Once every transfer (9 weeks) a senior missionary couple comes down to inspect our apartment, but then we have to find a way to get rid of all the mold on the walls and any other problems. But there are no worries because we passed. 

Also, winter finally came. We haven't gotten as much snow compared to other places in Hungary. It has snowed here, but every time it snows it doesn't stick to the ground. But now we have snow on the ground and the temperature dropped below -10 degrees Celsius (14 F). So sometimes our 3 or 4- hour tracting sessions have started to get cold.   

Something I haven't talked about yet, Multiple people here on separate, independent occasions, from our investigators to some random lady running a Christmas shop, have told me that I look like a U.S president. And so far I have had 4 people tell me I look like John F Kennedy. Even some of the members and a few of our investigators have started to call me "Az elnök" (The President). 

Also lately I have been craving some buffalo chicken wings so I put my chef skills to work and we made buffalo wings with the other elders and had our own wing night. We also made some ranch to go with it and it was so many flavors in my mouth that I haven't had in so long. 

Wing Night

Also I plan on burning a tie at some point this week to mark 6 months on the mission, and I’ll try and make a video and send it to you next week. In my personal study for now I read 30 minutes in the Book of Mormon and 30 minutes in Jesus the Christ. In our apartment we have every Liahona from like 2007, so I have read every one of those up until July 2014. It gives some entertainment in my free time at night or in the morning. What is the wing recipe you always use? if I could have that it would be great.  And next week my p-day will be on Tuesday because transfers are next Wednesday.

- Udy Elder

We tracted in the gypsy colony

February 19, 2018

Sziasztok a családom és a barátaim,  (Hello my family and my friends)

Nothing too exciting happened this past week. On Saturday we decided to go tracting because that is what we do here. We went down a back-country trail that went down a big hill. It led to a little gypsy colony. None of the houses had bells to ring outside of the gates, so instead we just had to yell outside everybody's home to get their attention to come out. 

Gypsy colony

"Beware of the Dog"

Also in our mission, every missionary does the self-reliance program, which consists of 12 different "lessons"  that are supposed to help make us more self reliant, like learning how to budget and learning how to solve problems and a few other things.. I finished it a few weeks ago but this past week I got a certificate saying I am now self-reliant. 😀

We don't usually give talks or teachings during church, because President Szabadkai says its best if the members can do those things, so that the missionaries don't end up running the church. But every other week I still operate the electronic piano during sacrament meeting when the member who usually does it isn't there. I still get fed once a week by the same member and its homemade pizza every time. 

Sok szeretettel, (Lots of love)

Udy Elder

I finally received my residency permit

February 12, 2018

Szervusztok mindenkinek,

I'll start with the big news here in the Hungary Budapest Mission. The Hungary Budapest Mission and the Romania-Moldova mission will combine July first and the new mission will be called the Hungary-Romania Budapest Mission. The new mission headquarters will stay in Budapest which is nice for us but it is a really long ways for missionaries in Molodva and Romania.The new mission will consist of 3 countries (Hungary, Romania, Moldova), 2 languages (Hungarian, Romanian) and 2 time zones. It will stretch all the way from the Hungarian-Austrian border to the Black Sea. And we will get a new mission president too because this is President Szabadkai's last year. There are actually over 1 million native Hungarian speakers in Romania, and there are some parts and cities that mainly speak Hungarian and not Romanian. So it will be interesting to see if the church starts to send some of us Hungarian speaking missionaries over to Romania. 

Chilling on the balcony of our apartment

Last week I finally received my tartózkodási engedély (Residency permit).For some reason the Hívatal was really slow with it, and it took them a very long time to send it to me. And it was sort of a problem because you are only allowed to be in Hungary 90 days without a residency permit, so if the police ever stopped me they could have technically taken me into custody because I didn't have my paper work. And as a missionary people on occasion threaten to call the police on you, usually we don’t care, but since I didn’t have my paperwork we had to take the threats seriously. But now I can welcome people calling the police on us, and I don’t have to worry.

One of our new investigators that we found through tracting this week said that he knows ours mission President, President Szabadkai. It turns out they both worked in the Customs office in Pécs and they sat right next to each other for 3 years. That was really cool to find out. 

Also last p-day us and the other elders got together with some of our younger investigators and we watched the movie The Testamants together. (You can watch it here...)

For English class this week, I taught the advanced class a bunch of idioms. I titled it "Idioms Taught by Idiots" and they seemed to enjoy it. 

English Class Idioms

Sok Szeretettel,

Udy Elder

We started our free English class again

February 5, 2018

Sziasztok mindenkinek, (Hello everyone)

     Last week we had our zone conference up in Budapest which was good. It fells like we are always going up to Budapest and whenever we do we always lose a day because of the 6 hours of sitting on a train. But it was a good conference, and afterwards the zone leaders came down to Kaposvár so there were 6 of us on the train. 

South West Zone of Hungary, Budapest Mission (Udy Elder back row, left of center)

Last week, while we were talking to people out on the street, we ran into one of our investigators who lives outside Kaposvár. He took it as a sign because he usually is never in Kaposvár and the one time he is, he sees us. So we took him to the church, or branch house, and we gave him a little tour. Hopefully we can get him to church one of these days. It is a struggle here to get people to church.

We also tracted into a new family that we started teaching. The dad is in the military and will be going to the Croatian border for the next 2 weeks, but he said he will read half of the Book of Mormon because he will have a ton of free time. 

Also this week we started our free English class again. We teach both a beginner and advanced class. Last week we taught the advanced class so we did things to initiate conversations with them because they mainly just want to practice speaking since they all speak fairly well. 

Unfortunately I've been told not to disclose anything about the mission, so I am unable to answer your questions at this time, but maybe next week. (Side note: The church announced it is realigning the boundaries of 19 missions and merging them with adjoining missions--July 1st.  This announcement could affect the Hungary mission boundaries).   Click here to read official announcement about Mission Adjustments.  That’s cool you got a book from the Library on Hungarian history (The Bridge at Andau). I don't know that much about the history, but it would be good to learn some more. That's good that the Patriots lost and hopefully BYU will be able to make it into the tournament this year. Do you know if they are going to make it into the tournament? My meals mostly consist of pizzas, ramen, and turkey nuggets. And occasionally we go out to eat or I might make hamburgers, tacos, or pancakes. The members here seem fine with the change in the prophet, they haven't expressed too much about it. And I think I lost my SD card reader, so I will have to buy a new one somewhere. 

Sok szeretettel, (Lots of love)

     Udy Elder