From Kaposvár to Szekesfehérvár

March 12, 2018

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

        This week I was transferred from Kaposvár to Székesfehérvár. This town has over 100,000 people and seems like it is twice the size as Kaposvár. On top of that there is only one missionary companionship in the city, so my area is now about 4 times as big. My new companion is Howard Elder. He is from somewhere near Olympia Washington and has been on his mission for about a year. So I am still 4 for 4 for no companions from Utah. And he already has spent 4 months here in Székesfehérvár so he will be here for at least 6 months. Since we are the only companionship, we get to go to Dunaújváros for our district meetings. It takes us about and hour and a half  to travel there. It’s crazy because it takes us longer to go to district meeting than it does for us to go to Budapest. And since my companion is the district leader and the zone leaders are in Dunaújváros, we get to go on a ton of splits this transfer which will be good. 

The Zone leaders actually came here for splits last week. And Ballard Elder, one of the zone leaders, and I were just talking to people on the street and we talk to these two young girls and the one actually said she was Mormon, but I didn’t believe her because that just doesn’t happen here. I thought she was trying to mess with us or something. But it was only like my second day here, so I didn’t know anyone, but it turns out she actually was a church member which was funny.  Then we used our whiteboard and were asking people the question "Kicsodák a próféták" which doesn’t really have a direct translation but it sort of means "Who the heck are the prophets?" I thought it wasn’t going to work very well, but we got like 10 phone numbers in just about an hour, so it was successful. 

Then on Sunday the zone leaders came back to hold a baptismal interview for one of our investigators. She is a 13 year old girl whose mom was baptized when she was 16, but then she was inactive for a long time and just came back to activity a few months ago, and the missionaries started to teach her two daughters. So we will have a baptism in 2 weeks which is exciting, 

In this city there are a bunch of 10 story apartment buildings that were built during the Soviet era. These buildings dot the country all over. They are pretty much identical and have a very sketchy small elevator.

A Bunch of Ten Story Apartment Buildings

We live on the 8th floor of one, and we have a good view of the city which is cool. From our apartment we can spot 9 different churches. 

View From Our Apartment

And we can also see our "meeting house" which is upstairs from a children's play house.

Our Branch Meeting House

Today for p-day we went to tour a castle here in Sékesfehérvar called Bory vár. 

Howard Elder and Udy Elder at Bory Vár

This town used to be the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary so it has a lot of history and it used to be the place where they crown the Kings. The castle was really cool to see. This town actually has stuff to see and things to do, so that should make p-days a little more interesting. 

- Udy Elder