Thanksgiving in Hungary

Hellósztok!

This week turned out pretty awesome, although, it didn’t start out so good. I have a pathetically funny story about that. Recently I have been trying to eat healthier and so early in the week I bought some chicken to cook for dinner. I put it in the fridge to thaw for most of the day, but it was still rock solid when I went to cook it. I put it in some really hot water for a few minutes, but then had to go to a meeting. I totally forgot about the chicken even though the meeting was on the floor below our apartment. The meeting ran late as usual and when I went back upstairs I found the water cold and realized that the chicken had been sitting out for over an hour and a half and was now thawed out and probably full of really bad germs. That was really lame of me. Haha. I didn’t trust the chicken since it had been sitting out so long and ended up wasting about a kilo of good food. I had been so excited to make something healthy and tasty and then I totally blew it! Hahaha. I’m going to try again tonight. Wish me luck! I’ll need it...

Last Monday we met with a really cool guy named László. He used to be Christian, but converted to Buddhism when he saw things in his church that didn’t seem right and that didn’t fit with what he felt was right. He’s a way cool guy who loves to rock climb—in fact, he reminds me of the guy who taught me how to rock climb. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon and about how our church differs from other Christian religions. He agreed to read the Book of Mormon. Nothing special happened during our meeting, it was just a good program. Hopefully we’ll get to meet with him again.

Thanksgiving was great! All thanks to the senior couple here, the Haslems! Whole turkeys are available here in Hungary only during Christmas time so the Haslems went to Vienna to get two big turkeys with which they made a great big Thanksgiving dinner! Missionaries from two other cities, Szombathely and Győr, came to Sopron and we had a big party. The party was a ton of fun and the food was very tasty! I felt pretty blessed to have a Thanksgiving dinner halfway across the world.

On Saturday we had a big branch party during which we made Advent wreaths. The making of Advent wreaths is apparently a popular tradition here in Europe. The party was a lot of fun. Almost all of our investigators attended too, which was really neat! This week was full, that’s for sure.

Marika is still doing great and her testimony of the Gospel is growing. She hasn’t been this happy in a long time. She had never been able to quit smoking before we started to meet with her, but she is now relying more on God and is receiving many blessings from Him. She had smoked for 40 years or so but was able to quit pretty quickly. She has a lot of determination which I’m sure has helped as well. It is a privilege to teach her more about God and Christ and what they have given to us through ancient and modern revelation.

Being here on a mission in Hungary is awesome. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ a ton! It is great to be able to teach others and see how living according to the commandments actually brings more happiness and peace and meaning into their lives. Thanks for all of the support from home and everywhere else!

~Anderson elder