Christmas in Békéscsaba

Sziasztok!

I hope that everybody had a great Christmas! I did! Unfortunately, all the snow melted, but that was OK. Elder Smith’s parents sent gifts for the members here and we had a lot of fun wrapping them and delivering them. His parents made scripture bags and bought copies of the new Gospel Art Book for everyone. We gave the members those gifts along with copies of the Hungarian General Conference Liahona, which finally arrived last week.

On Christmas day an English class couple invited us over to their house for dinner! Hungarians are so nice! They are standoffish at first, but become friends quickly. They made us mutton! It was really tasty! I’ve never eaten sheep before, but it was very delicious.

The day after Christmas, which is still Christmas here, we visited some more members and had a ton of fun. We biked our way to a member’s house who lives about 30 minutes away from our apartment. The trip there was fun because we had to go through a forest that was way muddy and wet from the rain. We got really muddy from riding all over the place! It was great! And then when we got there we just played outside with Laci, who is 10, and his mom using a soccer ball and a frisbee. They live in a farming area where the soil is super good. It’s like pitch black and apparently really fertile, which is probably why the food and juices are so good here! Anyway, we spent a few hours with them just playing around and having fun. Laci really looks up to us and he is such a cute kid. I hope he pays more attention to us and our examples than the kids at school.

Church went really well yesterday. Oh I completely forgot to write about it, but since my companion was so sick last week and since he is the Branch President we had to cancel church! That is unheard of in the mission. And so yesterday we had our Christmas program and it went well. I decided it would be a good idea to read the story of Christ’s birth from the scriptures as a Sacrament Meeting talk; I have now decided that that probably wasn’t a good idea. I’m pretty sure I put a few people to sleep, which is really bad since we only have a few active members here! Haha! But the rest of the program went well. Elder Smith and I sang some Christmas songs and that turned out good since he knows how to sing. I have figured out that I can sing decently only if I am following someone who has a similar voice as mine. I never would have sung with just one other person in Sacrament Meeting at home, but I guess singing in front of 12 people is a little easier than 140 people!

Sister Richards (one of the sister missionaries here in Békéscsaba) and I taught Primary yesterday! And it went well! Yes! Well, it went well for the first 20 to 30 minutes. We talked about Christ’s birth and the shepherds and then we talked about how we celebrate Christmas. We tried to teach them the song “Stars were Gleaming.” The girl, Brigi, was really well behaved, but her younger brother was a little more of a handful! Haha. After a while I just helped him draw dinosaurs from his new dinosaur book! But is was a ton of fun. I hope they will remember what we were able to teach them.

Well I have to go now, I love you all! I hope Christmas was great over there. Happy New Year in a few days! Let’s set some sweet New Year goals and work to be a little kinder, happier and more loving to everyone!

~Anderson elder