Help from the Homeless

Sziasztok!

Right now the weather is crazy! Last week was pretty cool, but then it was really hot yesterday, and today it is pouring rain! My companion and I went into Budapest early this morning to play soccer with a bunch of other missionaries – and it was a blast – but we were totally unprepared for the rain. It’s pouring rain and I’m in a short sleeve shirt! There is no such thing as a boring day on a mission!

Last week we had some interesting experiences. On Wednesday we had a program scheduled at 2 PM but the contact dogged us so we decided to go tabling instead. The place where we usually go tabling is a little square located between two small train stations. We try to talk to people who are going back and forth between them. Unfortunately, people are often in a rush trying to get to a train and don’t have any time for us, but it is the only place available. When trains aren’t coming we pretty much just bake in the sun while waiting for people to appear. Haha. I’m getting a really bad farmer’s tan on my arms and a really bad tan line on my neck! But anyway, there is a bar right next to the square where we table which always gives us some interesting people to talk to. For instance, on Wednesday a homeless guy came out of the bar and started talking to us. He wasn’t drunk, just really nice, even a little too nice. He said that he really respects us and that he was going to help us out! I tried to dissuade him. I told him no, that he didn’t have to help us, but he was really determined! So he turns around and starts walking towards the nearest person, who is a girl about 20 or so years old. Of course, I am super embarrassed by this time. Haha. So he stops this girl and tells her that she needs to come over and talk to us. So she actually came over, I think because of the crazy awkwardness of the whole thing. I was super embarrassed, so I started to talk to her about the English classes we teach hoping that she would speak English so the homeless man wouldn’t be able to help us out anymore. Luckily, she did speak English! So I apologized and we talked for a little bit. She said that she was interested in hearing more about the Gospel! So basically, we went tabling for two and a half hours and we found two people who are interested and a homeless man streeted one of them for us! God really does work in mysterious ways!

Then on Thursday we had a sweet program with someone from our English class who is really interested in the Gospel. She told us that a few months ago she wanted to start learning English. She prayed for the opportunity and then a few days later she got one of our fliers about our English classes! Sweet, huh? She really feels that God led her to us! So hopefully we’ll be able to teach her a lot.

Yesterday was a little interesting too. We missed three trains! It was intense. After church one of our investigators walked with us to the train station. We were waiting in line for our tickets but the people in front of us were taking forever and our train came and went without us. So we had to wait for the next one which was only 15 minutes later. We bought our tickets and were talking to our investigator when the train pulled up on the other track. We realized that we were on the wrong side of the stop so we took off running to the other side, but of course we didn’t make it! Eventually we got on a train to Budafok – just 30 minutes from Érd – where we had a good program. On the way back we went to the train station and looked at the schedule to see when the train left only to turn around and watched it go by! It had stopped farther down the track and then left before we even saw it! So that was a bummer, but not entirely. We got to teach a short lesson and give a Book of Mormon to the one other guy who was waiting at the train station with us! So I guess it was actually a blessing in disguise!

I love being a missionary and teaching people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ! It’s super fun and it is great to help spread happiness among the Hungarian people! Have a great week everyone!

~Anderson elder

The Castle District

Sziasztok!

I totally forgot to tell you about my sightseeing trip around Budapest last week, so I’ll give a little summary today. Elder Taylor had to get his permit to live here in Hungary, so a few other missionaries and I followed Elder McRae (who finished his mission just the week before) and his parents to the Castle District in Budapest. On our way there we met Elder Wilson (who finished his mission last December) and his parents and his fiancee. So we saw the Buda Castle, a big church, and this really cool public square with a vantage point that overlooks the Duna River (that’s what Hungarians call the Danube) across from which you can see the Parliament building. The trip was really fun!

Last week was really hard! Elder Taylor and I went finding for 16 hours, which is a lot, but we didn’t see much success from it. We are going to work on using our time more effectively and hopefully in the future we’ll actually be able to find people when we go finding. We did find one really cool family last week. They have so much potential, but right now they are a little more interested in learning English than in studying the gospel. But I have faith that things will go great with them.

Another cool thing was that one of our awesome investigators Gábor came to church and enjoyed it! The experience was a lot different, of course, but he liked it. Right after church we had a really good program with him and our mission leader, Attila. So that was really cool. Gábor is a super smart guy, he’s 27 and finishing his PhD in geothermal engineering! Whoa! So it is a ton of fun meeting with him.

The weather was crazy last week. For the first few days it rained a lot and it was kind of chilly and then on Wednesday or Thursday the sun came out and it was about 85 degrees! Now it is really hot and humid and gross. Haha.

Well that’s what happened last week. I hope that everyone is doing well. Read your scriptures and pray everyday! The basics help out so much! I love you all!

~Anderson elder

What a Day!

Sziasztok!

Sorry for all of the short blog entries recently, but my companion and I have access to just one computer right now and we are short on time.

I had an interesting and funny first full day in Érd. We started the day off by going to a program on the other side of the city. We took a 20 minute bus ride and when we get to the lady’s house, we learn that she had forgotten that we were coming. And just then, her granddaughter pulled up in a car to take her shopping. Since we couldn’t meet with her, we decided to go to another person’s house. The lady and her granddaughter were nice enough to drive us there. Unfortunately, that person wasn’t home, We decided to visit her neighbor who is also an investigator, but she was busy cleaning and doing yard work. Then we decided go tabling—that’s where we set up a table with stuff on it and basically street people around the table. So we went to the branch house, got the table and stuff, and started to walk to where we were going to set it up. After walking through the city with the table for about five minutes Elder Taylor remembered that we need to have our permit with us in order to table in the city. And the permit was back at our apartment. By the time we took the table back to the branch house we were pretty much out of time for tabling or tracting so we decided to street for about an hour. Unfortunately, no one wanted to listen to us. And then after we got home we had to do our weekly planning before finishing the day. It was crazy because almost everything we planned or tried to plan fell through! Our luck was so bad it was actually kind of funny. Some days are just like that.

Well I’ve got to go now, but I will be back next week! Love you all!

~Anderson elder

On the Move – Again

Sziasztok!
Last week was really fun and went by really fast! Elder Roundy and I worked extra hard and were able to meet with a lot of people.

The biggest news for this week is that I’m leaving Hódmezővásárhely! The city is getting whitewashed! (That’s what happens when all the missionaries in a city are transferred out at the same time.) President Baughman wants older missionaries as Zone Leaders, but he also wants me to be senior. The only solution is for both Elder Roundy and I to leave at the same time since he is going home. I’m going to a city called Érd. It is right below Budapest, so I’ll be able to visit the big city often! And my new companion is only in his second transfer so he’ll be a lot of fun.

We just had a cool program with one of our investigators and she said her first prayer out loud! It was awesome! I love hearing people pray for the first time! And during the last program with her we taught her kids how to pray. Laci, her five year old son, said his first prayer! He seemed to be talking to us while he prayed, so the next elders will have to help him understand that we pray to God. Still, he’s doing pretty well considering that he hadn’t learned about God at all before we came. In any case, his prayer was really cute!

Well I have to go now because we still need to pack and say goodbye to a ton of people here! Thanks for everything. I love y’all!

~Anderson elder

Little Miracles

Sziasztok!

Last week was pretty neat! Elder Roundy and I went on a lot of splits and it was a ton of fun. Monday night we traveled up to Szolnok and blitzed the area with one of the companionships. Both my companion and I stayed in the area for the whole day, so on Tuesday there were six missionaries in the city and not just four. I went on splits with Elder Peugnet, which was cool because he is just one group above me and so he was in the MTC with me for a while. Unfortunately, he had a ton of chores to do—he is the branch president in Szolnok—so we spent most of the day doing those things.

On Tuesday night we drove down to Kecskemét and I went on splits with Elder Gardenhire. It was really strange because it felt like I hadn’t even left Kecskemét and that all of the stuff that’s happened in Hódmezővásárhely was just a dream. Weird. (Before last transfer, I was companions with Elder Gardenhire and Elder Musters was part of the other companionship in Kecskemét.) I wasn’t in Hód for two whole days last week. It was a fun little excursion!

We had a few neat little miracles on Saturday. It was raining like crazy, so we decided to tract a ten story apartment building which has sixty apartments in it. For some strange reason there were a lot of people that weren’t home and those who were home were not nice at all. It was pretty lame knocking on those doors since no one was interested in talking to us. BUT the last two people we talked to in the building were SUPER nice! They weren’t really interested in our message, but they were just really happy and nice to us and that was wonderful! I think that experience was a little gift from God helping us not to give up. And so we continued tracting in other buildings where we found a lot of people who were home and many were really kind. We had lots of good conversations and even found a few people who are interested in meeting with us again! It was actually fun! We also tracted into a member’s sister-in-law on accident. That was a huge surprise, since it’s not at all common in a city of tens of thousands of people to tract into someone who is related to one of just fifteen members!

So all in all it was a fun week. We were able to get a lot of good work done and it was really neat to see the hand of the Lord helping us during the week. I love you all! See ya next week!

~Anderson elder

A Day In Békéscsaba

Halló sziasztok!

Last week was pretty cool! On Monday my companion and I drove to a small town called Szentes to visit a really nice member family: the mom, Edina; her sister, Viki; and Edina’s two small boys, Ábel and Gergő who are like five and eight years old. Edina served a mission in England and the whole family is so cool! Every Sunday they either drive or take a train to church in Szeged which involves an hour of travel time! They’re pretty awesome members. We go over to their house every Monday and teach the kids a little lesson. But it’s not like they really need it—Edina does a super good job of teaching them the gospel at home. After we teach the lesson we go out in their yard and play soccer with them! It’s a lot of fun playing soccer with little kids!

On Tuesday we went on splits with the Békéscsaba elders and I got to stay in Békéscsaba for the day! It was really fun to be back in the city. I got to visit a few members and teach English class too. It was interesting how when I was assigned there the weather was really cold and wet but now it’s all warm and green and pretty! I had a lot of déjà vu during the day I was there, it was really neat.

Throughout the week we were able to meet with a lot of new people, but we really need people who are willing to investigate the gospel seriously. Hopefully we’ll find even more people this week.

We were able to get the mission goals and achieve standard this week. It was really cool to see how things just came together for us. It was obvious that God was helping us to achieve standard. I know that God really does care about us and will help us achieve worthy goals!

Well I’d better get going. I love you all—thanks for everything!

~Anderson elder

What’s the Point?

Helló!

Last week was pretty crazy! It was a lot of fun. On Tuesday we had six programs! It was a ton of work. We met with five investigators and then we met with a cool member family. It is always really fun to have a bunch of programs in one day. The day flies by and teaching people is the best, a lot better than spending a lot of time finding people. Part of me is jealous of the missionaries serving in Utah because some of them don't have to do much finding at all, they just get tons of referrals from members and so they teach all of the time. That would be sweet. But it sure is an adventure talking to strangers on the street all of the time. We have a lot of interesting experiences.

Wednesday was also pretty fun since we had Zone Conference. The funny thing was that we drove down to Szeged to pick up one of the companionships there but we got stuck in some rush hour traffic and construction areas so we ended up being late to our own Zone Conference! It was pretty fun, well interesting at least. We had some really good trainings by the Assistants about planning and goal setting. They were trying to get us to strive to set high goals and push ourselves to get them.

Thursday was also interesting. We had a program with a new lady named Irén (so now we have two Irén investigators) and the program was pretty crazy. Haha. She has a four year old and two year old and they were insane! The four year old was asking us questions nonstop. He took a little pamphlet from my shirt pocket and asked, “What’s the point of you having this?” I told him that we give the pamphlets out to people and that he could have one. He took it and looked at it a little more intently, then looked back at me and asked, “What’s the point of me having this?” Haha. We laughed so hard.

Saturday was pretty intense. It was a national holiday. My companion and I got permission to drive up to Nyíregyháza (literally: “the church of birch”) because Elder Roundy had served there for a long time and he wanted to visit some people before he goes home. It was about a four hour drive though! We spent a lot of time in the car that day. We visited a few members and went to a branch party that was held in a really pretty park. I have now been to every remote city that missionaries can go to in Hungary and I have been to every corner of the country! That isn’t that difficult since the entire country of Hungary is smaller than Washington state! Haha.

I am so grateful to be here! I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored in its fullness. I am also grateful for the Book of Mormon and that it has strengthened my testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ! I love you all!

~Anderson elder