Made it to Hungary!

2 February 2015

sziasztok!!!

well this is it! I made it to hungary!! first off sorry everyone I forgot to bring my email list to my email for forever but now I can finally tell you all about the interesting stuff in hungary! Another disclaimer, hungarian keyboards are funky..so if anything is randomly a z instead of a y or the other way around just go with it. and exclamation points and question marks are all in funny places so yeah! fun stuff! but anyways to the fun stuff!

So I guess I'm in hungary now! we left the mtc at 3:35 am monday morning and made it to hungary at about noon on tuesday so it wasn't too long traveling. Mum, dad sorry the calling didn't work. The phone cards at the mtc are the worst. It said when I called you that I had like 75 minutes to talk and then wen I hung up because I couldn't hear you it said I had 35 minutes left but then the secretary wouldn't pick up and stuff and then it said it didn't have any minutes left so I don't know what is up with that but oh well, just know that I didn't get abducted in the salt lake airport! 

So when we finally got to the budapest airport president and sister smith were waiting there and we all made our way back to the mission home. It was a gorgeous drive along the duna (or the danue) and all the buildings are simplz gorgeous! The mission home is in an apartment building. The bottom two floors are the buda ward building and then the mission office is above them and then the mission home. So basically we dropped off our stuff and ate a little snack and then went out streeting. The first person I talked to was a really nice lady and I gave her a book of mormon in my very limited hungarian but she was really nice of only a little startled. Then I talked to some drunk guys who after I gave them a book of mormon took my hand said I was beautiful and kissed it. So that was fun. 

After that we had interviews with president and talked about hungary and the needs of the people here. We were all super jet lagged but after talking to president we went with the APs up to this gorgeous cathedral on top of the hill looking out over the duna and the parliament building. It was night time so everzthing was lit up and we could see pest. 

last district picture together!

 The A.P.'s the read the dedicatory prayer given when hungary was opened up for missionary work and it was so cool hearing about how there are going to be stakes and temples here someday. Right now there is only one stake but we are very close to getting a second one. I will probably see it happen while I'm here.

After that then we got our stuff and went to this cool modern hotel for the night since the mission home isn't big enough for 10 missionaries. 

the view from the top of our hotel

The next day we got our companions. My trainer is Sister Sellers. She is from a small town in northern idaho and is really legit. We are so similar it is crazy. She is short like me and has brown short hair. We both like to sing and we have a lot of the same interests. She is a graphic design major and goes to BYUI too! so I'll definitlz see her after the mission! My city is Érd and its about 20 minutes away from buda by train. It is sort of like the pittsfield ward of our mission back home. It is a small city with a really small branch of about 30 people but half are kids under 8. It has the reputation of not getting much work but I love it already. 

Our first day out tracting it was snowing and the city was just adorable covered in snow. We didn't get too much done just because we had the whole morning taken up with getting in from buda but that night we had angol óra or english hour where we taught the prófi class or the advanced class so it was nice having my real time talking with hungarians basically be in english. So many people here speak english it is crazy. They're not perfect but love to try speaking it with me. The next day or wednesday I guess, it was raining all day long. Most of the sidewalks here are broken so there is a ton of mud everywhere so my boots are caked in mud. We basically go from gate to gate ringing the csendő (or bell with a camera or speaker on it) most of the day so we're always walking around in it. We had one appointment with a lady named Éva but when we got there she said she didn't want to meet with us anymore because the last set of sisters tried to force prayer on her. (my trainer was on splits at the time). So that was sad but we gave her a pamphlet to read and she said maybe in a couple of weeks we could talk again. That night we had another angol óra so that was fun. This time there were only two old men so we ended up talking about the theatre with them.

My first lesson was with a lady named Papp Margit. (margit is her first name) she is a little náni (or old woman, auntie). She is a less active who came to church last week because she felt like it. A lot of people here get lelke betég (spirit sick) so basicallz they feel like they don't want to do something so their spirit is sick so they don't do it. I guess she usually doesn't come because thats how she feels but she is really sweet. It was really cold outside so when we came into her house and the fire was warm it made me super tired. The whole lesson I was struggling to stay awake but it is hard because hungarian sounds so pretty it just lulls you to sleep. I kept having to pinch myself. I couldn't understand much of it so I sat there smiling and trying to stay awake. Near the end she looked over at me and said something while laughing and my companion laughed and then she said that papp margit said that she thought I was adorable just sitting there smiling. It was so fun but mostly embarrassing. 

I just love it here. 

Sunday was pretty fun. They had me come up and introduce myself and that was embarrassing but awesome. Everybody keeps telling me I speak well because hungarians are just so nice. There is an american family in the ward so it was nice talking with them. My companion's parents both served in hungary and I guess the father of this family served with my companions dad and the mother of the family (who I think is hungarian but speaks perfect american sounding english) was baptized by my comp's mom! so its such a small world! We are going over to their house for dinner on wednesday so that will be fun. 

Yesterday we tracted after church and that was okay. We were both starving because it was fast sunday but we only had about an hour left til dinner and we were working our way down this street and then finally after a bunch of we're not interested this man let us in. We were a little startled at first because he let us in so quickly but once we got inside his wife was there and she was so nice. We talked with them for almost an hour about why we were here and about the church. Thez weren't religious but said that they would read the book of mormon we left them. They were really legit people. Most of the people that actually listen to us are a little strange but they were completely normal and after leaving we both said how he seemed like he would be the perfect "I once was an atheist but now love the gospel" member. We gave them our number and got theirs and are going to try calling them sometime in a few days and hopefully they will be interested in meeting with us! 

Oh another fun story. We were tracting and talking to this one lady who said that she meets with the Jehovah's witnesses (which are really big here) And we were trying to explain that we weren't the j-w's but she wouldn't listen but then was saying how we are silly little girls and we should be out having fun. She told us that we should become actresses because we were so pretty and have boyfriends so we could be happy. And we tried to explain that we were happy, but she wouldn't listen and just rambled on and on in hungarian about how our church is a cult and it was so funny seeing this little lady trying to explain to us how unhappy we are while we were just standing there smiling. Life is just great and It is so fun! 

Even though I am constantly soaked through and smell like smoke from everyone's fire places life is great! the people of hungary are wonderful and the food is good. I love being a missionary!!

sok szeretettel

heath nővér

The best candy ever. It has to be refrigerated because it is this sort of cheese thing. its sort of like cheesecake I guess but it is wonderful and strange.