Where did November go?

me playing H in ping pong. It was a pretty intense game...hahah! She is so funny! She is just like my best friend!

trying one some fun stuff at the store today

I cannot believe how fast time flies. I cannot believe December is next week. Everyone here is getting ready for Christmas. It is getting REALLY cold. The main part of the city is beautiful here! They have a huge tree and all sorts of cute little christmas shops. It makes me so excited for Christmas just seeing it!

Things are going so great! I just LOVE being a missionary here in Hungary! I just love these people so much!

A is doing great. He is going to be such a great member! Everything is still in order for him to get baptized so hopefully it stays that way. He is getting baptized on Dec. 14th. I am really excited! He is just so patient too! Yesterday we had another little frustrating sunday and we had to wait awhile - approxiatemely an hour and a half - for church to start. It was a little frustrating but the meeting was awesome! We had Elder Walker from the 70 come for stake conference. It was awesome! We just caught the end of his talk but something he said that really stuck out to me was 'criticism comes from not understanding'. I have been thinking about that a lot and it really is so true. Once we try to understand why someone did something and take the time first to understand them, there isnt much room for criticism afterwards. It was an awesome talk! He talked about temples and temple work so hopefully within the next few years Hungary can be getting a temple! that would be awesome!

All of our other investigators have been doing awesome! We have quite a few of our investigators praying about baptism right now so hopefully we will have some more baptisms in Nyíregyháza. They havent had to many here.

So last transfer, Sister Rupard and I met with this girl named N twice on the street. Both times we met with her, we had a really good conversation with her! And she even ended up coming to the halloween party and had a great time. So all in all we had met with her 3 times. But for some reason, every time we forgot to get her number so we had no way to get ahold of her. Sister Messinger and I were walking on the street the other night and she saw us and chased after us. We ended up meeting with her this morning and she told us that she had tried calling what she thought was the our number (it was really the elders - and they never answered.) She had been trying to get ahold of us the past few weeks and had even come to the branch cause she wanted to talk to us but then she just thought we were too busy. She has a test coming up for English in a few weeks and she really wanted to talk to us. So she said a prayer that somehow she could find us again. That same day she prayed she saw us walking on the street. When we met with her this morning she said she doesnt know why but she has been feeling like she needed to meet with us for something else besides english also. It was such a cool lesson! She is our age and is here for school so she is far away from her family. She is the coolest girl! I am really excited to be teaching her!

It has just been amazing to see miracles everyday. My language is just sky rocketing. There is still A LOT i need to improve on, but almost every lesson sister Messinger and I get out of, we just look at each other and are amazed that somehow we were able to communicate. Yesterday we found the cutest family with an adorable 5 year old girl. It was an amazing lesson! The spirit was so strong! When we tracted into her, her neighbor came out and told her that she should not talk to us. She proceeded to tell him that we were kind to her and she would listen. Then 2 other people then came up and tried to get us to stop talking to her. THe whole time I just kept thinking that Satan really did not want us to talk to this mom. We really had the best lesson with her and we are going to meet with her again. Hopefully it goes well.

This past week we had an awesome zone conference. We talked about how we need to have progressing investigators but that we also need to have progressing missionaries. We listened to a talk by Elder Holland about when Christ asked the apostle Peter if he loved him 3 different times and each time peter said yes. Elder Holland just reminded me of how important it is to love the Lord. And the way that we are the Lords disciples is to love others. That is how we can know if we are the Lords disciples. I have thought a lot this week about how blessed I am. One night when we were out streeting (we did a lot of that this week!) and I was thinking about how all the things that I have been blessed with- all the blessings that really matter in life. I couldnt help but think of the hymn 'I stand all amazed at the Love Jesus offers me'. It is so true. Christ has given me so much! I came on a mission to help others, but I really honestly feel like the Lord has just poured out even more blessings on me. It just ceases to amaze me how merciful and wonderful Christ is. This Gospel is amazing! I just love being a missionary and love being able to meet these amazing people and see their relationship with Heavenly Father and Christ grow. I really think there is nothing better than I could have ever been doing than being a missionary! Missionary work is just the most amazing work!

Thanks for all your letters of love and support! Love you all! Happy Thanksgiving! Eats lots of yummy food for me!

Falslev Nővér

It has been a crazy week but so good! Sister Messinger is awesome! She is from St. George. We get along super well and I think it is going to be another really great transfer. We both struggle pretty bad with the language but this week just proved to me again that having the spirit is really all that matters.

We met with K M on Thursday and we had the best program we have probably ever had with her. And it was a miracle. I really struggle in the language. We said a prayer before we went in for her program that somehow we could understand and be able to know what to say. The spirit was definitely there. And the spirit has definitely been working on M. She told us that earlier in the week she had finally had some time alone and so she got on her knees and really prayed like we had challenged her to. She said that she felt so calm and she knew that she would find her answers to her questions....she just didnt know how then. She then saw the BOM by her and so she started looking through the BOM. She came across Moroni 10. She read Moroni 10:3-5 (which we have already plenty of times with her but she found it for herself). She said that as she read Moroni 10 that she just recieved so many answers to her questions and she felt so comforted. It was an awesome lesson! We ended up talking about baptism and covenants and it was amazing how well i was able to speak. I know that the spirit was helping me because I have never, ever been able to speak that well and understandably before. It was a miracle.

Also M came to church this sunday. Without her kids. It was the absolute perfect sunday for her to come. Every talk that was given was exactly for her. One of the talks was about prayer and fasting. After Sacrament she just looked at me and said she felt like her brain had just been open and she had just been flooded with more answers and that it was the most peaceful she had ever felt. Then she asked me to teach her about fasting and baptism when we meet this week. It is the most amazing experience to see an investigator progress and recieve answers! This gospel is true for everyone! And the amazing thing is, M was able to find her answers for herself. By doing the small and simple things, miracles really do happen and answers do come.

Also speaking of miracles, R - the young girl that we had a surprise program with last week that is the elders investigator is getting baptized in 2 weeks! I am so happy for her!!! I hope everything goes through. We have been able to meet and do a lot with her this week. I love her!

Also we taught this guy named P this week. Last week Sister Rupard and I had a really good restoration lesson with him and he was saying how he had the same questions as Joseph Smith. I was pretty nervous about meeting with him again this week because of the language barrier. But once again, the spirit was there and that is really what is so important! I was able to teach the Plan of Salvation and everything just went smoothly. It went better than I ever thought it would. By the end of the lesson, we bap challenged him and he said that he would need to pray and read and then he would let us know. At the end of the lesson he just said that he has been looking for direction in his life and he feels like this could possibly be the direction he feels like he needs to take. Such a good lesson!!!

God really does qualify the called. We have already seen so many miracles this week already. Its just amazing how God works. He doesnt ask for the talented or ask IF you can do something, He justs asks if you are willing to trust in Him. I love being a missionary! Best thing ever!!!!

Also on a fun note....we got to go to Hortobágy today. We went to go get some whips. They are so much fun! And I actually learned how to do it! The guy who sells them could whip so good and made it look so easy. Hortobágy is just this little tiny town that is just kind of a different world than the city in Hungary. Us 4 missionaries stood out like sore thumbs. Everyone was staring at us while we were walking down the street. It was so funny! I love Hungary!!!!!

Thanks for all your letters. Love you all lots!!!

Falslev Nővér

me, H and Rupard on the last day of the transfer

we were lucky once again and got to stand the WHOLE way from Buda to Nyíregyháza with all of our luggage. And we had good company....two drunk guys. It was a crazy train ride but so much fun!

The whip people who are pro's at whipping! And they make these whips by hand for a living. me and Messinger. It was so much fun!

Me with my whip at Hortobágy.

me whipping. I wish I could send the videos! 

This week has been a week of so many miracles! I dont even know how to put into words everything we have experienced this week. I love being a missionary!!!! So much has happened this week.

We found out that M and her boys LOVED church! They went home and told their dad that they want him to come to church. We are hoping they come again this week! Such a cute family!

Also A is doing great. We had an awesome lesson with him with one of the members here. He said he is really noticing a difference in his days that he prays and reads out of the BOM. We met with him just before English class and we talked about the importance of reading out of the BOM and praying every day. Then in english class I asked the question what everyone would do if they had more spare time and when it was A's turn he smiled really big and said 'I pray every morning now and I read that Mormon book because that is what is important'. It was so good! And we had a little bit of gospel discussion in our angalora class. A is so cool!!!!

This week we also found this Less Active member that hasnt been visited in a while. She is an older lady with a lot of health problems so she cant come to church. She has no family around. She was telling us that she felt very alone and cant do much...like not even cut her fingernails or read. So we sat with her a while and cut her fingernails and read out of the BOM with her. After we were done she just looked at us and started crying and said 'now I can wash my hair because my fingernails are short'. She was so grateful. Simple thing we did, but it meant so much to her.

Then we got to visit M. She is a recent convert and she is just the cutest little old lady Ive met! She fed us a feast and gave us some gifts, and then gave us more and more and more! We lefts with just bags of things. She is just the sweetest person! As we were talking to her she was telling us about her life here in Hungary. Her husband and her lived in Hungary during the communist times but they did not support communism so they were put on a 'black list'. Because they were put on the black list, her husband was forced to work in an Aluminum factory which ended up killing him. She has spent many many years alone. My heart broke for her as she was telling us the story. She is just such a strong person! It is amazing to me that she did not turn bitter from her experiences but was still able to find happiness. Everytime you look at her she just smiles at everyone! She loves the BOM too. I just love these people!

I have also seen the power of testimony in our lessons this week. We have taught so many lessons this week! And they were all awesome! In a few of our lessons, things were just starting to go off track but then we were able to bear powerful testimony and its just amazing to see the change in people when they feel the spirit! Its been an amazing week! We were supposed to have 9 people in church this week! That is a ton!!!! But unfortunately things didnt work out as well as we hoped and only 1 came which was a super big bummer. It was pretty frustrating after having such good lessons with all our investigators. But hopefully next week!

We have also found some really cool new investigators this week! We taught the restoration to this guy named P and he just kept saying over and over how he has had the exact same questions as Joseph Smith and wants to find an answer. Super cool lesson!

Also yesterday was just crazy. We had program after program after program planned. We had 2 little breaks - one half hour break before and one half hour after a certain program. Our investigator for that program ended up accidentally coming a half hour early to his program which we thought was super weird but it fit in perfectly with our schedule. Then right at the end of the program we heard this banging on the branch house windows. It was one of the elders investigators that has been investigating for quite a while. She is a young girl and the elders have been trying to give her over to the sisters but we havent been able to do a hand over program with her. Anyways, she was pretty distraught with some things that had been happening in her life and she said she just prayed that someone would be in the branch house for her to talk to. It was the perfect timing. It was our only break during the day! We ended up talking to her and it was such an amazing program! She said she knew that she needed to be a member of the church. We are going to start meeting with her daily. Such a cool program!!!

This week there has also been this reoccuring question that keeps coming up in my mind: Why do I have it so good? I have been blessed with so much. That question has been asked to me quite a few times and I have been thinking about it a lot this week. I look at our investigators, and the members here and they are going through so much. The members here really do remind me of the early pioneers....they are the early pioneers here in Hungary. They go through so much and are so strong! It amazes me! I love these people here in Hungary and in Nyíregyháza so much. And luckily (we got our transfer calls this morning) and I am STAYING IN NYÍEGYHÁZA!!!! I am so happy! I am getting Sister Messinger from my same MTC group. I am really excited but really sad to see Sister Rupard go. It has been a great transfer with her.

I love you all! Be grateful for all that you have! We really do have so much. Being obedient to the commandments really does bring blessings....not only to yourself but also to your family and posterity. I am so grateful to be part of such a wonderful family who has kept the Lords commandments! Obedience really does bring blessings!

Falslev Nővér

M and me. She always feeds us the most delicious meals! She just got baptised earlier this year. She is such a strong member! I love her dog! We had some good laughs!

this is the church that I love here! It is so pretty!

playing ping pong with the coolest guy ever! 

A (coolest investigator!) and V. Super awesome program! V served a mission in Romania. Super cool member. 

information about the church...can you read it? 

another pic in front of the church

this is in front of the evángélikus temple (they call churches temples here). This building is so pretty and super old. It is like from the 1700s.

on the streets of hungary! I love hungary!

us with sweet M. I love her! She is so strong!

Me with K and L. I love them! They should be moving back to Romania soon though :( So sad!

Me with H. I love her! She is awesome!

Us with J. She is from Ukraine. Her son is V. I love this family! They are so strong. She made us delicious Ukrainian food last week and we watched some Russian dance and it really is like the Russian dance on just dance. Russians are so good at dancing! 

Me with R néni. I have only met her twice but she gave me the most beautiful hazi munka table cloth.! So beautiful! These people will give you the clothes off their backs if you let them! she is so sweet! 

Me with J. He just got baptized a few months ago. He is really sweet. And bought us chocolate for the upcoming transfers. He is super cool!

A week full of adventures!!

Wow! This week has been the craziest week just full of all sorts of adventures! It has been a really good week.

Tuesday we went out and spent a lot of time tracting. No one was really home and we werent having much success. We lost track of time and were in a hurry to come back for a program and as we were running back we both noticed this young kid standing on another road that was out of the way from where we needed to go. We both stopped, looked at each other, and then decided to go talk to him. He spoke really good english and as we talked to him he told us that he thought the purpose of life was to party and have fun and that was what heaven was going to be like to. I will be honest...I was a little bit frustrated that we had stopped to talk to him becuase the conversation was going no where and we were going to be really late. So we ended to conversation with him and started on our way back to the branch house. 5 minutes later we hear someone say 'hey wait!' It was him and he said that he had changed his mind after we left and said that he still needed to talk to us more. He said he didnt realize it until we left, but he felt really good when he was talking to us. He felt in his words 'like what you were talking about was right'. Unfortunately he doesnt live in Hungary but we told him where he could find more information.

Then begins our little fun adventure for the week. We had Elder José S. Teixeira come and speak to us for zone Conference on Thursday. He is the area president over Europe. So we had to leave on a train at 5 in the morning meaning that we had to get up at 4. We were going to get some sleep on the train cause it is a 4 hour train ride but that didnt happen. The conference was awesome!! I learned so much and Elder Teixeira did a lot of interactive teaching with us which was nice because I would have probably fallen asleep if he hadnt. He had us a lot of questions to help us teach our investigators and everything he said was honestly just like an answer to my prayers! It was awesome. And then his wife got up and spoke and she challenged us all to read the BOM in under 60 days. There are 60 days left in the year and that is how long it took Joseph Smith to translate the BOM. I have started that this week and it has really been a cool experience so far! I am currently reading the BOM in 3 different parts. I just started reading the BOM this week so I am in the beginning, I am in the middle reading in Hungarian, and I am almost finished with the BOM from when I started in the MTC (ya I am just a little bit of a slow reader haha!) But it has been so interesting to read in all three places. The BOM no matter where you are reading is always testifying of Christ. I just feel like I have been flooded with this power of the BOM this week as I have spent all my spare time reading it. It trully is an amazing powerful book!

Anyways, back to our little adventure...conference was super good. So good that it went a little over time and we missed our 4:30 train. So we decided to just take the 7:30 one and get home a little late. Well we got to the train station at 7:30 and we waited and waited and waited for our train to come. And it didnt. It was 9 and it still hadnt come and we knew we wouldnt be getting home til 2 or 3 in the morning so we got permission to stay in Buda. That was a lot of fun but pretty crazy. There were already some missionaries staying there so there were no beds. Anyways, it was a long night and we ended up getting up again at 4 to try and catch a train back to Nyíregháza. Turns out the train in the morning was too full and they wouldnt let us on. Then come to find out, Nov. 1st was a big holiday and they werent going to have trains running the rest of the day. They said that there was one other train we could take so we literally ran clear across Buda to try to catch the train. It was so crazy! We were all so sleep deprived. We ended up making the train but it was full also so we got to STAND in this tiny little compartment by the bathroom on the train. for 4 hours! We were so exhausted by the time we got home, but it was actually really fun. We made the best out of it we could. And I have never been so grateful for sleep that night that I got to finally get 8 hours of sleep in my own bed! Hungary and the holidays!

Speaking of the holiday, it was the coolest holiday. It was minden Szentek Napja. (All saints day or Day of the dead). It is a huge holiday where everyone visit their relatives graves and brings flowers and leave candles on their graves. It is symbolic of bringing light to their deceased ancestors who are in the dark. The cemetaries looked so cool! We got to go with one of the members to see it and she was explaining everything to us. Graves here are crazy. It was really cool to see though.

On Saturday morning (after finally getting a good sleep) we woke up to realize that we had totally forgotten that we were planning the halloween party for the branch that night and we had forgotten to get things for games. We also realized that we would be the only missionaries there also. So we spent all day Saturday trying to get everything ready. NOTHING was falling into place and we were pretty stressed out. But we just did the best we possibly could. In the morning I really felt like we specifically needed to invite one investigator that we have been trying to get to come to church for a long time. I kept fighting it because honestly I didnt know how well the party was going to turn out. But we passed her work place and I finally just told my companion that we should just invite her. We invited her and she actually came!!! The party turned out so well! (you all dont call me party girl for nothing haha) everything just came together perfectly and everyone had a really good time. And M (the lady we invited) Loved being there. At the end, I just asked her if she was going to come to church and she said YES!!!! It was wonderful and totally worth the stress for the party!

She came to church and brought her 2 little boys - ages 6 and 4. M loved church. We werent expecting her to bring her 2 little boys so I really think Heavenly Father was helping me use my creative juices to keep the boys occupied in sacrament meeting. It even got to the point where I was taking our free english class papers out and making paper airplanes with them during sacrament meeting. It was so great though! M was going to leave after sacrament but then she decided to stay for all 3 hours which was huge for her!!!! She went to primary with her kids and we had an awesome lesson and everything went better than I could have pictured. It was a perfect sacrament meeting. And she said she is going to come again next week!

Everything is really just starting to come together here! I love being a missionary. We have seen so many miracles and tender mercies this week. I wish I could just go through and describe them all. Being a missionary is really the best feeling in the world. It is a lot of work. and a lot of stress. But it is all worth it. It has been a great transfer and I have felt like I have grown a lot. 10 weeks is a long time. This is the last week of the transfer (next week I will be emailing on tuesday). Thanks for all your love and support! I love oyu all!

Falslev Nővér

some of the members and us tabling. This was a while ago

Rupard, me and Elder Gaytán at 6 in the morning at McDonalds trying to figure out how to get back to Nyíregyháza.

This was our little 'compartment' we got to stand in. Everyone loved it when they got to climb over us to go to the bathroom.  Great times! There we 6 of us and we had a lot of fun just talking and telling stories. It made the 4 hours go by fast! :)

some of the pictures of the graves. i dont know how well you can see them

 she is the member that took us to see the graves. She is pretty much a missionary with us. She goes everywhere with us! I love her!

these are cremation boxes. A lot of people are cremated here.

I was a cowgirl for Halloween

My personal favorite....so funny! The people loved this game!

the little kids ate cookies! So funny! They loved it!

. (can you tell who won? If you were wondering, it was me!!!!) haha! 

 This was so hard! This was actual bread ( I couldnt find donuts to do it with). It was so fun!

Is there paprika (peppers) that look something like this in America? Mom and dad do you think you could plant some peppers like this in the garden next year before I come home? :) It doesnt matter what color. If not, I'll bring some stuff to plant them. 

So this is one of her relatives. On the grave headstone thing all 4 sides are filled with the names of people who have died there. In Hungary, no one is buried fully under the ground. All their graves are above ground. And this is how it works: so someone dies, they are put in a coffin. Their body decomposes and then their bones are taken out of the coffin and put into another coffin. Another person in the family dies and is put in a coffin (so there are two coffins in the grave -one with just bones and the other with a decompoising body). Then when that body decomposes, it is added to the other coffin with bones in it. So they can just keep burying and burying people in the same grave. I would not like to be the person who deals with the bones haha.