Area Humanitarian Conference in Spain

On February 22, we flew to Madrid, Spain to meet with other couples serving Humanitarian Missions in the Europe Area.  What a wonderful 3 day event.  We had very helpful training, attended a session in the temple, spent an afternoon on a bus tour of the city, and spent an evening in the Prodo Art Museum.  The best part of the conference was getting to know the other couples and hearing about the humanitarian projects that they are working on.

Bottom left: in front of the Madrid Temple
Bottom right: eating churros and "hot chocolate" at an outdoor cafe in Madrid

The Madrid Temple

Senior Conference & the Chocolate Museum

The week of February 14, we went to Budapest to the Mission Home for a Senior Missionary Conference.  At this time there were 6 couples in addition to the President Szabadkai and his wife (at the head of the table and on the left)  Now (as of March 12) there are only 4 couples.  President Szabadkai is desperate for senior missionary couples.  We have a great need for MLS missionaries.  These small branches here need leadership support from senior missionaries.  This picture is taken in the Mission President's home.  It is a very nice home on the 3rd and 4th floor of the Mission Home and Budapest Ward building.

This was a great time to get to know the other senior couples in Hungary. Unfortunately, there are so few of us and we are so far apart, the only time we get to see each other is at conferences like this. After our conference training sessions, we took a tour of the Chocolate Museum.  This was an old school that had been transformed into the Museum.  The tour lasted about 2 hours and was filled with lots of information, but the best part was tastes of yummy chocolate in each room.  

In front of the Chocolate Museum

This dress was designed for a special
chocolate event.  The balls at the hem
and neck are chocolate bon bons.

Look carefully at the name on the wall hanging.

These are figurines are made out of chocolate
and then covered with a thin layer of porcelain

  

The finale was the flaming chocolate dessert in the big dining room.  A big thank you to Sister Szabadkai for organizing this event.

Letter to Family

We loved talking to everyone on Sunday.  It was a little crazy but really nice.   It was also fun to talk to and see “our” Primary class. Thanks Marnee for letting us take some of your teaching time.  I know that time is precious. 

Sundays are hard here.  Going to church and struggling with the language is not fun.  Either the Elders or members usually translate for us during Sacrament meeting and Sunday School, but during RS there are so few that even stay that long, there is usually not anyone to translate for me.  Last week, my normal translater gave the lesson.  There were only 3 other women besides myself there.  She speaks so fast that I couldn’t even distinguish any words let alone understand anything at all that she was saying.  So I just sit there and read the lesson in English.  Makes for a very slow Relief Society meeting. I can’t wait for the language to start clicking in a little more. 

We went to dinner yesterday at a member’s house.  The four elders were also with us.  This couple is about our age and have 4 kids and six grandchildren.  Their grandchildren and a few of their children live in Utah.  Their grandchildren don’t speak Hungarian so they have had to learn English.  It is still a bit of a struggle for them, but they do very well.  We stayed for about an hour after the missionaries left and had a good time learning about their family and looking at pictures.  They have beautiful photo albums – like ones that Marnee would do.  Their daughter in law is a photographer.  Not quite sure if it is just a hobby or if she does it professionally, but either way, these albums looked very professional.

Our NEW kitchen

We even have a dishwasher!

We finalized our part of the contract for our new house today.  I think we did a pretty good job negotiating this place on our own.  It was originally unfurnished and didn’t even include a refrigerator or washing machine.  We now have both of those as well as 2 wardrobe closets, a bookcase,  a bed and a few other miscellaneous items.  So all we will need to buy is a dresser and a few rugs and most likely we will buy a new couch since the ones that are currently in the house are quite uncomfortable. Hopefully we will be able to move in this weekend. 

We are going to Budapest tomorrow to meet with one of our NGO partners to hopefully get a project started.  We are staying in Budapest for 2 nights.  We are hoping to be able to get in to see a couple other partners too but haven’t heard back from them yet.  You’d think they would be very anxious to make appointments with us since we are giving them money!  .  Hungarians are not very good at responding to emails so even though we had hoped to have at least 3 meetings set up, we have only heard from 1.   

We found 2 new stores today – Tesco Extra – almost like Costco, and OBI–like Home Depot.  They are right next door to each other and only about 5 minutes from our current house.  Wish we had known about these a few weeks ago.  They are much easier to shop in than where we have been going.  Much more Americanized. 

While at Tesco, we asked for help and if they spoke English.  Another man interrupted and said he did and then asked us about the church after seeing our name tags.  Apparently he has been less active for several years and said he doesn’t come to church anymore because the members are not friendly enough.  It was so strange that he used that term, because that is exactly what Dad and I had been talking about the day before.  We felt that so many have become inactive for exactly that reason.  There is not a sense of friendliness and belonging.  He offered a lot of information including that he has read the Book of Mormon and knows that it is true.  We invited him to church and then did our shopping.  As we were leaving, I talked to him again and he told me about his friend that still goes to church.  This happens to be one of the members that we invited to dinner last week.  He is in the district presidency.  It will be very interesting to see if anything comes of this.  We thought it very strange that he would offer so much information if he didn’t have some sort of desire to return to church.  We got his name and hope to be able to follow up on this.   

Baptism in Eger

Train station in Miskolc

Our first train ride with the
Zone Leaders from Miskolc
Elder Robinson & Elder Seamons

Walking from train station
to the church in Eger

We are on our way to Eger, a city about 1 hour away from Miskolc.  They are having a baptism for 7 people today, February 4th.  It is a very exciting day. This small branch only has about 30 members so 7 baptisms in one day is huge!

The man on the left was baptized about 2 weeks ago and today he baptized his wife and son and daughter.  The other 4 baptisms were 4 girls in the same family.  Their parents are not members yet.  We are all hoping they will decide to get baptized soon.

Almost everyone in the branch showed up for the big event.  Since there is no baptismal font at the church, the program with the talks was held in the chapel and then everyone walked together to a nearby hotel where the baptism took place in the hot tub.

This is a pharmacy that we stopped in on our way back to the train station. There are pharmacies everywhere, but this has to be the most beautiful one we have seen.  It was even more impressive in person. 

After the baptism we went to the home of the family where the newly baptized father baptized his wife and two children.  This home was tiny but their hearts were huge.  They invited all 8 missionaries to their home for lunch.  We ate in a bedroom/family room.  There were two beds and a large TV.  We sat on the beds with a table in front of us.  There were 13-14 people in the room and not an inch of space to spare.  The table was filled with open face sandwiches (thick slices of buttered bread with a thin slice of bologna/ham)  They  had tomatoes, peppers and pickles to add to the sandwiches.  An assortment of pop and juices were in abundance.

Newly baptized family and Miskolc zone leaders
who had both taught the family at separate times

After lunch the father wanted to dance, so all the missionaries went to the kitchen to dance to his "Jesus music.".  The kitchen was basically an extension of the entry hall.  It is very humbling to see how people here in Hungary live in such a humble existence compared to our huge homes in Scottsdale.  

On our way back to Miskolc after a wonderful day