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.
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| Our NEW kitchen |
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| We even have a dishwasher! |
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.
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