Letter to Family - July 16, 2017

Dear Family,

            We have now been on our mission for six months!  It seems longer than that, not in the negative connotation.  These past six months have been packed every day with new experiences. The number of events, experiences, joys, some sadness, successes and some failures that we have had, in our life back in Scottsdale would have taken four to five years to have the same amount of experiences, but lacking the joy one gets when providing service to others.

            Yesterday your mom and I went on our normal walk (we average about two walks a week due to our schedules).  It used to take us about 50 minutes going up the stairs and streets to the top of the hill called the “Avas” (“Rancid” great name for a housing development!) and back.  Yesterday it was 28 minutes!  Our talk yesterday was around the question posed by your mom, “What is the greatest thing that you have learned in these past six months?”  My answer after a little thought, “The joy of serving others and the surprising quick answers we get from prayers when relating to helping others.”  Don’t get me wrong.  We do not sit down and “plan” the next week of service to others.  It just happens every day while on our mission in so many ways.  That is just the nature of the mission.  I wish I could say we planned it this way, about the only credit we can take is that we get out of bed in the morning and strive to begin our work, the service element of our day just opens up.

            Friday is a good example.  Thursday night your mom gets a text from one of the Zone Leaders, “Hey, we were thinking, can we ride with you down to Debrecen to Zone Interviews with the mission president?  We would rather ride with the two of you than take the train.” The train ride and the car ride are not that much different in time, but they would rather be cramped in a small car with us than ride the train (they get reimbursed for the train ride).  We got up early to be out the door by 8 am to get to your mom’s and my interview at 10:00 am (a 1 ½ hour car ride away!). What did the two missionaries do on the way down, played a card game together in the back seat, something they could have done on the train.  They wanted adult companionship. (The same two asked us today after church if we wanted to share their lunch with them.  A member had given them food for Sunday dinner and they shared it with us at our house.)

            On Friday, we get to the branch building in Debrecen for interviews.  Mom has made, what has now become the mission and humanitarian favorite dessert, “The Maurine Averett Moser’s Chocolate Zucchini bread”.  (Two Roma communities’ favorite, our district and zone’s favorite and now the Mission President and his wife’s favorite!  Thanks Grandma, your famous bread is now worldwide! We also brought tortilla chips (plain and Barbeque flavor) and a large bottle of what they call “Mexican Dip”, salsa.  We meet each district’s missionaries as they came in for interviews.  I spend time with the elders and Mom spends time with the sisters.  They tell us the exciting news of new investigators and upcoming baptisms.  They love to tell us about the past month.  We get to know each four missionaries in the four cities in our zone.  With the Area Auditor senior missionary couple in our zone, the missionaries feel blessed to have the attention of the two couples.  We are glorified cheerleaders and that suits us just fine, even the kidding of being from Snotsdale from one sister missionary from Fredonia, Arizona!

            The other two missionaries from our district showed up at 1:30 pm so what did they need after a 1.5 hour train ride.  Lunch, of course.   Off to McDonalds with the two hungary missionaries.

            After these two missionaries’ interviews, the four of us got into our car and sped back to Miskolc for a branch activity night.  We arrive with 3 minutes to spare, but we had to get a laptop and projector setup for the movie the members were watching (all in Hungarian, no subtitles).  After the movie began, the four of us went into another room to watch English/Hungarian Church videos that we will be using in our English classes the next 7 weeks.  After the movie was over we loaded everything up and took the two missionaries to their house and got home in time to cook dinner at 9:00 pm.  Service on Friday, started at 8:00 am and ended at 9:00 pm. 

            Today, Sunday, our day started with a 7:30 am branch presidency meeting.  A new branch presidency, the other two members have never been in a presidency before.  Today, 35 minutes spent teaching the proper way to release people from callings, then calling people to new positions.  We are replacing almost all leadership, most having been in their callings for over 3 years - the Primary President has been in 7 years!  We get out of our meeting 10 minutes prior to Church starting, only to discover the two Sacrament speakers are not coming and no bread!  Bet that has never happened in America!  Wait, it does all the time!  The Church is the same, world over!

            Today per the Mission President’s “request” a combined Sunday School was taught by me (with the translation help of the elders).  Teaching the concept of proper instruction (not reading directly from the manual and passing it around the room for each to read a paragraph.)  My assignment was to show how to teach a class.

            Yesterday I spent about 4 to 5 hours on this assignment.  I’ll use Hungarian grammar - teaching teaching, what an assignment!  I picked the “fake” lesson “How to give public prayers.”  Yes, you guessed it, killing two birds with one stone!  I started by showing pictures of people praying, arms folded, head bowed and eyes closed!  Basic ideas, not in Hungary!!!!  The opening prayer in Sacrament Meeting started out opened eyed, no head bowed and the statement “Hello Heavenly Father!” and she has been a member for about 10 years!  Too often your mom and I don’t even know that a prayer is being said because the normal bowed head and closed eyes are not there including the normal addressing Heavenly Father!  

            My lesson was taken from Spencer W. Kimball’s quotes from the Priesthood and Relief Society manual that contained his teachings.  He has very good quotes about shortness of opening and closing prayers in public.  I used the Sacrament prayer on the bread and had class participation.  I first had the other counselor in the branch presidency read the prayer in Hungarian as fast as he could. What an inspired impression to pick him.  He read it in about 5 second, but pronounced every word! I then asked our Brazilian missionary who has Hungarian as his third language to read the prayer like he would in Sacrament Meeting.  I then asked which prayer allowed us to hear the prayer, understand the four acts that we promise we will do this next week.  The “One breathe prayer, Mr. Hungarian” lost the vote.  I won because it made the point, slow down when praying in public. 

            Why are we here in Hungary?  You figure it out.  I am too tired and need a nap!

Dad

Cooking Competition

On Saturday, July 15, 2017 we attended a cooking competition for the participants in the Pro Ratatouille projects.  There are about 8 - 10 villages in the Pro Cserehát region of Hungary (the northeastern portion). We work with the participants in two of these villages, Edelény and Ároktő. The participants from each village brings all the food (mostly grown in their gardens) to prepare a full meal (appetizers, main course, dessert) at the park.  The competition was held in a park in Hejőkeresztúr.  There were activities and games for the children, music, fun for all, and the food was delicious.  Just as the results were about to be announced, the wind started blowing and then the rain came down really hard. Everyone packed up and left in a matter of a few minutes.  As far as we know, no winners were announced.  Reminded me of a microburst in Arizona. 

It took a while, but he finally warmed up
to me and we had fun playing together

The mayor of Arokto taking their entry to the judges

Arokto - cooking their delicious
pork and cabbage main course.

Judges table.  Time to sample all the entries

A beautiful sunny day ended in wind and rain and a quick dismissal of all the participants.  We left soaking wet not knowing who won the competition or if they even determined a winner.  This video was stopped due to extremely wet conditions.  I think we were soaked to the bone by the time we got back into our car.  The good news is that everything was pretty much over except for the announcement of the winners.

We baked Grandma Moser's chocolate 

zucchini bread to share with our two

villages.  They enjoyed it so much that

we have been asked to bring it again to

another function in September.

Family Day in Edelény

Wednesday, July 12, we visited Edelény again.  We were expecting that there would only be about 15-20 people there this time so we planned accordingly and had a few extra supplies, just in case. It's a good thing, because . . . those numbers quickly increased.

We began our session with an “English” class discussing families and learning family words such as Mother, Father, son, daughter, etc. During this part of the session, there were approximately 15 adults and about 15-20 children.

We have been trying to figure out who belonged to who, so we decided a lesson on families was a good time to group everyone into families and take some family pictures. So here are a few of our feeble attempts to do some very quick family pictures.

 

After the class, we started to roast marshmallows and make S’mores.  By the time we were done, we think we had close to 50 people there.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to take any pictures during this time because there were so many people there and we were busy putting marshmallows onto the roasting sticks.  It's a good thing we planned for a few more than we were told would be there, but we probably could have used almost twice as many marshmallows, chocolate chips and cones as we had.  We were thrilled to have so many there, but wish we had brought more marshmallows and all.  Oh well, fun was had by all anyway.  We love our visits and love being able to spend time with these great families.  

        

4th of July Celebration in Ároktő

Last Friday, we went to Ároktő for another visit.  This time we planned an all-American 4^th of July party, complete with roasting hot dogs, potato salad, potato chips and s’mores.  

They have hot dogs here in Hungary, but they had never roasted them over a fire, and they had never had potato salad.  Even stranger, they had never had hot dogs and potato chips to eat together in the same meal.   They seemed to enjoy these new treats and we had a good time being the ones comfortable with what we were eating and watching them question whether they wanted to eat it or not.

 

S’mores were also a new type of dessert for them.  Typically, Hungarian desserts are not very sweet so we worried that they wouldn’t like the s’mores.  Since they don’t have graham crackers here, we used sugar cones, chocolate chips and marshmallows.  The marshmallows here are kind of strange though.  They don’t puff up like American marshmallows and they “sweat” before they get toasty.  In spite of the differences, they were yummy and everyone liked them.  I think a few of them even had 3-4 cones.  I think I liked the sugar cone even better than the graham crackers.  Maybe we can start a new trend when we get home.

                       

After lunch we had a tour of the community center where there is a small library, computers, and a sewing room complete with 6 sewing machines.  We have plans to teach the women how to sew.  Timi, the 7 year old pictured below with her mother, will be my assistant.  She is very excited to learn to sew and help the other women.  I also told her that my granddaughter, Kaitlyn, wanted a pen pal in Hungary.  Kaitlyn has already written to her and we had her letter translated and given to the Mayor of the village who will give it to Timi. This is their backyard with their big garden.

In Ároktő, the families have their own individual backyard gardens as well as a large community plot that has been donated to them by the mayor of the village. The following pictures are of the community plot.  It is in a beautiful setting just across a little river and surrounded by crops of sunflowers. 

   

Elder Moser's 4th of July Letter to Family

            Late Friday night, a week ago, we received news from Germany (The Church Headquarters for Europe) that LDS Charities had a large warehouse in Germany full of diapers, men and women underwear and other clothing.  All items that are on the top of the list of things needed to help the poor.  The Church was giving away the whole warehouse full of these items and shipping them to the charities’ location free of charge.  The only thing that the Church will not do is pay any import taxes.  We worked on the email about this over the weekend and got it sent out. 

Diapers and supplies
delivered to SOS

            At 6:30 am Monday morning we got our first response.  The Order of Malta (a Catholic aid organization), here in Miskolc, said yes and sent in their order.  So we thought that we would be very busy the rest of the day.  We had an appointment with the local Red Cross that morning and he told us that he had his order already sent to the national Red Cross office.  But as of today, Sunday July 2, no additional orders!  I know you get tired of me saying this, but, “It is very hard to give money away.”  We are dumbfounded at the lack of response to this offer.  The Red Cross emailed us back about some questions on getting the items into Hungary, but that was it. 

            The next Monday morning we got an email from Germany on another matter.  LDS Philanthropies, the fund-raising arm of the church, wants to come to Hungary and film our “chicken project” and the garden project in Edeleny!  They feel that these two projects will be ideal for fund raising purposes.  Somehow, they heard about both projects and want to make a film about them. They are going to Greece about the refugee program there and two areas in the Fiji/Samoa area to also film.  Talk about an answer to our prayers.

            We were wondering if our efforts in Hungary, particularly with the “chicken project” was not really what the church wants us to be doing.  Everyone else is doing these quick fix projects and we have these two projects that take up a lot of our budget.  We really felt like we were a disappointment to LDS Charities, working hard, but with little to show for our efforts. We had prayed asking for direction.  We felt that we were doing as prompted, but felt maybe we were doing things wrong.

            I guess listening to the Spirit, going with the promptings and working very many long nights redoing our proposal so that it would get approved, paid off.  A film is being made of it!  I wish we could take credit.  But even before our mission call, your mom had this feeling of doing something for the children.  She actually found our partner online while still in Arizona.  So, when we got here to Hungary and in one of our first meetings, we came across SOS Children’s name, your mom jumped to make contact, she was being pushed by a feeling this was very important to save the family unit.  The actual name of the “chicken project” is “Stop the Cycle of Poverty”.  Our goal is to put food into the home so that the children are not taken out of the homes and put into foster care, which destroys the family.  The Holy Ghost was pushing and at times, we both think yelling into your mom’s ear, “Get moving!”  Move we did and the project got approved.

            Keep in mind that after all of this work on the “chicken project”, which meant almost one half of our whole budget for the year was tied up into one project; we learned that the project was not for this year, but next! We were really disappointed, because we can only fund a project up to the time we leave Hungary.  So the fact is that the project wouldn’t get our funding until next year, but the film would be made this year.  We talked this over with Germany and they said just go along with the request to show the people from SLC the project since it is in the second year of operations, even though we have not funded it, yet.  The film crew will be here the last of July to do a prelim scouting report, then back the last of August to do the filming.  Your mom and I were concerned, we are going to be filming a project that we have not financed yet!  Then again, ye of little faith, the Lord shows his hand, again He shows that he is in charge here.  We get an email late Friday from our contact on the Chicken Project.  “Will you consider funding part of the project for this year?  One of our funding source did not come through.”  No deception, no hidden truths that we are not involved.  They don’t know yet about the film proposal.  So now, once Germany gives the O.K. to fund a portion of this year’s operation, it will become “our” project.

            We are blessed every day.  We see how the Lord is directing all affairs of His Church.  We know, so much more than we did just 6 months ago, that this is His Church.  We know that he listens to our prayers and the amazing fact is that he answers most, very quickly.  He doesn’t wait to test our faith when it comes to fulfilling assignments for His Church and for the poor and needy.  So fast, that sometimes it shocks us.  We turn to see if He is there in the room with us; we feel His Spirit.