Dear Family,
Last week was a very full week, particularly fighting jet lag. We had
just one week upon arriving back from Arizona to get three projects written up
to be submitted by Wednesday. That kept us going, particularly since two
of the three contact people were on vacation and did not respond to the
questions about some of their projects that they wanted help with. We
were only able to submit the Hungarian Foundation for the Blind project and we
received word late Thursday that it got approved!
Thursday, we drove 4.5 hours down to Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Hungary
and the top resort area. (we gave out candy bars to our grandchildren in
Arizona that were called “Balaton” and the wrappers had a picture of the lake
on it.) This was for a two day senior conference. At 5:30 pm on
Friday, we got in our car and drove 4.5 hours back to Miskolc. We arrived
at 10:00 pm tired.
Late Friday, we heard back from one of our potential partners (The Order of
Malta) and they want a meeting with all of their decision makers at 1:00 pm on
Monday! So Saturday was working on the presentation for this group.
This project may be one of our largest. It deals with the Roma people in
Miskolc at two different locations.
Then on Tuesday, we will be going up to our favorite Roma community, Edeleny
and will be interviewed on TV about what we are doing with this Roma
group! We will also be doing a back to school activity with the children
of the Roma group.
On Thursday, we will be back in Budapest to meet with a new potential partner
(NGO) that also deals with the Roma. We hope to meet with the Red Cross
about their family shelter, the NGO handling the Edeleny and Arokto villages
and meet with the Foundation of the Blind to go out and buy the electronics for
them. We most likely will stay the night in Budapest and work on the
Foundation for the Blind stuff on Friday.
On Saturday, the new senior missionary couple that specialize in Self-Reliance
will come to Miskolc and go up to Edeleny with us to visit the food festival
that will have our Roma group presenting their garden vegetables and Mom’s
version of Grandma Moser’s Chocolate Zucchini Bread. Then we will go back
to Miskolc and the self-reliance couple and their supervisors from Germany will
meet with a couple from our branch and teach them about self-reliance.
This couple will go to Edeleny once a month to teach the Roma self-reliance
(personal finance). At the same time, they will be training the branch
specialist who will be teaching the members of the church the same program.
Did we mention that in the middle of all of this, it is transfer week, we will
lose two of the four missionaries on Wednesday, help one set move from one
apartment to another on Monday before our meeting with our NGO partner and try
and find time to travel 40 minutes to visit a lady in the branch who has never
had home teachers?
Mom is still worried about what we will do when we get to Hungary, if we will
be bored with nothing to do! All I can say is that we love seeing the
lives of so many people being changed for the better. Member or
non-member, Christ is concerned about all of his children everywhere. We
only hope that we are doing as well as He expects of us to do, although we know
He will never accuse us of not putting in the hours.
We got paid a backhanded compliment this week. A lady who fell and
injured her arm told the Relief Society president that she only wanted a Sister
Kovacs and Elder and Sister Moser to come and visit her. After we took
dinner to her and talked to her, she told the RS president that she would now
accept other visitors, because of the joy the Mosers gave her on our
visit. The RS counselor complained to your mom, “The members only want
the missionaries to come visit them when they are sick, not the church
members.” I told your mom to respond, “That is because of Elder Moser’s
good looks and great humor!” We got a big smiley emoji in response.
And they warned us that the Hungarians did not appreciate good humor, maybe so,
but I do know that they love my bad humor!
