Family Letter - Busy Week

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!