Family Letter

Well, today is Mom’s “just over 30^th” birthday.  We hope that doesn’t shock any of our children since all are over 30 years old and one has the draconian birthday of 40 this year.  Speaking of Dracula, the underground prison that he was held in is on top of Buda hill, by Buda castle.  We have visited the place with all of our children, Marnee, Mike and kids will be the last to visit in just four days!  

One of the many perks of our traveling.  We stayed

in a beautiful little hotel in the hills of Pecs.  This 

was our view during dinner.  We could see all the way

to Croatia!

Still haven't quite mastered the

selfies yet.  Getting a little

better.  At least I am not

deleting all of them now.

June can be called the travel month.  We put on 2,827 KM or 1,753 miles on our car.  That very nasty tick tick of the clock is a constant reminder that we have so little time to get all of our work done.  This means traveling to all of our sites for final visits. 

Elders Moser, Emang, Neumiller, Howard, and Jones

I talked to the young missionaries last night, as we were cleaning the church, about going home.  The two I talked to will be going home two weeks before we do.  I told them that we are not excited about going home.  They looked at me strangely.  I put it as bluntly as I could.  You are going home with excitement about starting your adult life and the hopes and dreams about what all of that entails, school, marriage, jobs.  Moser Nover and I have lived our life.  We have been married, we have children and grandchildren, we have had careers.  We know life and what it has to offer.  It is much different for us.  We Skype, Zoom, Facetime, Messenger, et al with our children and grandchildren all the time.  So going home does not mean going home to a “new life”. 

            I said that we fully understand the excitement and thrill for them going into a new phase of your life.  That is what mission help so much.  They now know the importance of living the Gospel and following the commandments so that they and their family can have eternal life together.

            However, for Moser Nover and me, we will have a very huge void in our life.  We will miss the interaction with the missionaries, the members of the church and the people that we are helping throughout Hungary.  For us, that loss is something that we would rather not experience.  So looking forward to leaving Hungary the end of August just is one great big experience that we would rather skip.  To us it is the same of scheduling a visit to the dentist in two months to have two root canals done without pain killer.  Something that is necessary, but not wanted.  The two young missionaries thought about that and agreed that it must be difficult to leave what we have established behind.

Being focused on helping others is one of the biggest blessings that we have received.  It is nothing that we have set out to do.  It is not in the mission rules to do.  Our general guideline given to us in late December 2016 was, “Help the poor and the needy.”  It took us two or three months to find out what that meant. 

Now in the final two months we put on 2,800 Km (1,755miles) on the car in going out and seeing our projects.  This last week we drove 1,300 KM or 825 miles in what could be called a complete circumference of Hungary.  Look on the map of Hungary.  We started out in Miskolc, the northeast part of Hungary, only about 45 minutes to the border of Slovakia.  

We headed down to a city called Pecs.  Look at the southwest border of Hungary near Croatia, there you will find the city of Pecs.  We visited a school where teachers were being taught how to better teach and interact with the Roma children and their parents.  LDS Charities paid for that class which had about 16 teachers.

Mayor and Roma mediators in Lengyeltoti

Then look at the map of Hungary and you will see on the western side of Hungary a lake.  The largest or one of the largest lakes in Europe.  (Lake Balaton)  Half way between Pecs and the lake is a very small village, Lengyeltoti.  There we met with the mayor and a group of Roma and non-Roma who are trying to develop better relations with each other.  The mayor was the former head of the public school.  He wants more Roma children and parents support.  LDS Charities is financing the activities to help make this a reality.  This is one of our “micro grant” projects that we give $1,000 to help kick start the program.  Small amount of money in our thinking, but large in a small Roma community.  

A  home that was repaired

Mayor and Roma Mediators in Gyulaj

Now go up the lake, turn right and half way up the lake, we went directly south to a town called Gyulaj (pronounce July).  There, LDS Charities is financing an effort to home repairs for those families that qualify.  To qualify, they must show a willingness to help themselves.  This project again cost about $1,000, but is the seed money to get the programs going.  One of the very small villages that we went through to get to Gyulaj was called “Juta”, or Utah.  So on a special day in the month of June, we visited Utah and July!

Toy library in Nagydobos

Now go back up to Miskolc, from there, go northeast to the Ukrainian border.  There, probably not on the map is a small community called Nagydabos.  They are famous for their large pumpkins.  

You can even buy Nagydobos pumpkin seeds on Amazon!

We even got to eat in the school cafeteria! 
We had a three course meal

This is another mostly Roma community.  There they have a very large kindergarten school with about 150 children ages 3 to 5.  The government wants the young children in school at the early age to insure that they receive one meal a day and are taught how to speak, motor skills and social interaction.  It is the law that all children must attend, but for the Roma, it is not enforced very strictly.  So we are involved in trying to get the Roma parents to send their children to school.  Here we are financing a “toy library” where kids can come to play with toys they do not have at home.  The irony of the locations is that it is in the police station building!  

 
Introducing Partners in Hungary (the micro grant projects) to Pro Cserehat (the gardening projects) resulted in a joint project with the two NGOs, a gardening project in Nagydabos with about six families.  Their garden is about twice the size of our gardening project north of Miskolc in Edeleny. 

(Note from Jane)  The most amazing part of this past week was how welcomed we felt and how quickly we felt a bond of friendship and love with each of these groups.  Even though there is still a major language barrier, we were able to laugh and "communicate" (with the help of a translator).  We feel that we are helping people not just doing projects.  We appreciate the opportunity to meet and interact with the people that LDS Charities is serving and helping.  We feel that our lives are being blessed and changed as much or more than any of those who are part of the "project".  

So you see that our directive, “Help the poor and needy” entails us to help the poor and the needy in the locations that the poor and needy reside.  We don’t know how successful all of our efforts will be over a 5 to 10 year period of time.  What we do know is that if we were not here attempting to help change the environment for the poor and the needy, nothing would change.  It has been the same for the past 1,000 years.  We will go home knowing one very important fact, we did our best with limited resources to affect as many of the poor and needy that we could.  If we fail 100% in our efforts, at least we know that we did try to help.  That we did follow Christ’s statement, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  Matthew 25:40.  What more can we say about our mission.

Happy Birthday my sweet 30 something bride of almost 43 years this August 5^th.

Dad