Dear America,

Right now I'm sitting in a Hungarian pub/internet café. That's freakin cool. You're all asleep and will continue to be for like 4 more hours. Thats so weird. Gone are the days when we could chat back and forth for a while on P Day. Its cool though because Hungary totally makes up for it.

This is probably the coolest country I've ever been to in my whole entire life. Technically I've only been to two before this and the one was Canada so I don't really count that, but still, this place is the shizzm. I'm serving in a tiny little town called Pápa on the west side of Hungary. When I say tiny, I mean its the smallest town in the mission that missionaries are in, but its three times bigger than Burley. I freakin love it though. Every where I go is Hungarian, along with the people, the food, the buildings, the smells, the dogs, the cobblestone roads, the other roads that are dirt, the soccer fields, the Nénis, the Bácsis, the trains, the bikes, and all that jazz. This place is so cool. I miss it already.

My new comp's name is Elder Johnson. He's from southern California and loves soccer. I'll send a picture of the two of us. Yeah. He always looks like that. He's probably the goofiest guy I've ever met, but I don't know what I'd do without him. We SYL all the time and I can't speak super good yet, but he is really patient with me and I've learned a ton of things in just one week.

So we finally arrived in Hungary at like 11:30 on Tuesday. The mission president and the APs met us at the airport and took us back to the mission home. That night we went on a tour of Budapest sorta and saw Hero's Square, Gellért Hegy (which was where the mission was set apart), and a beautiful view of Budapest. I got some pretty good pictures of the whole place, but we were so tired that night. We stayed at the mission home and then met our new comps and found out where we were going to be serving for the next 9 weeks. Like I said, I got Elder Johnson, in Pápa, with the Book of Mormon.

Pápa is a nice little town, but I have no idea how to find my way around it yet. The streets are all over the place, rather than in straight, boxular lines like in good old Burley. The buildings are so awesome. Imagine the most quaint little European town you could ever picture in your mind, and thats kinda what Pápa is like. I love it so much.

We met some really interesting people here. We don't do a lot of tracting here, because theres so much work we can do out of the area book. All of our time has been spent looking up inactive members, old investigators and other such people. There was a man named Zoltán, who we can't bring up the gospel with, or else he'll shut us down really hard (I found out about that first hand), Zsuzsi, who is really nice but I don't think is very interested in the gospel, taught a whole family of gypsies who may or may not be totally golden (maybe not), and all kinds of other people. I love them all and hope my Hungarian gets good enough that i can help them.

Our branch is pretty tiny. There were only about 20 or 25 people there on Sunday. I spoke and they said I did a good job but really who knows.

I wish I could share this whole experience with everyone. Being on a mission is like being at the tree of life that Lehi saw in his vision. I want you all to be able to see the things I see and meet the people I meet. When I get home, I can already tell that I'm going to miss this awesome country. Do me a favor, and learn Hungarian so I don't have to leave this place all the way behind in two years.

You're all awesome. I don't expect you to send me letters or packages anymore cuz its pretty expensive, but if you wanna send me an email or something from time to time, I'd sure love to here from any and all of you. Love you all,

Your one and only Hungarian Anderson Elder.