Family, Friends, and everyone else

This is what Ive got for pictures this week. Its kinda exciting.

This kid got baptized! Thats super cool. He's the really small one. His name is Sándor and the guy next to him was the one who baptized him, but not his dad, unfortunately. His name is Joci and he is the 1st counselor in the branch presidency. The little girl is his older sister who was baptized about three months ago. The boy comes from a family of inactive members so this is kinda cool, but predominately just what you would expect from a member family. Also, I didnt play a very significant part in his conversion. I was just as helpful, probably as any other church member who saw him at church on Sundays. So, obviously Im not counting, but this little guy certainly isnt #1. Also, notice that the difference between the two pictures is basically a slight turn of everone's head.

Dear the land of the free and the home of the brave,

This has probably been one of the better weeks here in Pápa. Elder Johnson and I learned how awesome it is to have members come with you to lessons. Like half of our lessons were with a member present and work got done. We have a man named Ferenc on bap date and I might have talked about him before but I'm gonna do it again because hes so awesome. We met with him like 3 times this week which is a ton. Usually we only meet with people once a week or sometimes even once every two weeks but he doesnt have a job and isnt doing anything better with his life, so we meet with him all the time. We have to call him whenever we get to his house because he doesnt have a csengő (kinda like a doorbell) and so he sorta struts out to the fence with all the swag a guy could ever ask for and wearing his sweats and an awesome sweater that I know Meghan would think was bomb. All three of our lessons with him were with a member and we're gonna baptize him on the 15th of March which is just in two and a half weeks. I'm so excited for it. I'll send some pictures for sure.

We've been trying to talk to a couple of less active members these last couple weeks (which really isnt our job as missionaries but whatever. We do what we gotta do in Magyarország) and we've been having some pretty good success with it. between the last two Sundays we had 3 less active members come to church which doesnt really sound like a lot, but trust me. Thats good progress. Its like more than a tithe for our branch. However, something really dumb happened yesterday at church. This less active member, Bálint, came and we were super excited. He sat next to Ferenc who also came and we were excited about that too. Well, in the middle of the sacrament, Bálint gets this sneezing fit and he was trying not to sneeze then trying not to laugh and be reverent and it was awkward and kinda funny. Well, Ferenc starts laughing, so Bálint starts laughing, but they're both trying to hold it back and be reverent but its hard. It persists into the first talk and this girl, who isnt even as old as I am, in the middle of her talk, gives them an awful death glare and says (in Hungarian) "Really? Now is serious." Thats so messed up. Afterwards, the branch president told us that if we dont teach Ferenc (and also Bálint) the importance of the sacrament, we're gonna have to put off his bap date. I recognize that thats kind of a good point, but I think he understands that its important, he just couldnt help himself. He doesnt even have the authority to tell us when we can or cant baptize people. Whatever. I'll get over it, but that was something that really bothered me this last week. We'll still baptize Ferenc in a couple weeks.

We have another investigator that I like a lot named Zoltán. In our last meeting with him, he taught us how to play this game taht he invented called Gléx. Its super fun and he made it while he was drunk one night. Dont get the wrong idea, its kinda like chess. Kinda. I'll have to teach it to everyone when I get home.

I had some more super awesome food this week. We found a place in Győr that sells Milka bars for 200 ft each, which is like almost a dollar so we stalked up on those. Theres a ton of really good flavors and I wish they would just have them in the United States because I just cant explain them very well. This one family that we teach gave us a bunch of Hungarian donuts which were super good. We went to a members house last night and had my new number one favorite meal in all of Hungary. Its called paprikás csirke which means paprika chicken I guess. It was so good and I'm gonna learn how to make it so I can have it whenever I want. I wish I could take pictures of everything, but its kinda awkward when we're at a members house or in a restraunt or something. I'll try though so you can all see what wonderful things I get to eat.

We've been doing lots of biking this last couple of weeks. Thats probably a pretty obvious thing to say, on accounta I a missionary, but we do it a lot. Every time we go out to Ferenc's we have to go a couple kilometers out of Pápa (sometimes in the rain and wind. The weather gets pretty crazy in this little country (but its been super nice lately. Some people are talking like winters already over and Spring is coming. I dont know if we should count our csirkas before they hatch though)) and then sometimes we schedule appointments right after each other with people who live across town from each other. We have to cruise all over the place as fast as we can and its pretty tough. Particularly for an unexperienced biker like myself. However, I'm not gonna misrepresent the truth, I'm probably gonna come home with a pair of pretty attractive legs. Look out world, here I come.

The church is true. Dont ever forget it. The work is going pretty well here in Pápa and I'm grateful for all your prayers and thoughts and monetary contributions and what not. You're all great and I hope things are going great for you. Let me know when something cool happens so I can be jealous and stuff. 

Love you all,

Anderson Elder.

Sok szeretettel köszöntelek benneteket,

I'm still in Hungary. Also, I really did send the pictures off so you can for real see a little bit of what Hungary looks like. What bites, is that i cant write a hundreth part of the things that I've experienced. Theres so many people with so many stories and so many other things that we do throughout everyday that theres no way I could write everything. Heres some of my favorite parts though.

In Pápa, the work is a little bit different from what you might think of missionary work as. Pápa is kind of a small town (thirty thousand ish) and the mission has been open here for about 25 years. What that kinda means is that its been tracted out probably a million times. Thats not bad, its just that we don't expect to find a lot of people by knocking on doors. However, the Area Book is full to the brim of people who have been tracted in the past who expressed interest in our message or who have been dropped or whatever else has happened to them. So we spend our days sorting through those records, organizing them by where they live and going to see if they would be interested in speaking with us again. Often, we get rejected but thats no big deal. I'm getting used to it. One day, we didn't talk to a single person after like 5 or 6 hours of this kind of word. It was a bit of a bummer but its super awesome when we find people who want to meet with us. For example, we met this family, the Simon family, who were taught maybe 2 lessons about 6 years ago and they haven't met with missionaries since. Well, now their kids are a little more grown up (they were really small when they first met the elders) and they have a little bit more time to meet with us. We haven't actually taught the whole family an official lesson yet, but we prepared for it like we've never prepared for a lesson before and we feel super good about it. We are going to share The Family proclamation and it turns out, that proclamation is bomb. Every time I think about it i wanna introduce someone to it. So cool. Anyhow, The Simons. They're great.

Also, there is this man named Balázs that we met with a few times. We took a member, who is actually a returned missionary, to this lesson and I don't know what all happened but in the end we set a baptismal date with him. Whoo hoo! He's got a couple things hes gotta work through but we're super excited for him. 

The language is super hard. Usually, I find myself sitting in lessons and just starring at stuff around the room while my companion talks to them. Occasionally he'll do something really mean and ask me to say something. Under normal circumstances, thats whatever. I'm more than happy to bear testimony or whatever else, but sometimes I don't even know whats going on in the conversation so I havent the slightest clue of what to say. Its coming along well though. I feel like a lot of being able to speak and understand Hungarian is just getting used to hearing real Hungarian speakers speak it. Which I do. All the time.

Theres so many awesome things I wanna say, but I just don't have time. Know that Hungary is awesome, missionary work is awesome, the Lord is awesome, and I love you all.

Sok szeretettel,

Anderson Elder.

They have some super awesome churches here, and also some goobers.

Awesome shots of Papa

Our apartment

This is Pápa in the a.m. I woke up my first day, took a peak out onto our little balcony, and this is what I saw.

This was that Hegy I talked about. I forgot what it was called. And also Parliment.

Budapest

Heroes square

This is a picture that Elder Johnson painted of me.

This is my district at the MTC and my teachers. Theyre cool. 

This is the super awesome Hungarian Zone Leader tie.

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.

Salt Lake CIty airport