Monday, February 23, 2015

Sok mindent happened this week

Sok mindent happened this week. So it all started out at a normal district meeting at the branch house. We were talking about ways to find more people to teach, as we often do, and Höferl Elder mentioned that we could have sort of like an open house night where the members and us could give presentations to anyone interested in finding out more about the "teachings of the Mormons." We scheduled a time, talked with the ward council and mission president, and so far this idea has been well received. I also made a flier for us to hand out to everyone with all the necessary information. I think that I'll attach the flier to the email, since I've been having trouble getting pictures on email, and then you will also have some sort of visual link to my missionary work ;). It will be official when the mission president clears it through the are presidency, which shouldn't be a problem, and then we will mass produce and distribute the flier throughout Veszprém and maybe even the neighboring towns and villages. Planning for this was basically the highlight of the week, since it took so much phone calls and, well, planning. 


here is what the flier looks like! We kept it simple so we could just black-and-white photocopy it relatively inexpensively.




Here's the translation:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints
  • We believe in the Bible, a testimony of Jesus Christ
  • We believe in the Book of Mormon, another testimony of Jesus Christ
  • We believe in the eternal family
  • We believe in faith
  • We believe in prayer
  • We believe in Jesus Christ
Come meet us at our new building:
  • 3 Aulich Lajos Street
  • March 20, 5:30-8:00
Free presentations from Hungarian members and missionaries teaching about our beliefs.

Hopefully it will be successful! 

We put on basic beliefs and other information on our flier that targeted ideas people have about our church in an effort to make them more curious and interested. 

We put on that we believe in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon to target the incorrect idea that people have that we think the Book of Mormon replaces the Bible. 

We emphasized that Hungarian members will be there, because many people walk up to us and say "don't you know that there are no Hungarian Mormons?" We are hoping that this group of people would be interested in meeting Hungarian members and seeing with their own eyes who attends our church. Also, many people think our church is strictly American, and that we hold meetings and other things in English, so we are hoping that this information would make people more comfortable in coming to talk to us, knowing that there would be fellow native speakers there.

In the center of the flier we put on "We believe in Jesus Christ." Of course, this is the most important information, and we are hoping to draw in the people who want an opportunity for their faith to grow - We have actually talked to quite a few people like this in Veszprém that are interested in our church, but are "too busy" to regularly meet with us. Hopefully this would interest these people in providing a no-strings-attached opportunity to get acquainted with the Mormons!

This week we met with a lady from China. She spoke English, but not a word of Hungarian, so that was easy for me! It was Chinese new year so she fed us dumplings and cabbage.

From random google search

 It was delicious! She is an interim here at the university of Pannonia teaching Chinese language and culture. 

I don't know if I already mentioned it, but we are teaching this family right now. They are really cool, and they know a couple of members here, which is always a plus. 

I swear my bag gets heavier and heavier every time we go shopping! This week I bought four liters of milk and four liters of juice, as well as lots of fruits, and a couple of vegetables, too, as well as flour, sugar, etc. but that stuff is not important! Just the fruit and the juice and the milk!    :)

Until next time!!!
Bunker Elder

Monday, February 16, 2015

A new way to eat Langos

Hello All!!!

This week was very busy. On Tuesday we went up to Budapest for interviews with the mission president. Those went well! :) It's always fun to go up to Budapest and to try to get around -- lucky for me my companion, Dellenbach Elder, served in Buda once, and he knows his way around! The train station that usually connects to Veszprém, Déli, was under construction or something, which was too bad because it is walking distance from the mission home place. So we got off at a different train station (forgot its name!!) and got to our destination using the subway and the tram. It was pretty fun -- I hope I get to serve in Budapest some time- I'm pretty sure most missionaries do, at one time or another, serve there, since there are quite a few missionaries there. I always think it's funny when I think about how literally about half of the nation's population lives in that city. 

On Wednesday we had Zone training at Dunaújváros, which was greeeaaat. The training was focused on communicating with investigators and focusing on using the Spirit in teaching the message. Then we stormed the local McDonald's. Fast food is reealllly expensive here, but it tastes as good as ever. However, it is usually a better use of your money to order a pizza!

So I've figured out a new way to eat langos! I made two scone things, and then made a burger from some ground meat I bought mixed with some onions and garlic, and topped it with the sour cream and shredded cheese and also some fresh pieces of pepper, using the scone things for buns. I called it a langos burger. It was really good. 

We had another program with our investigator who is almost done with the Book of Mormon. I think that by now she is probably done with the Book of Mormon. We are going to start talking about commandments this week. Super excited, she seems to be doing very well and has made friends with several of the members, which is one of the most important things an investigator can do. We are thinking that maybe we can even move her baptismal date up a little bit if she is ready. We are really hoping that the baptism goes well, and we are also hoping that we will be able to invite some other of our investigators to the baptism so that they can feel the spirit and see someone else be baptized. If she is baptized, she will be the first baptism in the new Branch House here in Veszprém that was built about six months ago. 

I am always surprised about how many fliers and pass along cards we manage to hand out. Today we went to the photocopy place and photocopied 500 of the original sheet, which can be cut into 8 fliers, so in all, we got 4000 fliers. Depending on how much we street and table, we may hand out all of them in the next two weeks. This morning for p-day we walked around Veszprém castle, which is always pretty. 

Guess what I saw this morning when shopping?? Fresh strawberries!!! I don't know if they're in season or not (I thought that they weren't), but hey, a strawberry is a strawberry. So I got some strawberries.    :)       And then I ate them, because everyone here talks about how fast berries go bad. 

Sziasztok!
Bunker Elder

Monday, February 9, 2015

The Book of Mormon

This week has been amazing! 

We really didn't do anything for p-day today, because the other elders are up at Budapest doing interviews with the mission president, and shopping and stuff took longer than usual, but we are planning on having district pizza tonight! There's this pizza delivery place here, and all their pizzas are about five dollars, and they have like thirty flavors. I usually pair up with Höferl Elder, and one of us gets Hawaiian and the other gets gyros, and we split half and half, but sometimes it is fun to try a new flavor. There's this seafood flavor, that has bits of octopus on it, and it doesn't taste very good. Just thought I'd share that with you all!  ;)

Just added a few email addresses that have been overdue so if this is your first email sorry for the delay. And if this is equivalent to spam, let me know that, too, and I'll take you off the list!

So remember that one new lady I told you all about, the one we gave a Book of Mormon to in front of the Spar in the rain? She is a steady investigator. So we met with her on Tuesday (I think) which was just about five days later, and she told us she had read 220 pages out of the Book of Mormon. She would have read more if it weren't for the fact that she had been writing a play by play summary of what was going on in the Book of Mormon in a notebook to help her remember the story better, as well as a summary she had written of the restoration of the church taken from the documents in the front of the Book of Mormon (testimony of Joseph Smith, etc.). She read portions of her Book of Mormon Journal to us and we talked about it with her, and the Restoration. When we met on Friday, she was somewhere in the 300s, and we talked about the plan of salvation and even a little bit about the gospel of Jesus Christ. She asked when she could be baptized. If everything works out, there will be a baptism for her on March 31. She came to church yesterday, and loved it. She made friends with the lady who has been coming to church every week, and E. drove her to the bus station -- she lives a little out of town, but she said that she wants to come to church every week! She is an amazing example of how we need to have a personal relationship with God and to act on it. We as missionaries can do a million things to help our investigators, but ultimately it is all up to them when it comes to making decisions. She read the Book of Mormon in her free time and made the sacrifice to keep on coming to Veszprém to meet with us and to come to church. There are people everywhere ready for the gospellllll!!!!!!!!!!! .... and know not where to find it. We are also hoping that E. will have the opportunity to be baptized on March 31, as the other invitations for baptism we extended to her were too soon... E. has followed through on our invitations to follow all the commitments we have extended so far -- word of wisdom, ten commandments, law of chastity, read the Book of Mormon (she started last week!!!!), attend church. We've been really blessed to have had the opportunity the meet with these two amazing investigators. 

We got let in to these two older guys, who were brothers. When we asked them if they believed in God, one of them said, "no, we are communists" and the second one said "um, excuse me, butI believe in God, and I am definitely not a communist. We are devout Catholics." And the first one was like "hey, I'm not a Catholic, I'm a communist, and you know that." And they went back and forth about communism and catholicism -- it sounded as if they had had that conversation once or twice or maybe like a million times before. It was really funny. The communist had this ashtray in front of him, and he kept on scooping the ashes of used cigarettes into new paper and smoking the same stuff over and over again, paper and all. When he would finish one cigarette, he'd scoop the leftovers into a new paper and smoke that. It was pretty disgusting, and I think he went through like five cigarettes in the twenty minutes that we were there -- and I looked like his brother did the same thing from the matching ash tray on the other side of the table. 

This week is going to be super busy! We are going up to Budapest for interviews tomorrow, and we are having our monthly zone training in Dunaújváros on Wednesday. Can't wait to see everyone there!!! 

So we had the most people ever show up at an English class on Thursday -- seven people came to profi!!! It might not seem like a lot, but let me tell you -- it is progress!!! The topic of the class was music (guess who picked that subject ;)  ). We started off by splitting into two groups and talking about our favorite genres, artists, albums, etc., and then we talked about words for different musical symbols and stuff, like half note, treble clef, etc. It was a good lesson. We also had English class on Saturday. There is this man, who always comes on Saturday, who reminds me a lot of Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He loves to talk about airplanes, and his time in the military as a pilot. 

So, I love langos, that scone thing I always talk about, so much, I've made it like every day. But I don't think It's very healthy -- fried bread, salt, garlic, cheese, and sour cream... I tried to make it healthy the other day by putting a bunch of vegetables on it. It didn't taste that good. Which is funny, because I love vegetables!!!! 

So I've spent a little more than two months in Veszprém, and it looks as I'm going to spend two more months here. I hope after this transfer I still stay here, I love Veszprém so much!!!! And in theory, it's possible. I've heard of two other missionaries who had only two areas their whole mission. I also want to go to Pápa, because there is someone there I want to contact. But enough about that -- the mission, after all, isn't about me, right??? ;)

So we have like three investigators in this one building that we tracted, so we are always over there having lessons with them. There is this one guy that lives there, maybe in his early twenties, and he saw us, and he told us, "I always see you guys hanging out around here, you shouldn't be here unless someone invites you." And we were like "oh, yeah, we meet with some people here, don't worry." And then he called the cops on us!!! When the cops came he strutted out and told them that these troublemakers were always hanging out in their suits, up to no good for sure, and that they said they were meeting with some people but that probably we were up to no good!!! The cops were like, "ok, you can go in now" to the kid and then were like to us, "yeah, don't know why he called, you're not doing anything wrong" and then left. It was actually pretty funny.

Sziasztok!!!
Bunker Elder 

Monday, February 2, 2015

Visit to the Balaton

Hey all,

So we have had all sorts of weather here. Right now there is snow on the ground outside. But this week we have had cold, warm, snow, sleet, rain, and everything in between. Except for anything like summer...

So we went to the Balaton this morning for pday! - finally- and it was really pretty. But there really wasn't much to do except for take pictures and look at the water. We took a bus to Balatonfüred, a smaller city about twenty five minutes from here by bus, and just walked until we ran into the Balaton.

Image from a Google search of Balatonfüred

Image from a google search

 It wasn't that hard-- the Balaton is much bigger than Balatonfüred. We could see the Tihany peninsula in the distance-- it looked really cool.

Tihany peninsula from random google image search

After that we came back to Veszprém and went to this little kebab place and got kebabs. Here kebab doesn't mean food on a stick, in means like food in a pocket of bread, and it was like a Gyros but with different meat and vegetables and sauce.

I have started to really appreciate fresh garlic in cooking. It makes everything savory taste better! Speaking of food, Dellenbach Elder and I made palacsintas again last night.

Image from random search for palacsintas

They were good, but they weren't enough to fill either of us up. So we both kept on cooking and eating till we were full. There were a lot of dishes to wash afterwards.

By the way, pass along cards really work! A lady called us this week and said she got a Book of Mormon pass along card. She said that she would like to meet with us and get a copy. We met with her in front of the neighborhood Spar, and gave her a copy, and she was very happy, and we set up a time to meet with her again.

Interviews with the mission president are coming up, and he sent out an email reminding us to bring our planners and study journals. I've been doing really good with my planner, but I didn't know that I was supposed to be keeping a regular study journal   :O     I guess now is a better time to start than ever. Of course I have been doing great studies and marking my scriptures and stuff, but I don't have a cute little notebook set aside as of yet to right notes and stuff in. I usually just study for the lessons and stuff we are having that day and right down a couple of useful scriptures in my planner or something.

We didn't run the last couple of days, because the ice, but we should be able to start again tomorrow, since it is all mostly melted.

We were tabeling on the street, and this one guy came up to me and asked how much would it be to buy a Book of Mormon.  There was this lady walking past us, and when she heard me tell him that the Book of Mormon was free she was so surprised she just stopped walking and almost tripped. But then she came to and started walking again.

The Book of Mormon
Click on the link below if you would like to order your own free copy of the Book of Mormon!

http://www.mormon.org/free-book-of-mormon



Szia!!
Bunker Elder