Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Gofri Est

This week was awesome! 

We went to an older couple's place and helped them clean up their rose garden. We also helped them prop up some of the branches of their fruit trees on poles. Then we all had Hungarian hot dogs, with paprika paste and mayonéz. When we were eating their niece and their son both stopped by. It was cool talking with their son -- he said that he, too, might interested in meeting with us.

We also went to Cibakháza again this week, and had lunch with the members there. This week they made us Hungarian soup, and than stuffed cabbage for everyone. It was probably the best stuffed cabbage I've had here in Hungary, which is saying something, because stuffed cabbage is a favorite when it comes to feeding missionaries.
Image from street view of Google maps


We also had a "Gofri Est," or waffle night, with the branch. One of the members compared "gofri est"s to Halloween parties. 10 years ago, they didn't really exist in Hungary, and 5 years ago they weren't really mainstream, but now, they are very popular and "divatos," or fashionable. I don't really know what is so fashionable about making waffles, but it was really fun! One of our investigators also came. She is friends with a member, who also could show up, and she was able to meet the other branch members that came! My takeaway from the evening was that waffles taste REALLY good with Nutella.
Image from ohhcestmignon.blogspot.com

We also had splits with the Zone leaders again, since they are trying to split with all the companionships in the zone twice this transfer. They came up here this time. This time, I was with Elder Oakes, from Arizona, who has served here before, and we spent the more part of the day finding and talking to people he knew when he served here, and seeing if they wanted to meet again. It was a really good split. When we were in the office supply shop where one of the members here, works, we bumped into a less active member and had a great time talking with him. Hopefully we will be able to meet with him in the future. We also had lunch at this café with good prices and amazing lemonade.

This week we are going to have zone conference in Budapest. It should be awesome! There will be both the East and Southeast zones, which includes all the missionaries from Szolnok, Szeged, Kecskemét, Békéscsaba, Debrecen, Miskolc, Eger, and Nyíregyháza. We aren't supposed to go through the main train station, Keleti, though, because of the crazy refugee stuff going on, though, but It won't be hard to get off at Kelenföld, the last train station before Keleti.
Migrant protesters outside of Keleti station.  Image from www.express.co.uk
Kelenföld train station.  Image from www.panoramio.com


Finally, my year mark is going to be this week! My MTC group is going to have a group conference call that night after we are all at home, so I'm really looking forward to that! Also, I've been reading the Book of Mormon out loud in Hungarian for awhile, and I hope to finish it before the 24th-- I just have 30 pages left, which is the last couple chapters of Ether and all of Moroni, so that should be great!!!!

Hungarian Book of Mormon.  Image from pinterest


Have a wonderful week!
Sok szeretettel!

Monday, September 21, 2015

Area Book

This week was great, as usual!

We looked up several people who were investigators in the past, and found this older couple, and had a great discussion about the restoration. We are actually going to go visit them tomorrow to help them in their garden! 


Speaking of finding new investigators, we have spent a lot of time (a have had a lot of success) finding people using the area book. Usually in all my areas we have just had one area book, but here in this apartment we have like 4 old ones just lying around full of old investigators, quite a few of which stopped investigating just because they weren't available for a couple of weeks or went on a long summer vacation or to college somewhere else for a semester, etc. We also do a lot of streeting and tracting, and a bit of tabeling, too, per usual.

I hope everyone has a great week!!!!
Bunker Elder

Monday, September 7, 2015

The best milk in Hungary!

So big news this week -- the weather is finally cooling down! Also, we have one of the best branches ever here in Szolnok. I might have already mentioned this, but every time we bring a new investigator to church, or a less active member comes, everyone wants to talk to that person and get to know them. Also, we have several members that are always asking us if we have any programs coming up that they could help us with. We have brought a couple of members to programs with one of our investigators, and she has been progressing amazingly. She also cooks delicious fried Hungarian foods.

We also started up English class again! I might of forgot to mention this, but everyone in the mission held a "summer break" from English class during the month of August. Me and Haroldsen are doing great. We hit our year mark this month, and by the time transfers come in September, we will have spent 5 months of our missions together, including time at the MTC!

We also found out that due to some random legal rule or something that's been overlooked in the past, we might be spending a longer time in individual cities. "Average" I guess is from 3 to 4 months. So I might be spending a few more months in Szolnok, which is fine with me!

I have also discovered the best milk in Hungary. There is this pékség 2 blocks from our house that sells it's own milk and it is delicious. Just in case you all wanted to know!!!!

Have a great week!!!!
I love you all!
Bunker Paul Elder

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Pizzás csiga


Sziasztok!


This week was great! One of the things we did was go to a falu south of Szolnok called Cibakháza. There are a two families in the branch that live there, and we visited both of them. They also fed us really good food. We had warm bread with homemade peach preserves, gulyás leves, which is like a farmer's soup, pörkölt over nokedli, scones with jams, and some really yummy homemade madár-tej, or "bird's milk", which is like this caramelly milk that tastes really good.


 I was really full and couldn't eat anything until the lunch the next day!!!! These two families always come to church every week with a forty or so minute bus ride! It's always awesome to see them at church!


Also, one important part of being a missionary in Hungary is knowing about Pékségs, or Hungarian bakeries. My favorite pékség is a Pizzás csiga, or "Pizza-y snail." It's like a roll of bread with pizza toppings on it that make a little pizza. 

Image result for Pizzás csiga


The best part is you can buy it for the equivalent of about 75 U.S. cents. I also like things with túró on them, which is a special kind of Hungarian farmer's cheese. From what I heard, it is like a step past yoghurt when cooking milk with the yoghurt-enzyme-stuff in it, if that makes sense. I mentioned one other time the túró rudi, a candy bar made of this stuff and covered in chocolate. My favorite Hungarian candy bar, though, is the Guru, which is like a Túró Rudi, but with nuts in the chocolate coating and a nut paste in the center.


This week our focus is going to be getting more members with us in programs. We've been having more and more programs lately, so we've been needing to make more and more phone calls to get members there, too! :).


I love you all!
Bunker Elder

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Funny Email

So, here are the excerpts from a couple of emails from Paul and his dad:

Dad:
OK, so at work, I was talking to someone about you being in Hungary, and that person (can't remember if male or female) had a friend do a missionary trip to Hungary with a Christian missionary group.  Apparently the friend said that if you really wanted to tell someone off you would say, "go to France!"  Is that true where you're at?  Everyone involved with the conversation thought it was really funny!



Paul:
Haha, yeah, if you're really mad at someone you say "a Francba" which literally means go to France, and the mental image is kind of that of a person getting shoved head first across the French border. There's a lot of ways you can tell people off in Hungarian, actually!  I really like "A macska rúgjon meg!" which means "may the cat kick you" in a really strong way, or like "may the cat REALLY kick you!".