Fireworks on New Year's Eve!

Hello from Hungary!

This week we had transfers (already!!) which was pretty crazy but good. Elder Dellenbach really likes to work, which I am totally fine with!!! Elder Dellenbach's last area was Nyíregyháza, and Elder Cox went to Kecskemét. 

So I am trying my best to get rid of all that chocolate and other stuff I consumed over Christmas week. I have been eating tons and tons of kiwis and oranges, as well as pomegranates and other  fruits and veggies I find at the store. I think right now I prefer that stuff over the chocolate. 

Our investigator has been continuing to come to church and that has been great! During gospel doctrine class she kept on asking all of these questions and writing everything down, which is amazing, because it shows she really wants to learn about the church! We are going to try to set up a specific baptismal date this week, and we are shooting for February 14 ... hopefully it happens!!!!! 

We tracted into this guy yesterday night, and we gave him a Book of Mormon and marked Alma 32 and Moroni 10. He had some interesting opinions about faith and said we could meet with him later and we set up a lesson.

We also just met this family,who are friends with another family here in the Veszprém branch, and seem pretty interested, and the wife seems super excited about the gospel and church. We also have been meeting with some other investigators.

During New Years Eve we heard fireworks all night, and there was a live concert a couple of blocks from our apartment, that we heard, too. We could see a lot of fireworks from our window from all over the city. People take New Years pretty seriously here!!!!!

One day only one person came to English class!!! She was our investigator. We were glad at least someone came!! It seems like the more flyers we hand out, the less people come -- I think we have been averaging about like five hundred flyers a week! At least the photocopying place is really cheap! 

The New Years party at the branch house was really fun! (Don't worry, we got back to our place by 9:30!) There is this couple in the ward, the Kovácsék, and they had all these games that everyone played, and there was a tooooon of food. A couple of investigators came, so we were happy about that! Because of New Years and transfers and prep and everything we officially had 3 p-days this week. We didn't know what to do with all that time.

Also, the buses here in Veszprém have never been the best, but this past week they were awful. One time the bus never showed up, and we had to walk 45 minutes to get home from the branch house. The worst is when a bus is like ten minutes early and just comes by and goes off. On Sunday my companion and I had a meeting at the branch house at 7:45 a.m., and we were walking to the bus stop, about ten minutes before the bus was supposed to come, and we saw the bus come up to the bus stop and leave, and there was nothing we could do about it because we were so far away. So we ran all the way to the branch house. Based on how long it takes to walk there, I think that it is about 3 miles. We got to the meeting on time. Everyone else but one family showed up late, so funny!

Sacrament meeting was great! So many people bore there testimonies, and everyone felt the Spirit so strong. 

So the last snow that happened, the one the day after Christmas, melted a couple of days ago. But, Its snowing again, and this time for real!!! Super excited! We are hoping that next week on p-day we will be able to go to the Balaton, which missionaries are allowed to visit in the winter. Right now it's really snowing hard!!!!!! 

Until next week!

Bunker Elder

Chocolate overload

Hey everybody!!!

The Christmas week was really crazy, and we didn't have much of a chance to really do emails.... Sorry! But we were able to visit some less active members with plates of cookies, and we had a great Christmas program that was really successful.

First, the Christmas program on Tuesday! It started out with the choir singing several Christmas hymns acapella with some of the members reading poetry.  The lady who we got a referral for and has been a super solid investigator, read this cool Christmas poem. I didn't understand it that well, but it was pretty. Then we did this sort of readers theater thing dealing with the nativity with some hymns and other things with the ward choir, and at the end we all shared what Christmas meant to us, and bore our testimonies about Christ. I think everyone felt the Spirit really strongly, and it was super awesome because a lot of less active members and investigators were able to come.

So this week is the first week it hasn't been super foggy. I guess Veszprém is always foggy because of its proximity to the Balaton -- at least that is what everyone tells me! I guess it got to cold and all the fog condensed into ice or something, because the day after Christmas it snowed -- finally!!!!! Apparently Hungary usually has a white Christmas, but not this year! However we will have a white New Years!

Funny story: so no one was out the morning after Christmas except for us, and we were like walking through the Belváros to get to the other elders' place, and literally no one was out. So I sang Christmas songs really loud (but not louder than beautiful!). Picture to come of empty street when I finally email at a computer capable of sending pictures!!!!!!

So when we are out and about I'm always the person who is fine without the hat and scarf. But when we get home and I take off my coat, I finally get chilly, so I sit all huddled on the couch under a thick blanket. I wonder what my companion thinks of me. Speaking of my companion, we are cousins!!!!! We even found the linking ancestor, which I'm pretty sure is our great-great-great-grandpa. I don't really remember though.....

And also speaking of my companion, we are having transfers tomorrow, already, and my companion is getting transfered already!!!! Elder Cox is going to be with Elder Baird, who is from my MTC group and my new companion is going to be Elder Dellenbach, who right now is with Elder Evans, who is also in my MTC group. I guess a lot of missionaries in my MTC group are getting changes. I know for a fact that Sister Jeppson, who was also in my MTC group will be getting a new companion, because her old comp, Sister Kovács, is just finishing out her eighteen months as this transfer finishes up. I don't know about anyone else, though.

Elder Cox has been a great companion!! He has a very strong testimony and loves Hungary and Hungarian. It has been awesome serving with him, and I wish him luck for the rest of his mission, and when he goes home in July! I also can't wait to serve with Elder Dellenbach, I've heard lots of good things about him!

Funny story: I have become really used to sounding things out since I've come to Hungary and have had to sound out words in Hungarian if I want to write down and remember them, and along with that, in the previous paragraph I kept on trying to spell "MTC" like "emptysee." Not kidding. LOLOL

So the highlight of this past week or so was talking to my family!!!!! It was fun talking to them and getting up to date. I'm not joking when I say my family travels a lot, and it hasn't changed since I left for my mission. They went to family in Washington DC for Thanksgiving, and I just found out through email that they just barely went down to Mississippi to see some more family sometime before or after Christmas. (I know they were home Christmas day bc of the Skype call!)

So the pattern seems to be we go up to Budapest for this and that between one to two times a month, maybe sometimes even three. But we only really see the three blocks between the train station and the ward house / mission home / mission office / multi purpose building.

I haven't really talked about that building, much, have I?? It's a cool building. the first two floors are a ward building, the third and fourth floors are mission offices and related stuff, and floors five and six are the mission home, and theres also a basement that connects to a garage thing. I might have gotten it a little wrong, because whenever ever I go there I don't really pay attention to the floors, I just go up and down stairs until I arrive at wherever I am trying to get to. I geuss there is only one other building in the ward quite like it. (BTW, the ward that meets there is the Buda ward. I guess if you want a seat, you have to get there really early, because there are a lot of people and not a ton of seats.)

Hopefully more than like two people will come to English class this week! From what I have heard, Veszprém has the smallest English class by far, at least compared to the other areas that missionaries here have been in. Were hoping the class numbers will rise. We give out like a million fliers every day. Also, this English teacher at the university here in Veszprém has asked us if she could promote it to her class for extra English practice. If what I hear is true, a lot of things here in Hungary with mission work tend to pick up after the holidays, because everyone isn't quite as busy. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will be true with English class! (And in case any of you were wondering, usually more than two people show up, but there have been those weeks!!) 

If the labeling is true on all the chocolate I ate over the Christmas week, then I averaged 1000 calories of chocolate a day. I have given up trying to come back from my mission all fit and healthy and am going for coming back from my mission without having a heart attack. Its going to be a hard goal to follow through. But I think with self control, strenuous workouts, much prayer, and a TON of fasting, I might be able to do it. LOL

Speaking of eating lots of food, two stories. The first, we were eating at an investigators house, and for seconds they just gave me the serving bowl, as kind of a joke. The kept on telling me I didn't have to eat it all, and they didn't want me to get sick or throw up or anything, but if I was hungry to just go ahead and eat, but it was easy to see that János, the man we were visiting, wanted to see if I could do it. I just kept on eating and eating and somehow I did it. Everyone applauded when I finished.

Second story, I was reading Jesus the Christ when I came across this: "We believe in enjoying good food ... We believe in getting all the enjoyment out of eating that we can." It made me chuckle.

Have a great week!!!!!

Sziastok!!

Bunker Elder

He Is the Gift!

Merry Christmas from Hungary!!!!

I hope that you take time to remember the first gift of Christmas--our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ.  Have a very Merry Christmas and wonderful New Year!

Szia!!! 

Bunker Elder

#ShareTheGift

A Christmas Zone Conference

Sziasztok!! 

Sorry this email is a day late, but we had zone conference all of yesterday in Budapest, and our p-day was bumped to today!! 

Zone conference was really good. Because it is Christmastime, zone conference was a Christmas one, we only had zone conference the first half of the day and then played some Christmas games that President and Sister Smith organized the rest of the day. It was super fun. Everyone really felt the spirit during zone conference. For Christmas as a mission we are talking about the attributes of Christ as listed in Preach My Gospel (faith, hope, charity and love, virtue, knowledge, patience, humility, diligence, and obedience). The Sister Training Leaders talked about patience, then the Zone Leaders gave a talk about hope, then the Assistants to the President talked about obedience, we had an intermediate hymn, then two senior sisters shared Christmas stories, and finally Sister and President Smith both gave talks. It was really good. At the end of the day we had a white elephant gift exchange. It was fun.

This week everyone in the mission was challenged to give out double-digit book of Mormons. My companion and I (but mostly my companion, since he does a lot more speaking!!) did it!! It was really hard, but we already have one new investigator out of it. We gave out most of our Mormon Könyvék when we were tabeling. 

About the new investigator. When we were tabeling, my companion went up to this lady and told her that this book would change her life. She asked if we could help her daughter, because she was sick. We told her that we could come over later. We came over later that week. She lives in a little tiny village outside of town. We got on the bus, but we didn't know when we were getting off, but a lady on the bus happened to be getting off at the same place and she even escorted us all the way to her house. We gave her a Mormon Könyve as a thank you! The lady was actually waiting outside her house. Her daughter has some sort of disorder. She had already read most of első Nefi (first Nephi) but didn't really understand it.  We read the chapter from harmadik Nefi (third Nephi) about Christ blessing the children and then told her to read it out loud to her daughter every day. It was a good lesson, and we really felt the spirit. I'm so glad that I have such a great companion!!!! 

The lady who came to church last week, came again this week! Later we had a program with her and invited her to say the closing prayer. It was a beautiful prayer, and she started crying in it! After the prayer she said that she was feeling a feeling that she couldn't describe, and Elder Cox told her that it was the Szentlélek (Holy Ghost). 

So we don't call people with the title of "brother" and "sister" very much in church. It's reeallly communisty, and everyone here hates communism and Russia. They also don't like Italy, France, and a couple of other European countries. But they do like Austria, the UK, and Germany. I guess that's Europe for you! 

So in Hungarian you can turn any noun into a verb and any verb into a noun. Even more freely than in English (because we can kind of do that). But there's a bunch of complicated rules on how to do it.   :/    So in church I never play the piano, I just piano. It's not "will you play the piano during choir practice?" It's "will you piano during choir practice?"

Every week I get one more liter of milk than the last week, thinking that it will finally be enough!! But it's never the case! Last week I got five, and the week before I got four, but it's never enough. This week I'm going to get six. Maybe. I do have to carry it all home in a big bag.... 

Every day when we come home we are both sooooooo tired. That's a good thing, right? Except for the times when we both fall asleep in nightly planning... 

So sometimes when we're a little rushed we forget to eat breakfast (which is funny, because we do studies for at least three hours every morning). And sometimes our stomachs grumble at the wrong times. Right now both of our stomachs are grumbling. lol. 

It gets dark really early here. Yes part of it has to do with winter and we are a little north, but it's mainly because we are on the verrry end of a time zone. The sun sets at like 3:30 or 4:00 ish. But it rises at a pretty normal time. So we're not going to have long summer nights or anything.... 

Szia!!! 

Bunker Elder

Pillows, Polka Dots and Dwarves

Sziastok!

Thanks so much for the emails this past week!! I loved reading them all!! Writing this email is really really weird, because for some reason, the computer is trying to spell check all of my words... ;)

Sorry I don't have any pics! The computer at this internet café doesn't have a little place to put the picture thing in. If that makes sense. This internet café is basically a pékség in the top of a little mall. A pékség is a little type of bakery that is found all over Hungary. The stuff you find in there is really tasty and usually really friendly to your wallet, so it makes for a good snack or small lunch if you're in a hurry. You usually can buy a couple of little pastries with a 200 forint coin, which is equivalent to about one dollar.

They have this cold cereal in Europe called Pillows. Its really good, but really unhealthy. I use it sparingly -- I'm still on the box that I bought the first day here! Pillows are like woven little pillows of grain with a creamy hazelnut or vanilla filling.

This image taken from a google image search

A really good candy bar here is called polkadots. At least that's the translation into English -- I can't remember right now what it's called in Hungarian! It's a chocolate bar with a flavored cottage cheese filling. It's really tasty!

This image was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi

This image was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi

Today we are going to walk around the Veszprém castle. I'm pretty excited. Apparently we live really close to it. We live in the belváros, which is basically the old and pretty and ancient part of a Hungarian town. I's been really rainy and misty since we have come hear, so it's pretty hard to see that far anywhere, but today is fairly clear (comparatively!) so that's good news!

We usually have at least a couple of lessons each day, and we spend the rest of our day streeting. We've been tabling (sp?) twice. Tableing is where we set up a table in the middle of a pedestrian zone and put a bunch of pamphlets and a couple copies of the Book of Mormon, or  a Mormon Könyve, and hand out fliers for English class and pass-along cards. Usually at least a couple people come up to us with questions about the church or English class, and it's a great way to meet people who are genuinely interested in church.

A new investigator came to church this Sunday. It was awesome, after sacrament meeting she went around and talked with everyone how wonderful the meeting was, and during the classes she made sure she wrote everything down. We gave her an a Mormon Könyve after church. None of our other investigators were able to make it to church, unfortunately! The other elders in this district are helping a lady get over smoking. She hasn't smoked in several weeks! We are really happy for her!

One of the craziest things about Hungary is how obsessed everyone is with their personal appearance, even more than in America! Apparently sometimes for tracting the elders go around and conduct a public survey, and one of the questions they ask is "What is the most important thing in your life" and the most common answer is something about how healthy they look to other people. There are so many public working-out places scattered throughout the town that the government maintains, and people will go there and run and run and run around the track, and the gyms are always full too. Everyone under a certain age wears skinny jeans, the girls and the guys.

Today when we were shopping I got a pomegranate (sp?). I'm really excited to eat it. The food here is really low priced. I usually spend the equivalent of about twenty dollars for a whole week of shopping, including five liters of milk and fresh bakery bread. But the gas here is really expensive, about the equivalent of eight or so dollars per gallon.

I finally got my last suitcase! It had all my socks in it!!! Don't worry though, I bought new socks awhile ago when it became clear that I only had like three pairs and a lot more than three days in between laundry cycles.

BTW we have a washing machine in our place! I think most of the Hungarian missionaries have them! Super happy about that!

The pedestrian zones are where you can see evidence of the Christmas season the most. They're filled with temporary wooden stands selling fresh Christmas-y food and other seasonal treats and gifts. The air is filled with the smell of fresh pastry and the sound of Christmas music.

I love European milk! But I think that, at least among the other elders and sisters in this mission, I might be alone in that opinion. Except the other elders and sisters who were raised in Europe. We have a two native Hungarian speakers in our mission, a sister and an elder, and at least two (that I know of) elders from Austria. Just about everyone else is from the USA. Apparently sometimes people are really surprised when they meet a missionary not from the states. They're like, "wait, non-American Mormon missionaries exist??!!" It's kinda of funny, especially since I'm pretty sure there are more Latter-day saints outside of America than inside America!

So the other day we went to Budapest to get our visas. Usually they wait in line for like an hour, but this day there was a problem with numbers or something, and we waited for almost six hours!!! The only thing I really had with me to study was a picture of the old Hungarian alphabet on my camera, so I now have that pretty much memorized! The old Hungarian alphabet is what J.R.R.Tolkien used for one of the languages in his books, I think for the Dwarves, but I'm not quite sure. I looks really really cool. It's also written right to left, like Arabic or some other languages.

This image was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_alphabet 

For my English class I think it would be fun to do some tongue twisters, but I can't think of very many! If any of you all have some good ones, please send some to me!!

Hungarian is sooooooo different than English! This guy we met on a train showed us a picture of the language tree and evolution of languages. It had all the European, Asian, and African languages on it, and how they were related. It was really cool. He told us to find Hungarian on the tree. We looked, but we couldn't find! He then showed us a separate little tree at the bottom, which just had Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian! The rest of the other languages throughout the world were on the big tree. I'm certainly feeling this difference when trying to speak. I can speak in simple sentences, but I have to really think. I can usually understand what people are saying by the context and picking out a root word here or there, but it's really hard to respond to questions and stuff!!!

Sorry if the spelling is all messed up! If I actually used spell check, this email would all be in Hungarian, and it wouldn't make any sense at all!!!

Boldog Karácsony!
Bunker Elder

Páprikás Csirke

This recipe was taken from Cooking the Hungarian Way by Magdolna Hargittai, page 48.

Páprikás Csirke
or Paprika Chicken

Serve paprika chicken with small dumplings or with noodles.

One 2 1/2-3 lb. chicken, cut into 8 pieces
4 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 large Onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tsp. Salt
1 Tbsp. Paprika
3/4 c. Water
1 1/2 c. Sour Cream 
1 Tbsp. Flour
1 Green Pepper, cored and cut into rings

1.  Wash chicken pieces in cool water and pat dry with paper towel.

2. In a kettle or Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat for 1 minute. Add onion and cook until transparent.  Add chicken pieces to Dutch oven and cook, turning often, until lightly browned on all sides.

3. Sprinkle salt and paprika on chicken and add 1/2 c. water.  Cover and bring to a boil.

4. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until chicken is tender.  Add a small amount of water if necessary.

5. In a small bowl, combine 1 c. of the sour cream, flour, and 1/4 c. water, and stir well.  Pour mixture over chicken and stir.  Simmer, uncovered, for 5 more minutes.

6. Place chicken in a deep serving dish.  Spoon sour cream from pan over chicken.  Garnish with green pepper rings and remaining sour cream.

First Week in Hungary!

So I've spent my first week in Hungary. It's a really different place than the United States. The first night we spent here we spent in Budapest. It was really cool -- they take the missionaries on their first night to the castle district to walk around and take pictures -- the view over the Danube is amazing, with parliament and all these other big buildings all lit up. 

We got our new companions the next day. My companions name is Elder Cox. He's really cool. We are serving in Veszprém. It's kind of next to the big lake Balaton, if you are trying to find it on a map. We live in the middle of the old part of the city, in this little on a side street. The craziest thing about this city is most of the housing. There are miles and miles of these fifteen story tall cement apartment apartment buildings. I think they are communist era, but that's just a guess. The elevators are really rickety. These are where most of our appointments and programs and stuff are. This week a lot of people called and cancelled appointments, so we spent most of our week tracting and streeting. We also teach an English class. I guess a lot of investigators are met that way. Not very many people come to it. Me and my companion teach the advanced class, which is good, because we just speak English, and I'm really fine with that. 

BTW the y and z are switched on the Hungarian keyboard. I didn't know that we used so many y's and z's when typing until I had to focus on them. So they don't have QWERTY, they have QWERTZ, but I think they still use the word QWERTY which is pretty funny. 

I gave a short introduction talk in church. Everyone says I spoke tökéletes Magyar (perfect Hungarian) but I'm pretty sure they were just being nice! Sunday was the primary program - their primary consists of four girls. It was really well prepared. There are about five youth in the ward - three young women and two young men. Right now two missionaries are serving out of this ward. One is in the Scottish-Irish mission and the other is somewhere in the USA. Fun fact - Hungarians call the USA one word "Usa" (pronounced ooshuh). It's kinda funny. 

For thanksgiving we went over to the university here in Veszprém to their English club, which was having a Thanksgiving themed event. We were able to talk to a couple of people about the church. It was pretty cool. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and Black Friday!!!!! 

My companion and I made páprikás csirke (sp?) for dinner one night, and had leftovers for several nights after that. It was really good. They have these little waxy looking yellow peppers that they use in everything and eat fresh also. They taste pretty good. We put quite a few of them into the páprikás csirke. When we went shopping today we got two huge bags of them. With the páprikás csirke we also had nokedli (sp?) which is this little Hungarian noodle that you make with the regular noodle ingredients. I remembered reading about that noodle in a world recipe book in our house, it was fun to actually make it. You can put a lot of sugar in your serving of páprikás csrika and turn it into a sweet soup - it's surprisingly good. 

I love it when Hungarian people are really into a conversation -- their sentences go on and on and their eyes get bigger and bigger and eventually they have to take a breath. It's not very often, but it happens. 

If anyone is wondering what Hungarian sounds like to foreign ears, its kind of like "beh-teh-teh-keh-leh-keh-teh-teh-keh" but realllllly fast! 

Their food is really fattening. We kept the skin on the chicken in our páprikás csirke and put in a couple containers of sour cream. They soak their loaves of bread in pig fat before they bake them. Things like that. 

We take the buses and walk everywhere. In case anyone wanted to know.

So on the way here we lost about two thirds of our luggage, and had like a four hour delay on our last flight! It was exhausting! Only one person actually had all their luggage - Krueger Elder. They got most of our luggage to us the next day, but about four or five of us still don't have one of our suitcases - I'm one of them!! Lucky me there was nothing necessary for survival in it. I did have to got to the store and get a couple pairs of new socks, though! 

Sziastok!!!

Boonkehr Elder

(that's how they pronounce my name)