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

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. 

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

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!". 

Short email!

Hello everyone!!!

I had a great week this week!!!

We had zone training in Szeged, and then after that we had splits with the Zone Leaders. They were great! Szeged is a really pretty city -- it would be fun to serve there in the future. The Tisza, which is the river that runs through Szolnok, runs through Szeged also -- it's a little wider there, but you can tell that it is the same river!

There was also August 20th this week! It is like the Hungarian 4th of July. We could hear music from the concerts all through the night!

It also rained a bit this week! So that was nice, now that it isn't really that hot anymore!!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Bunker Elder

Some pictures of Paul

Here are some pictures of Paul that I've found in random places online from various missionaries blogs and or forwarded by others.

Another Baptism!

First of all, I got my birthday present!!!! Thanks so much to everyone for the letters!!!!!!!! I love reading all of them!!!!

So, great news, I'm staying in Sopron**!!!! So is Elder Haroldsen!! I am really exciting to be serving with him some more. 

Here are some pictures of Paul and Elder Haroldsen at the MTC back in October of last year.

This is a really cool branch, although it is really small, with a lot of people who are excited to help the missionary work. We had a program yesterday with a new investigator that lives on the edge of town, and we brought a couple from the branch, and they really helped contribute to the program. It was really great. We also went out to a falu on Friday to have dinner with another family from the branch. It was a classic Hungarian meal, with a light soup followed with some really yummy pörkölt. 

Random picture of pörkölt

An investigator here in Szolnok got baptized, too, this weekend! It was really exciting. The baptism was actually performed in a swimming pool in a hotel a several blocks away from the branch house!

We also had interviews in Budapest last week!!! It is always really fun to go up to Budapest. Also, President Szabadkai is really awesome, I really like him!

Szolnok is a really cool city. Apparently, there are quite a few wild hedgehogs around here, and lots of missionaries have seen them, especially in the evenings, so I hope that I run into one sometime!!! 

Picture from Wikipedia

This city feels like it once was several falus that kind of came together over time. It's really interesting. We use the buses a lot here, they are the most timely buses that I've seen in Hungary so far!!! So that's good!...

I Hope you all have a great week!!!!

Sok szeretettel!

Bunker Elder

**I think he means he's staying in Szolnok.

June Zone Conference Picture

Back in June there was a Zone Conference, where all the missionaries from a large area of the mission get together to learn.  Here is the picture from Paul's.  This picture is from the mission website.