Are you a jedi or a sith?

September 16, 2013

Where to start? We will start at the very beginning, that is a very good place to start. I love being a missionary. I love missionary work, and I feel like the Lord is just blessing us in ways I could have never imagined. We went on splits this week, so that was fun. A couple of people have asked me what I do as a sister training leader, and I still don't know. Ha, but we just go with it, and it is all working out. We went to the Leadership council meeting the Friday after transfers, that used to be just the zone leader meeting, but now it is like, all the leaders. So, I went. And we got a good training about the direction President Smith wants to take with the mission and everything, and that was pretty nice. So, we got some good direction and then they told us that they want us to go and work with the sisters in our area as quick as we can.

So, Sister Oberhansley and I went out! We are over Miskolc, Nyíregyháza, Szolnok, and Kecskemét. I went to Miskolc and she stayed here. Want to know what is weird? Working in another person's area. Seriuosly. We met so many incredible people and we kept getting their phone numbers and everything. We got let in and had some good programs while tracting, and that was awesome, and then I left. That was kinda weird. Spend a whole day working really hard and then just leave it and go home. I will admit, it felt really good to get off of the train in Debrecen, but it was fun to work with Sister Montenegro. We worked on different ways you can talk to people, different things with Hungarian, and we also taught english class together. I love english class. My absolute favorite thing to do is draw someone on the board and then just dress them. The best part is, I don't have to know the Hungarian word if I draw it. I just draw it and say what it is in english and then they are like, oh! Skirt, that is szoknya. And then I agree and keep drawing. One member after the class just kept coming back to me and telling me how great it was... It was funny. And then we actually went back to Miskolc for a district conference on Sunday, and the same member found me again and told me how great my lesson was and asked me if I was going to be serving in Miskolc anytime soon. I told him probably not... and he didn't like that. Not at all. Pretty funny though.

These are all the missionaries in the cute little city I am serving in. I will go through the entire picture, from left to right. We start with Elder Nyman. He is like, the youngest missionary ever. Just graduated high school. He is like, my best friend. From American Fork. Elder Cutler. I served with him once in Buda and two transfers here. He is cool. His dream this week is to be on The Bachelorette. Then Elder Andersen. He is from Arizona... and is in the same ward as the Law family. Turns out they played volleyball together. Fun stuff! Then there is me. And then Kati, and her daughter Katika, and they aren't missionaries, but they had us all over to sing. And then Sister Oberhansley. She is my companion and we are getting along swimmingly. She speaks Hungarian like a champion so I am learning a lot from her and that is good, because I like to sound smart. And then we have Elder Brown. I have also served with him three transfers. Once in Buda and twice here. He always makes me smile. He tends to hiss at people, and thought Sister O was walking behind him, and turned around and hissed at her, only to find out that he hissed at a Hungarian. Awkward... We have district meetings every Friday and we travel a lot by train, and we have activities at the church often, so right now you are looking at my little family. I love it. Who knew these people would be some of my best friends? I had no idea.

I just, don't even know what to tell you anymore. We have two investigators working towards baptism, I mean, I guess all of our investigators are working towards baptism, one on September 28 and the other in November. So, we keep working with them and moving them towards that. We had a district conference in Miskolc on Sunday and they were both able to come and they both really liked it. One of our investigators is from Taiwan, so I spent my whole time translating, and so I can't really remember what was talked about. It was good though, and I felt really good while I was there.

I am so blessed to be serving in this mission. I mean, every mission is unique, but I feel the Hungary Budapest mission is truly unique. God loves all of His children. We testify to them everyone. On the street, in their homes, in creepy elevators, in forests, on trains. We gotta just spread the good word, you know? I learned something in Hungarian this week. ige means verb. Or, it means the Word. That is pretty cool. I mean, I liked it.

But, I think I would like to end this email with a really good inspirational picture.

"Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh;...they are free to choose" So, whether you choose jedi, or sith, it is up to you. But, may the force always be with you.

Sok szeretettel,
Kennedy novér

And this time last year...

September 9, 2013

Well. We have it. I finally did it. A made it a year in the country. And, I am still alive. I know, what can I say, I am really impressive.

Sister Magda and I went to an all you can eat sushi style buffet thing. The selection wasn't the best, and we definitely regretted our decision, but this is a picture of me eating nuclear toxin. You can tell because it is so neon green...

Let's start with exciting news. Our awesome investigator, the one that had the Book of Mormon for like 15 years, and just barely started meeting with us and everything... he is getting baptized!! On the way to transfers he called and asked for the branch president's phone number, and so I naturally gave it to him. The next day we met with him. I like, walk in, shake his hand and he says, "Caroline (because some people here really are very anti last names, because they want to feel like we are friends), I am going to be baptized this month. I already asked the branch president to baptize me." WHAT?! I was like freaking out. We are walking up the stairs and I am trying to tell Sister Oberhansley about it, because we were maybe thinking about November, but I guess she didn't hear me because she asked him if he would want to be baptized in November, and he said no. September. So! He is getting baptized on September 28 and we are super excited about it. When we got to church he was helping put up the numbers for the hymns we would be singing, and he is just really cool. He is going to help the branch out SO much. What a dream. But, you know. We will just keep working with him and see what happens. He is pretty stoked about it all, so, yeah!

As far as being a sister training leader. Who knows what that is?! Ha. We are really excited to just kind of see what happens and to... do it! We are going on splits this week in Miskolc, so I will be working up there and getting to see a little bit more of Hungary. I am most excited for when i get to go to Kecskemét. Oh. Szívem. It will be super great. We were travelling a lot last week, we had a meeting in Budapest on Friday with all of the leaders, and I really liked it. It gave me a brand new insight to the workings of the mission. So that was cool. I hope that I can help the sisters in my area to really feel the spirit of missionary work and to feel happy with the work they are doing. So great.

This is me and Sister Oberhansley. IT IS UNREAL serving with her!! We like... both speak Hungarian... and we dont really worry about anything. Like, I say something and then she says something, and then I say something. I bet this is how people feel in English speaking missions. I am so grateful for the opportunity we have to serve together and we will just keep on kicking it and doing missionary work. I really do like missionary work. Did a survey for the mission and I checked the box that said I have served for 15 months, I have had 4 areas, and had 10 companions (That includes the MTC. Except I didnt count it as an area, because the MTC is a world of its own). Pretty crazy.

I love my God. I love my Savior. Gotta go spread the good news.

Sok szeretettel,
Kennedy novér

Transfers

August 26, 2013

Well, another transfer come and gone. Transfers are next week. This one was a real quicky, totalling at a grand total of five weeks. Next transfer is going to be ten weeks, and then after that we will be having nine week transfers. So crazy!! But, I go home halfway through the first legit nine week transfer, so that means I come home in a transfer and a half. Or, as it turns out, in one semester. Thinking of it as a transfer and a half makes it seem like I am coming home really soon. Thinking of it as coming home in a semester makes it feel reeeeaaallly long. Even though I am graduated, school still makes things feel like eternity :)

This week was August 20. That is the big celebration here in Hungary! We celebrate the first Christian King, the creation of the Hungary state, and lucky for me, I celebrated it in Debrecen with the flower festival!! It was pretty cool. There were all sorts of people here. We had a little table out with information about our church and with some little drinks, we gave those out in hopes that people would stop (it worked :)). We ended up having a huge group of Ukranians come up and talk to us. We were right outside the branch house, and they asked if they could use the bathroom. I couldn't believe that the parade was so long that people had a big enough break to go to the bathroom, but hey. It was cool. They had really pretty costumes, but they are from Ukraine, so only a few of them could speak Hungarian or English.

We had a hard time meeting with our regular investigators this week, but we met with that guy I told you about last week. He is really cool, but for some reason feels like he can only speak to us in English, and that is kind of hard, but it is going good. We had a big branch party in honor of the holiday, and he came out, along with a bunch of people from our english class, so we are really hoping to get them involved with us. Sister Magda and I left the party early to go get in some streeting, and when we left people were surprised and we told them how we had to go teach people and they for some reason hadn't understood, every week, when I said we came here to teach people about our church, but they understood then, and we are looking forward to meeting with some of them this week :)

This is the super gorgeous city in which i live. This is the main square. I climbed up the tallest tower in the church and got to take a little peak out. It is one of the prettiest cities I have served in :) I love Hungary. The people have gone through a lot. But, they certainly know how to build things up again and make them look good. This is the proof right? I know it is the same with us. God gives us trials, and maybe we get emotional destroyed or something, but we can only go up from there. Satan is tricky, and he really does like to make us think we can't progress, we can't move on. But, we can. It just takes some introspection. Does that word choice make sense?

Répa retek mogyoró korán reggel ritkán rétkant a rigó.
Kennedy novér

Tomorrow is like, Hungarian's 4th of July. Make sure you wear red, white, and green!

August 19, 2013

What a happy, crazy, long week.

The weather hasn't been too bad. It is definitely hot... and told I took of my backpack after tracting and I definitely had the sweat marks on my back. I can still feel it... so gross... but other than my back just being wet a disgusting looking all else is going well. We are meeting lots of interesting people, no one seems too interested in meeting us right now, so maybe I am doing something wrong, but we just keep going out everyday and trying to find those people that are ready.

So... I had the weirdest thing happen to me while we were tracting last week. Here they have 10 stories. I don't know if I have written about them before. But they are buildings... that have 10 stories. There are anywhere between three and six rooms well, typcally. At the bottom they have all the bells and the door is locked, so once you get in, it is golden, you can just knock every door as your heart delights. Sometimes when I ring in and tell the people who I am they say how they are super not interested, and then I ask them if they would still let us in, and they say, yeah, just don't come to my door. Ha. Anyway. The 10 story we were at didn't have a speaker system set up, and when I rang this doorbell the lady let me right in. We were so excited. We like smiled at each other with like open mouths and like, ran in. So exciting. I didn't exactly remember who I had rang, and then I talked to someone else before this lady, and then we went up this stairs where the lady was. But this lady, upon seeing me, grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me around, said she would never in a thousand years let me in the building again, and walked me out the building. That was super awkward. I mean, she literally grabbed my shoulders and literally turned me around the building and she literally watched us until the door locked behind us. I was still like trying to talk to her and be conversational, but it didn't turn out. Oh the life of a missionary.

We had a miracle this week. We ran to an investigator on the street. And we talked. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But let's get down to the juicy stuff. We met with a super awesome guy from English class! I gave my spiritual thought from the Book of Mormon and he was telling me how he has one of those books. I thought that was cool, I asked him if he would be interested in meeting and he thought it would be cool. Sometimes we end up meeting with people from English class that have been meeting with missionaries off and on for years, but you never know, so I went with it. He showed up to the church, gave us a bunch of fresh veggies (I taught our class how veggies is short for vegetables and they loved that one) and he was explaining how hard missionary life is, and he wanted to help out. So, this guy understands missionaries. And then I asked him if he had met with the missionaries before, planning on asking him maybe, who he met with, how everything went. And he said he had never met with the missionaries. I have no idea how he go it, but he got the Book of Mormon when he was 20, he is now 35, and he has been looking for missionaries ever since! Maybe not, actively looking, but looking still. And, we met. He has read the whole Book of Mormon, he knows that it is true. He was asking me a question, and there was one word I didn't understand and it was the crucial word in the sentence so I couldn't understand what he was asking, and then he said, it's okay. I'll just read the Book of Mormon and find the answer. WHAT?! So cool. I invited him to be baptized and he said he was already baptized, Greek Catholic, so we are going to start right at square one and go from there. I am really excited to work with him. It has actually been a really hard week, and I feel like the Lord seriously just blessed us so much when we met with him. It is really nice.

This is a really interesting monument. It says, We believe in Hungary's resurrection. It is just built into the country side. I think Hungary is gorgeous, and I loved being able to look at the country side. It is way different up here than in the Southeast, where I have been before. Anyway. I know that God loves each of His children, and that as we loving serve each other and give of our whole hearts we will be able to feel of His love more abundantly in our lives.

Sok szeretettel, Kennedy novér