I may have saved a drunk man's life this week.

October 7, 2013

Me. And Sister Falslev. On a mountain. Curse those Hungarians!! They've tricked me into thinking hills are mountains!! But today we travelled out to Tokaj, a super cute wine city, and we hiked a mountain. I brought the whip and pretzels, and it was a huge success of a day. Turns out there are wild boars up there. I was making my way down and talking to an elder when all of a sudden I heard all of this snorting and moving in the bushes and something running towards me!!!! I started freaking out and then i turned and saw the bright blue shirt... funny. One of the investigators that came with us is reeeeal good at making wild boar noises. It was funny. Yeah. It really was.

Oh. And if you can tell from this picture at all... i have a new backpack! Traded it with some kid here when President Smith told me we are probably getting out of backpacks. Just found out that will be happening in January... so I actually use a purse now to carry all of my personal belongings. Can you believe it?! I know, I am super grown up.

I think the main question of the day is, what did I think about general conference? I mean, that is important, because I am a missionary. I live for conference. I will go into specific details as to satisfy all of the questions people have about these parts of the world. We watch conference live! When we can :) So, on Saturday we start off with watching the morning session at 18.00. We worked all day, and got all ready and excited for the day. Naturally. I am not sure if I had any specific questions, I just wanted to be filled with goodness, and I got me some goods. We used the satelite, but we couldn't get a constant stream, and so we had to reset it a lot and we missed a lot, but I think I liked it? Basically, the whole time, that was our biggest problem. At one time the sound in the Hungarian room went just to English, and so that was hard. I think a lot of the members and investigators were bummed about that and by Sunday evening most people had just called it quits saying that they could watch it next week on the internet. On Sunday there was a special meeting at 10:30 for the priesthood here, because János got the priesthood! So, we went to that, and it was awesome! And then we went to Relief Society at 11. That was in Hungarian. It was really nice. I like listening in Hungarian, because I can't understand it like I understand English and so I am able to listen more to the spirit and understand more what I need specifically just for me. Really nice. I like that a lot. We then had a break for sandwiches, Hungarians are really good at making open faced sanwiches (they use some little sliced sausage, and cucumbers, and hard boiled eggs on buttered bread... and I LOVE IT!) and then we watched the saturday afternoon session of conference, as it was broadcasted again at 14.00, and then we watched the sunday morning session at 18.00. It was really nice. Oh. Except the sunday morning session had TERRIBLE reception. We ended up just watching it on a computer, but the Hungarians was in and out so much, that most of the Hungarians had given up, like I already said. We ended up missing a LOT of conference. It was really too bad. I didn't see any talk start to finish until we switched to the internet. I can't wait to be able to read the talks in the Ensign... but, i am pretty sure they release the liahona to us in english only when they release it in Hungarian... so it normally takes a couple of months to get out here. So, I guess I will read it in America. So that is a little bit about how it works. We watched it in english in the Relief Society room.

Here is me, Michael, and Sister O watching it all play out.  

Definitely had a member here tell me about how they are building a new temple that is so much closer than the temple in Germany... I am pretty sure that didn't happen... That didn't happen... right? I feel like there would have been more reactions if that were true... but... I mean. What do I know? Turns out there is a LOT of stuff going on in the world and I have absolutely NO idea. Meh. What can you do?

I really loved Elder Oaks and Elder Christoffersons talks. I also loved the one by the old BYU quarterback (can anyone tell I watched conference with elders?) that was talking about exclamation points. I mean, didn't catch the whole talk... but I caught the enthusiasm. So important. This gospel isn't a passive lame thing. It is awesome! I felt like I was just at another conference when I watched it. It was only going to be as good as I let it be. I mean, if I go to zone conferences and don't want to get anything out of it... then I won't. But, I just loved it. It was soooo good. Can't get over it.

The work this week was stellar. We have two people working towards baptism right now, that is exciting. We are seeing so many blessings here in Debrecen and I feel that the Lord is really trusting us with His work. Things continue to go well with the sisters in our area--There are three companionships over our 5 zone mission, and Sister Oberhansley and I are over the East and the South East zones, with Szeged as an exception. We are going down to Szeged on Wednesday to give a training at their zone meeting, and we are really excited for that. Seriously. Just seeing so many blessings.

Welp. I almost signed off without telling you one of the most exciting stories of my week. So, it was freezing, and I was here with a Sister Rupard. We were streeting walking down the street, elders on the one side, us on the other, when we see a guy at the villamos stop (you know... one of those like, trax things that i tried to explain at mothers day. it has train tracks down the streets). The villamos travels down the middle of the street, so the stops are accessed by crosswalks and are just in the middle of the street. So, this guy is like dancing, and i thought, look at him, dancing to his own beat. But, then we realize he is completely drunk, and he is falling off the median thing and into traffic. So, Sister Rupard is fearless (and really tall. Like 5'10". Afraid of nothing) and says we have to go help him. Seriously. He was going to get hit by a car. So we went out there and she grabbed his arm while he was still kind of swaying (oh. he is a little plump guy. maybe not even as tall as i am...) and I just talk to him about everything. I asked him how old he was, to which he replied 16... but he then told me about his full time job and he had a lot of scruff, so i guess he lied. But, our goal was to just keep him distracted until he got on the villamos. But, when the villamos came he wanted us to get on first. Yikes!! We didn't have any cash, no tickets, nothing... so we like get on, get him on, and then it starts beeping that the doors were going to close and I start screaming, get off, get off, get off!!! It was really funny. We never felt threatened in the situation, and the elders were there the whole time, but it was just another moment from my mission. Oh. My mission.

I love you all! We need to be better than we were yesterday... so. What do we do?! Become like Christ. I challenge everyone to pick a Christlike attribute and really work on that this week. I also would like to remind everyone of the challenge I extended last year to read the Book of Mormon studying a specific topic before I came home. It might come sooner than I would like.

Sok szeretettel,
Kennedy novér