Monday, December 3, 2012

Week 18 (November 26-December 3, 2012)

 Christmas yay 
 Our decorations

 Tree in the city center! (Without decorations yet)

 The "tree" and "gifts" from my family

 Morning view out of my window

 Setting up Christmas in the Szombathely Elder's apartment!



Watch this video of Cameron learning to use a whip!


BÉNA!!
Elmennem kell Sopron!! (this probably won't work in a translator)
NEM! NEM! NEM!
A.K.A. I have to leave Sopron! Dang it! We just finished up setting our 3rd baptism! This is a bummer... BUT I guess it's all just part of the missionary experience, right? I am going to be serving now in Kecskemét. It's a super big city and it's in central Hungary near Budapest. I'm sad to be leaving the West.
On the bright side, I will be leaving this place on a super great week. It was just incredible.
So in my second transfer, I tracted into a lady. Elder Hansen and I have taught her this entire transfer and this week we set up her baptism for January. She even paid tithing and fast offerings this Sunday. She is absolutely incredible. We did have a funny experience with her this week though. We taught her the word of wisdom and she was super excited about it and had no problems with it. Then she pointed out a bunch of bottles of really old alcohol on a shelf and made SURE we knew that they were JUST decoration. Good earth it was so funny. Also, while teaching her, we read little sections here and there from some lesson pamphlets. As she read, she would finish a sentence, look up, and say, "this is SO true!!" after everything. Wow she is just a miracle. The story about how she was found is a pretty incredible too. It's one of those "last door we knocked on" stories. She was truly prepared, and our job was easy, all we had to do was show her the gospel and she ate it up!
On top of that, we asked another investigator to be baptized and he said that he absolutely would. (This is the guy who had been coming to English class for forever and I was super persistent to get him to meet with us until he finally did. Since then, he asks such great questions and says, "teach this to me the next time we meet, and this other thing to me the next NEXT time we meet!") He is incredible and he was truly prepared as well!
Last Monday Elder Hansen and I were able to go whipping! It was great and Elder Hansen is a pro! He was a happy camper.
I was also able to go on splits this week back to Szombathely. I always love returning to where I started my mission. The people there are amazing!
One more incredible thing that happened this week (among the many others) happened while we were tracting. We weren't sure where to go so we just started in a direction and kept walking. Then we felt like we needed to go down a certain street. We met a woman moving wood and asked if we could help but she refused and said we couldn't because she didn't want us to get our suits dirty. She was super nice though and we were able to talk for a minute with her. We continued walking down the street, then I said, we need to take the next right turn and go down whatever street that is. On our way there, Elder Hansen stopped us and said that we needed to visit a member right then. That member just so happened to live FAR the heck away and I wasn't so sure about it... Then he said, "no we REALLY have to visit her." as we arrived at the street I thought we needed to turn on. So we stood on the corner for a second, decided to pray, and the first thing I said after the prayer was, "time to hike to Csilla's house." On the way there, Elder Hansen felt like we needed to give her a wrapped Book of Mormon. I thought it was kind of silly we were going all the way there for that reason when we could just give it to her tomorrow when we had originally planned to meet. When we got there we said, "we don't know why we're here, but here is a wrapped Book of Mormon." The next words out of her mouth was, "Oh my goodness! I had a friend ask me for one of these today but I didn't have an extra one to give her! I will give this to her right now!!" THEN on the way back, we turned back down that same street I felt like we needed to go on and it just so happened that a random lady passed us and stopped US and started asking questions about our church and things about us. Miracles all around!!
Tonight we're planning on going to the city center that is all decked out for Christmas. They have a HUGE tree and all sorts of cool little stands and things. I'm excited!
Hey, read the Book of Mormon today. You know you want to.
Sok SOK Szeretettel,
Alldredge Elder