#2 Pest: Lo Kolbász! (horse sausage)

Horse Sausage

Yup, I bought horse sausage today! Welcome to Hungary.

We did get food poisoning this week, but not from the horse sausage. We were poisoned after eating a meal we ate at a new members home this week. Fun times! It’s all part of missionary work.

We ran out of food yesterday, so I dipped into my food supply from my care package and we made the Bear Creek Jambalaya from my last care package and we LOVED it. We definitely want more of that kind of thing in the next care package.

I'm doing good, but it's been a crazy week, we have been just working and talking to people like crazy. It's been a little frustrating because tones of people have been "dogging" our appointments but its okay because it's just part of missionary work!

Speaking of a missionary work...

What's in a Missionary's Life?

Here's a fun description of a day in the life of a Mormon Missionary, from my companion Elder Fales:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1C26ZqjCsTFtTM_5mnCZ0SYMH6yb80P/view?usp=sharing

Spring in Hungary:

The longer I live in Hungary and experience the seasons, the more convinced I am that Hungary is just a European Illinois. There is one thing that isn't like the Midwest. In Hungary there are really bizarre rain showers. It will be really sunny outside and just one cloud will drift over your head and then pour rain on your face, and then go away. It’s very strange, but cool. It’s kind of like the cartoon rains in storybooks… like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh.

This week we discovered Mullberry trees. There are two kinds, the kind they have back home, and another kind. The Hungarian Mullberry tree are "most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen. The fruit thereof... filled my soul with exceedingly great joy... it was desirable above all other fruit." (1 Nephi 8:11) OK, it was really good stuff!!

Now, for the details of my week:

On P-day last week, we met the zone leaders and took Elder Surdu, who has never really been to Budapest, sign seeing. We went to the basilica. One of the things I didn’t know about the basilica was that one of the few Christian depictions of Heavenly Father in art is in the basilica. He is painted at the pinnacle of the dome. We went to an exhibit it the basement about the Hungarian revolt in the 50’s and I had never seen that, so it was cool. We went to the holocaust memorial on the Danube and then took the metro boat down the river, which is a really great way to see the city fast. We went and got kolaches, which are always amazing.

Elder Surdu

We went back to the building where the man in the wheel chair called the police on us, guess we were just asking for more punishment, but we went back to finish the building. We met with a nice friendly catholic lady who wanted to teach us how to cook popular Hungarian dishes. Before we met with her we had tracted into another resident who slammed the door in our faces and said, “We don’t want any faith turners.” Meaning, we don’t want any people who are going to change our faith. So, we had moved on a bit when the couple came back out of their apartment, unwilling to leave us alone. They came out and confronted us. They were yelling at us; their dog was barking at us. They just got so mad they lost all their self-control. It was like they had lost their humanity. Usually when people yell at me when we are tracking, I don’t say anything, or I quietly apologize, or I just leave, but this time I decide to speak. I said, “We are missionaries and we are sharing a message about Jesus Christ. We know he loves you. What we are doing is not illegal and we are doing it share with you our belief that Jesus loves you.” At this point the catholic lady was standing with us and began defending us, and the angry couple backed down and went back into their apartment. Everything turned out OK, and we were able to go on with our work. We met with another man in the building who let us share the message of the restoration of the gospel and we read scriptures with him. The spirit was there, and it was a good conversation, even though he didn’t ask us back this time.

We met with a woman who we found streeting, the woman is from Mexico, we gave her a Spanish Book of Mormon we found. She works in I.T. and she speaks English really well. She is very nice. Also I got my hands on a Spanish Book of Mormon this week, and let me tell you, it's really sad that I can just look at the introduction and figure out what each sentence is about. Spanish is really easy!! I'm convinced, Hungarian is the hardest language in the world.

It was refreshing to talk to a non-European Christian. I’m not sure why, perhaps non-European Christians just have a better sense of God and have a better understanding of how religion works. Working with her has made me think that it must be pretty cool to be a missionary in Central and South America where the people are so open and friendly.

It’s hard to explain the difference, but when you explain what the Book of Mormon is and that there is a promise in the book that if you read it with real intent to know if it is true, and you pray about and ask God, you can receive an answer from God. If you receive a witness that the Book of Mormon is true, from the Spirit, then you can know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the church was restored by heavenly power in these latter-days. Non-European Christians seems to understand this logically and then desire to read the Book of Mormon.

So, this woman is very open to reading the Book of Mormon and told us she’d like to meet in two weeks, so she would have time to read the book before we meet again. It was just refreshing to talk to her, and the contrast between her and Hungarians we teach is really evident. Even Hungarians who claim to be religious don’t follow the logical thought process that if the Book of Mormon is true then Joseph Smith and the church is true. It just doesn’t click with them. I don’t think it’s the language barrier, so it must be cultural thing.

We had a lot of time this week to tract. Usually tracting doesn’t yield results, but this time we tracted into a young woman, Veronica (she has red hair and a dog), who we had a very good discussion with. We asked her if she knew what the purpose of life was, and she said she didn’t know, but we read her some verses from the Book of Mormon and she really liked it. We read her some verses about the plan of salvation and the purpose of life and she said, “Wow. I really like this,” and she was really interested. We were able to make an appointment to come back and talk to her. When we went back the next day to meet with Veronica, her mom stopped us from meeting with her. Her mother kicked us out, but not before I snuck Veronica a pamphlet to read. Veronica is an adult, and we don’t need her mother’s permission to teach her, so I hope that we can find a way to meet with her and teach her despite her mother’s opposition.

An older woman let us in, and while she was cooking we talked mostly to her husband and we talked mostly about families. They really liked what we shared, but they didn’t make a follow-up appointment with us; but they said their door was always open and that we could come back anytime. Not sure if they were really into the idea of taking the lessons, but the liked visiting with us. Maybe we'll take them up on their open invitation to visit.

My New Ward In Hungary:

We also went to the bishop's house last Friday for dinner, they are so cool, Csóti Püspök is great, and he and his wife's story is really awesome, they are really good members.

On Sunday, at the ward I am in now you can have English translation with a headset, and I had the headset (It does help to have the translation, as far as helping me learn Hungarian), but I realized that I was able to understand the vast majority of what was said even without the translation. That’s a good feeling. There was an American who gave a talk. He has been working in Hungary for three and half years for the department of state (the U.S. Department of state). They are moving now, so I won’t really be able to get to know him, too bad, he seems really cool.

In priesthood meeting, a member of the high council was teaching about personal spiritual experiences, and I told the story of giving a blessing to Molly at last year’s family reunion. I was able to share this experience in Hungarian, but it is a lot harder and nerve racking when you know that whatever you say in Hungarian is going to be translated right back at you in English, by a Hungarian who is really good at translating. So, it made me conscious of saying everything as perfect as I could. This process made my mistakes obvious. In Hungarian the pronouns are context driven and you have to organize your sentences to be really specific about who you are referring to, especially when you are talking about more than one person. In English we have a “he or she” to help us with these transitions, but Hungarians don’t use these pronouns, so it got complicated. I was talking about Molly and my uncle, but I didn’t differentiate them properly so when the translation came back the translator assumed I was talking about the person I was most recently referred to. He did not pick up on the change to the second person, so while I was talking I adjusted how I spoke to make sure the translation reflected my intent. It was a good exercise. I realized that hearing an English translation of what you are saying in Hungarian could be helpful in learning to speak Hungarian better.

Brother Wagner shared his spiritual experiences in life. He's got a cool story. Brother Wagner is an American who works for Paramount pictures, and will be here for a few months. I didn’t realize that they film a lot of movies in Budapest. They are filming part of the new Terminator movie right now. There is a movie called Gemini Man with Will Smith and Brother Wagner is a visual effects artist working on that movie. He told his story about how he went inactive after his mission and lived a worldly life. He talked about how his marriage failed and the very difficult trials that he experienced during that time. He shared his path back to the church, meeting his current wife and how he baptized her, and they will be going to the temple soon to be sealed. Of course, I’m glad that I don’t have a story like that, or a testimony because of those kinds of trials because I know the Lord doesn’t want us to go through that kind of pain; but I was thinking about my testimony and I just don’t have a cool story to go along with it. My belief in the gospel and testimony of the church came gradually and over my lifetime, not in any dramatic way. I’m grateful for it, but I did enjoy hearing his life experience and how it built his testimony.

Until We Meet Again... or until we email again:

Overall it was just a pretty good week! I like being a missionary and I'm learning to like my new part of Budapest. I'm glad that everything is going well, give everyone my love!


BYW: My companion says he loves my family. From just one meeting on video chat, that’s saying something.

Stay safe, love you all.

Morgan elder.


Word of the week: Eperfa (strawberry tree) = mullberry tree.