February 22, 2015

Hungarians love red hair dye.  Here are a few samples of the (unnatural) colors.



The walk to church this morning was beautiful, and then it started raining – and it’s still raining.  It promises to rain most of the week.


It’s been a busy week, but we’ve stayed in Kaposvár, and we didn’t do anything photo worthy.  Each Monday we walk to the bank to make the church deposit.  Monday we did that and then accomplished a few other errands, which included a long walk to a dry cleaners.  It actually felt great.   Home evening that night was a bust; no one showed up.  One set of elders had gone to Budapest for new missionary training, so the other set of elders and us used the time for planning, discussing the rest of the week and ways we can help and support.


Hence, we have attended several programs (discussions) with elders this week.  And when the investigator or family hasn’t read or if the program just ‘calls for’ reading, we have read in the Book of Mormon with them – a Mormon Könyve -- in Hungarian!  This evening we visited a less-active family and read together.  Hungarians read (and speak) super fast, but when the 8-year-old read slowly and sounded out those very long words, it made us feel that maybe we were at his level.   We wish we had the magic potion to get that family to church.  They have two teen-age boys and two younger children.  They agree they need to come; but the husband and wife both work 6 days.  On Sunday there is much to do, their family won’t all fit in their little car, and it’s at least 30 km into town to church.  What to do?  Are those excuses or lack of faith?


One positive note and very exciting news from our branch – one of our young single adult girls sent in her mission application to the stake president!  We’ll see now how long the process takes in Hungary.  A number of missionaries from Hungary also serve in Hungary.  This sister is attending university to get her law degree and speaks some English; it will be interesting to see where she is called.  Stay tuned.


CHaS (Church Humanitarian System), the Church’s computer program that we use, was down early in the week, and by the time it was fixed, we assume we missed this week’s deadline for project approvals, as we have not heard about the 3 new projects we submitted.   We worked this week with a translator to research online, make calls from home and order items for current projects.   We are trying something new tomorrow.  We’ve mentioned before that in Hungary, we are mostly required to go to the place of business and actually pay cash.  This translator is sure that a ‘bank transfer’ will work.  So the vendor (from some city in Hungary, and this time we even have one from Slovakia) sends an invoice to a bank in our city and we go to the bank and pay cash.  When the bank tells the vendor the invoice is paid, the vendor will then deliver the goods.  Tomorrow we have 4 different banks to go to; we hope this method works.  It’s always a great adventure!  


This is probably the preferred way of doing business in Hungary.   People do not use checks, and yet there are often more than one bank per block.  


Another interesting development: the mission recently learned that once someone has been in the country for a year, they must get a Hungarian driver’s license.  Apparently the international licenses that we all came with do NO good.   Missionaries have been driving illegally for years!   Currently all the young missionaries’ cars are parked.  So, one of the AP’s and Stan are the guinea pigs – to see how it’s done.   While I was gone to the US, Stan got his required medical exam; he then went to the official interpretation office to submit a copy of his US driver’s license.  For 10,000 ft. ($40) the (very little) license had to be translated and it took 2 weeks!  Friday Stan took one of our elders into Budapest to the Dr., and picked up his license translation.   He then went to another government building (another part of town) to actually apply for the license.  He turned in copies of his medical exam, his passport, US driver’s license translation, residency permit, and an official form showing his Hungarian address.  Now he will wait up to 30 days to receive the answer of what he needs to do next – a driving test and / or a written test – to obtain a license.  This could all cost around $200-300 we are told.   We hope driving school is not a requirement; that could be $600.    And he will use this license for about 3 months before we are released.   Depending what he finds out will determine if he goes through with it to the end.   Some seniors have determined to turn their cars in and use the train, which we may do also.   One more example of a very labor intensive process.


And some people complain about processes in America!

Elder Roberts (Pleasant Grove, UT), Elder Heilein (Germany), Elder King (Orem, UT),
 Elder Martineau (Santa Clara, UT)

We’ve been having branch members with one set of elders (for translation) for Sunday dinner.  We just have a few left to come, but none could today so our four great Kaposvár elders came.  


Life is good.  We are always very grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the restoration of the Lord’s Church in this dispensation.   We are blessed to be included, to be able to represent our Savior and in some small way, help His work go forth. 

1 comment:

  1. When you post such great pictures of red hair, who needs other pictures! Have a great week.

    D.

    ReplyDelete

 
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