Samurai action

Josh sent a quick email and told us they were tracting in an apartment type building this morning. They went up to the top floor and heard a weird sound behind them. They turned around and saw a man swinging a samurai sword at them! The man started yelling at them to go away and not come back. Apparently he thought they were the Jehovah's Witnesses he'd chased off the day before. Josh said he had a hard time not laughing because the guy looked so funny, he was acting out what he was going to do with the sword if they came back. Yikes! Laughing wouldn't be my first reaction to that but at least it didn't scare them. But they also don't plan on returning to the top floor of that building ever again!

This week from Hungary

Wow, Brian's (Hathaway) almost home? How long has Dustin (Nuttall) been out? I can't remember. Things are a little better but the language is still like trying to figure out what Charlie Brown's teacher is saying. I'm almost done my first transfer already.
This morning we went to a falú (a small town on the outskirts of a city) and there they have these cave tours, and the caves were so cool. They were like when we watch movies with caves in. There was this long tunnel and at the end was this huge room, basicllly, and it was about 60 meters under the ground. I don't remember that in feet but I know its kinda deep. The cave was like limestone and had those shell looking formations and had the spikes from the ceiling from dripping water for thousands of years. It was really cool. Too bad they didn't allow pictures. IDK (I don't know) why but that would have been really awesome to have pics of.
We did commit 2 investigators to baptism 2 weeks ago and now we finally set up their bap. date for Oct 10.
We don't get fed that much in Komló. There are only five members and one of the 2 meal programs I had was with an investigating family.
Here they dont have much different food. They don't have a lot of the same candy and have a lot of European food, but I haven't had the time to try anything. I have had gyros. It's Greek or something but it's basically a pita with meat, lettuce and onions and some sauce, but I will have to tell you more about food when I get more time and experince with it.
I sure miss the club (Lifetime Fitness), ever since coming on my mission you now how I've been working out a little bit more, but now I wish I had all that workout equip that I haven't seen for weeks now. All I can really do is run and push ups and sit ups. I wish I at least had some good way of doing biceps and stuff like weights, but they wont let us go to gyms here.
Man I love and miss you guys, I love doing all things we did together, I even miss working on the garden and stuff. I can't wiat to see the progress of that when I get home.
When I get home I'm going to crank out working out and getting ready for basketball season. I hope I don't lose the skills I have now. We get to play ball every once in a while but not on good courts or rims that are full height. They are like 6 inches short or something.
I'll take care of it when i get home. I have the summer to do 4 classes and work out like crazy and work on my basketball again. What's cool it that I'll get home just in time for Elder's ball. I will probably come home the 3 weeks earlier, so that I can go to Jeremy's grad and you guys can still pick me up. So I'll finish late April, cause May 20th (my report date) is halfway through a transfer so I could either stay until June 7th or April 28, 2011.
Well peace. Love you guys and hope to hear from you guys soon. Dad said he sent something.
Bye

Everything is foreign

Josh email on Monday and had the following to report after we asked him about life in Hungary:

For laundry here I have a washer in my apartment so I just wash whenever I need to and we air dry cause they don't believe in dryers or at least haven't even heard about them. They also don't belive in cold drinks cause they will give you a cold and they think that air conditioning puts germs in the home that are very bad for your health, so it's still dang hot, period. The food is really good if it's a Hungarian meal. I still have yet to find a loaf of bread that isn't hard and milk that tastes good.
My comp and I are getting along great so that's good. He was a cross country guy in high school so we run every morning for like 30 min and now I'm down to 186 lbs. I love the European chocolate too. yuummm. He's kind of the quieter type but he's awesome for helping me learn. He has a strong will to serve which I hope rubs off onto me. We have a good time though.
Today we dont have a p day cause on thursday (20th) was a super P day cause that day is the Hungarian Independance Day and so I played some basketball and ping pong with the 4 Pécs elders and we watched the Nightmare Before Christmas. In this mission we can watch animated movies as long as they are rated G and not live action. So weirdly enough we can watch the Incredibles but the Best Two Years is not an approved movie. We can only watch a movie once a transfer though and we have to tell the mission pres when we watch it, what movie we are watching. This thursday I have to go back up to Budapest for zone conference and then again next Thursday for interviews and because it takes literally all day they are really long days, but fun to ride a series of trains and metros to get to the mission home.

He mentioned that someone has asked him to baptize him. Josh hasn't been one of the missionaries teaching him but this particular man needs to be rebaptized and feels that Josh is a good and non-judgemental person, so he's requesting that Josh be the baptizing Elder, if possible. We'll see how that goes as time goes on.

The rest is personal things to our family, basically he's really experiencing bouts of homesickness and memories of home are pretty good right now. Time is going a bit slowly for him and he said he thinks that he has one foot in Hungary and the other is slowly dragging across the U.S. Once he has the language a bit better and "both feet" in Hungary he believes time will go faster. He's hoping!

He also mentioned the other week that his computer has a Hungarian keyboard. Between that and trying to think in two different languages, his letters may sound a bit odd or his words may be mixed up. We don't care as long as we hear from him, but I do some proofreading and correcting before posting his letters.

Until next week...