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...

First area

Josh has gotten his first assignment in Hungary in a very, very small town in the southwestern part of the country. It's a town called Komlό just eight miles north of Pécs. Komlό is an old socialistic mining town where there is high amount of unemployment. Pécs is the financial center of Hungary. Josh's branch he attends on Sunday is in Pécs and there are only 15 members...can you say multiple callings?!? I'm sure half those members are kids!

Mr. President

We got an email from the Budapest Mission President, Gary S. Baughman. He reported to us that Josh arrived safely at the mission home and spent the evening having dinner prepared by Sister Baughman and then sight-seeing in Budapest. He also spent some time talking with Josh, getting to know him better and is impressed by Josh's sincerity in his desire to work and serve.



Josh has gotten his first companion, Elder Christensen. We don't know anything about him, like where he is from, but we're hoping when Josh is able to email(his p-day is now Mondays) he will tell us all about him. We also hope he will give us an address where we can write him directly rather than sending all mail through the mission home. But for now, write to him via the mission home address.

It's easy to see why he's nicknamed Magas Man...magas (pronounced ma-gash) in Hungarian means tall...

Budapest at last-the Pearl of the Danube River

One of Josh's favorite friends in the MTC is an Elder in his district, Elder Gardenhire. I woke up this morning to a call from Elder Gardenhire's parents~they'd gone to the airport in Salt Lake yesterday and saw Josh, then they were able to talk with Josh on the phone during their 4-hour layover in Paris. Elder Gardenhire had called his parents, then handed the phone to Josh so he could give them our phone number. Gardenhire's parents said Josh is so excited and they were already talking to people in the airport and on the plane, "streeting" as they call tracting but not house to house, to people on the streets. There's a good reason Josh didn't call us from Salt Lake or Paris...

First, the bus to take the missionaries to the airport was 45 minutes late, so they arrived at the Salt Lake airport very late. They checked in at the kiosk (self check-in) and Josh was the last in line. His passport number wasn't being accepted at the kiosk and he was directed to speak to an agent at the counter. He waited and waited in line and finally got to an agent who proceeded to yell at him because the flight was due to take off very soon...but Josh didn't have any control over what was happening. For some reason, this agent insisted Josh needed a visa to enter Hungary, too! None of the other missionaries had this trouble. Eventually the agent was convinced that you need a visa within 90 days of entering Hungary but not to enter...and let him go. So they went through security with barely any time to spare to board the plane~and certainly no time to call home. The first flight flew for 10 hours directly to Paris. That's when Josh tried to call but his calling card wouldn't work. I guess a bunch of missionaries in his district got calling cards that weren't being accepted by the French phones! Then he didn't have a boarding pass for his second flight, the agent had failed to give him the boarding pass for the second leg of his journey! Luckily they had plenty of time (4 hours) to get his boarding pass.

So a little after 9 am Josh called from the airport in Budapest. It was so good to hear his voice! He sounded a little tired but great! He said in Paris he heard a lot of English being spoken but not in Budapest. He said it's actually a little freaky hearing all kinds of languages spoken. He said it feels strange, as much as he wanted to get out of the MTC it felt a little weird not to be there in the safety of its walls. But after 10 or 11 weeks of staying within the same city block, he's now halfway across the world. He still doesn't know what they will be doing tonight but for sure they will meet with the mission president and sit down and apply for their visas, among other things.

Josh said on the flight from Salt Lake there was a whole district of missionaries going to France plus their district flying to Hungary, so they had about 20 missionaries on that plane and they had a great time visiting with each other. As a mom, I'm sure glad and thankful they made it ok!!

PS...guess who was the only one without his bags at the time he called...let's hope his bags made it there with the late check-in and all, you never know!

Oh, Josh said if anything of value is mailed (including things like camera memory cards) they should be hidden because it's a poorer country and sometimes mail is gone through for valuables~

Oh, and it's 8 hours ahead there.