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.