This is our pantry. It's a little creepy because at the end is a window that goes between the building. It's also very narrow. But it holds alot of food. Most of the food in it we didn't buy. We need to get a dictionary and find out what most of it is. The other senior sisters just left it for us.
Here's the other part of our kitchen. As you can see we have a very small oven. It only heats on the bottom so you have to be careful when you bake anything. But we have a decent size fridge ( which you can't really see) with a nice freezer. We also have a microwave. So we are very happy with our kitchen. We don't do alot of cooking in this kitchen because we are so busy cooking at the Center most of the time.
This is our kitchen table. We like having it right by a window. We have oranges in that basket all the time. The oranges here are delicious. We have even learned how to say orange because we buy them so often. The blue and white flowered cart in the corner is what we take with us to the grocery store. It's very convenient to have when you have alot of groceries, but not that easy to carry up the flight of stairs. :)
This is our bathroom. It looks small in the picture and that's because it is small. :) But we have a shower which sometimes has hot water. There's also a small washing machine in the corner that you can't see. It takes about an hour to do one load. We don't have a dryer so we put our clothes on a drying rack. Our clothes are a little crunchy when they are dry, but once you wear them or iron them, they are Ok.
This is my bedroom. As you can see I have bright yellow curtains in my room. Apparently our landlord likes bright colors. There's also a sleeper sofa in my room. Deen wanted to have her own room, so she is in the living room. It's actually very nice to have our own rooms. We just asked our landlord and a couple of missionaries to move one bed into the living room and this sofa into my room. We go to bed and get up at different times so this way we don't disturb each other. We are very happy with the arrangement.
Here is the living room of our new apartment. We were able to move in a week ago but I haven't had time to add these pictures to my blog. This is where we will be for our entire mission. As you can see it's a very nice apartment. Our landlord is very nice. He added the bright orange curtains just for us. We found some curtain rings in the cupboard so we tied them back to let in the sun. It's hard to tell in the picture, but we have yellow walls so our living room is very bright. But it's a nice apartment. We are just across the street from the YA Center. Once you get downstairs it's about 30 steps to the front door of the office building. So it's very convenient -especially when we are coming home at 10:00 at night.
This is Elder Jackson, Elder Wanlass and Sister Roderick. They posed for us with these costumes. It was so funny because they were so serious. In the first picture Elder Wanlass is knighting Elder Jackson. It's nice to see the missionaries have a good time. They seem to work really hard in this mission.
This is a wax depiction of the meeting of the 3 kings in 1991. The king of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia all met to remember the treaty Poland and Hungary had made in 1335 against Austria.
This is Laci, Elder Miller (an Office Elder) and Elder Gardenhire. They're eating Langos. The Hungarians put garlic butter, cheese and sour cream on them. They are absolutely delicious and probably about 5000 calories. It's just like a huge piece of fried bread. YUMMY I don't know if you can see the tiny flag on Elder Gardenhire's sweatshirt. Many people were wearing them. This was a big holiday in Hungarian so lots of people were wearing a Hungarian flag on their shirts. This is when Hungary and Poland made a pact to fight against Austria in 1835. It happened at the castle we were about to visit in Vise Grad.
This is Elder Miller and Elder Gardenhire. They are the AP's. Really fun guys and great missionaries. They were entertaining us while we waited for the ferry.
The guy playing the clarinet is Csaba and the one on the piano is Levanti. This was an amazing musical number. The accompaniment was very difficult. Levanti had never seen it before that night. It was amazing to hear how well he was able to play. Lots of musical talent in this area.
This is Andras. He's in the Branch Presidency in the Buda Branch. He is possibly the nicest person in the ward. The girl sitting next to him with the blonde hair is his wife. She is a mentally a little slow. She was being harassed by some guy so he married her. It was really a sweet thing for him to do. Anyway he came to FHE - Csaladi Este and played this beautiful song for us with the guitar and harmonica. "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" I have it on video but don't know how to put it on my blog. I may be able to post it on Facebook. I will try.
The Primary and a few YW had an acitivity learning how to Crochet so I taught the class. I had done it before for Girls Camp so we did the same thing. Fortunately we had alot of adults who knew how so that helped a great deal. Almost every girl had a helper. It was a fun actitivity. Elder Allen came by at the end of the activity so I asked him if he wanted to learn. He was very agreeable to the idea so he sat down and work on it with us for a while.
After FHE the kids in the Center and some of the missionaries had a farewell party for the Senior Sisters. It was very thoughtful of them. They made a big braided bread and a red velvet cake for them. They also had a slide show of activities with the Sisters over the last 18 months.
Monday morning we started off with a District Meeting Brunch. It was so much fun to get to know the missionaries in our district. Each of us told a little bit about ourselves and then enjoyed some yummy food. One set of Elders brought fruit soup. Apparently a Hungarian favorite. It was good but so far not my favorite. My favorite thing here is the bread. We discovered they have delicious bread here. - That's all I need to survive. I know the scriptures say "man shall not live by bread alone," but I think I definitely can.
Here's Deen taking a nap while we waited for our plane in Paris. We just got off an all night flight from SLC. Deen didn't sleep much on the plane. I don't know how she was able to sleep here but she did. It was cold in Paris. We didn't want to bother with changing our money so we ate a couple of oranges we had with us and a bagel. Both of us were thirsty but we weren't sure if the water was safe to drink, so we just waited for our next flight. We had a 4 hour lay over. I wrote in my journal while she napped. The wait wasn't too bad. Our flight from Paris to Budapest was only 2 hours long.
Look who we saw at the airport. I just quick took a picture because our flight was about to leave. Later I wished I would have at least gone up to him and shook his hand. I was surprised that he wasn't surrounded by throngs of people. Maybe in Utah it's no big deal to see an Apostle. But we thought it was way cool that we did.
Here we are getting ready to leave for the airport. It's about 1:30 pm on Friday March 4th. We were both excited and grateful for the wonderful experiences we had at the MTC. We were also nervous about what we would do when we arrived in Hungary. We were the only missionaries leaving at this time. We had a 10 hour flight from SLC to Paris which left at 5:00. Even though we spent alot of time getting our luggage to weigh the exact right amount, we were still hoping that everything would be Ok when we got to the airport. My suitcases actually weighed 51 lbs each. But the lady at the counter was really nice and told the attendant to put 50lbs - so no moving stuff and no extra charges.
This may be a strange picture to many of you, but it was not easy to get our luggage to be the right weight. We brought our suitcases to these scales many times during the day to get it exactly right. Here's a funny story- one of the sisters saw me weighing a few things on the scale, like lotion, shampoo, hair dryer - just small items. She said "What are you doing? They aren't going to weigh that." I wasn't sure what to say, because if it's in my suitcase, they are going to weigh it. We aren't on the same flight as she is, but my guess is, she's going to be in for a big surprise when she gets to the airport. The fines are pretty high too - $150 for over 50 lbs and $300 for over 70 lbs. They don't mess around when you are flying international. So we're very happy to have all of ours just under the 50 lb weight limit. We worked on it almost all day yesterday getting ready. We did ship two boxes, which helped us make it under the weight limit.
This is Norriss and Carol Webb. They are from Lake Oswego, Oregon. They have also been called to serve in Africa to help with the PEF program. They've been told there needs to be careful scrutiny about how the funds are used because so many people in Africa are poor. They help them find jobs to pay back the funds they borrow from the church. They must make a payment every month- even if it's just a small amount. Super nice couple
This is Glen and Virginia Stacey. They only joined our group this week. I don't really know why that happened. They are from Centerville. They will be serving in Albania. They will also be working in a CFYA ( Center for Young Adults) like us.
This is the other set of senior sisters in our group. The one in the blue is Sister Tanner. She is from Colorado. The one in the red is Sister Kartchner-Hauley. She is from SLC. They have been called to serve in Madrid Spain. Sister Kartchner- Hauley already speaks Spanish, so that will be helpful to them. They didn't know each other before they came, but seem to be getting along great.
This is Glen and Patricia Johnson. They are from California. They have been called to serve at Yale University to teach Institute. Neither of them have ever taught Institute or Seminary. Sister Johnson is pretty nervous about the whole thing. But she worked so hard during the CES classes to try to understand what was being taught.
