first transfer out of office...

I'm going back to MISKOLC!!!!!

Transfer 13, Week 6 the zoo!

Hi everyone!

alright, so this week was nuts.....Elder Miller and I were told by President Baughman that Elder Conklin would be coming in to replace me. So, we talked to Elder Conklin Tuesday night and scheduled him to come in the following night. So, the next day, we picked him up and brought him back to the mission home, just in time for dinner (they do the weekly dinner thing after Institute on Wednesdays instead of on Mondays for Family Home Evening. They're trying to get more people to Institute. anyways, he got to meet a lot of the youth, there're a few who already knew him from when he served in Pest, so they were excited to see him. After that, we went home, he got unpacked a bit, i packed a bit more (i had started and just about finished on Tuesday night), talked a bit, then went to bed. Thursday morning was pretty chill.....I kind of ran through all the stuff we do with him, got him familiar with most of the stuff, then pretty much just let him take over. I'm pretty much just there if he asks questions, otherwise i just study and take care of other stuff...oh, book recommendation! Gordon B. Hinckley's Standing for Something. Pretty much amazing. I never really realized how meticulous he was with his choice of words, he has such a great knack for putting things exactly how he wants to convey them. There is no mistaking his meaning, and the things he conveys are so needed and necessary! i love it so much, i'm reading it for the second time now. definitely a must-read. So, on Friday things went pretty well...we met with Dávid and Kristof again......they seem to be doing good, just really having trouble with having a faith-promoting experience, which is what they really want.....hm.....we'll see. i hope they are able to keep meeting with Miller and Conklin, and hopefully they in turn will let me know what happens with them. So, Friday was good...the Williams came up from Szolnok to give a fireside on dating. It was interesting, more on dating etiquette than anything else. pretty good. And, Elder Williams gave his whole first part in Hungarian, it was quite impressive. After that, on Saturday, Elder Conklin went with the APs and Elder Miller and I went with a member to the zoo. It was pretty fun, we got there early so we walked around a bit and got a few pictures of the George Washington statue (yes, there is a statue of George Washington in Hungary). Then we went to the zoo and saw all the animals. It's fairly small, but still pretty good sized. They had a lot of places where you could go in and the animals were just running around or able to come right up to you. it was pretty fun, except that most of the animals were sleeping. We did get to see a pretty cool show by the seals. it was a scorching hot day, but luckily they had a bunch of mist sprinklers set up so people could walk under them and cool off. that was nice. After the zoo, we went and had lunch with the Bagozzis and Sister Smith and Sister Chase kind of as a goodbye for me. then, we went home and got ready for the concert in Buda. That was way cool, Sister Bodily played the piano, a member played the organ, three other members sang (two of them are professional opera singers, so that was way cool, the other was one of the first twos' daughter), and Elder Turley and Sister Roderick sang. It was really cool, and the whole message of it was just way inspiring. so, that was our week, pretty much. i've basically just been training Elder Conklin and wondering where i'm going...there are a few places i would really like to go, but i don't think i can think of any where i absolutely definitely would not want to go. I think i'm just going to be excited for anything (though i may be more excited for some things than others :). I'll be sure to let you all know next Monday how everything turns out. Until then, have a great week!

Elder Murray

ps the Rollingsons were a senior couple that served here in Hungary and just recently went home, but they sent a little surprise the other day...if you go to their blog (http://normandheather.blogspot.com/), look at the second picture (unless they've added more, in which case i don't know which one it would be). I was, needless to say, pretty surprised. It was way cool though, i never would have thought that people i knew from Hungary would meet people i know from home, let alone my family! so yeah, that was the surprise for the week. :)

Transfer 13, Week 4

Hi everyone

Oh gosh, I'm really sorry that I've been so bad with emailing lately...we didn't have internet last week, and then we were swamped yesterday so we didn't have any time....it's been a pretty crazy week, altogether.

So, I'll try and explain what has been going on:

Monday: the workers come and take everything out of President's and the APs' offices, rip out the carpet and put down a thin layer of cement (which, by the way, has a headache-inducing smell.....fun). Then they talked to us and said that they would need us to clean off the shelves and everything in ours and the Bagozzis' offices so they could do the same for us. Something must have gotten lost in translation because on

Tuesday: we packed everything out of both rooms, got everything completely out, it looked wonderful. Meanwhile, they were laying the carpet down in the two offices they had done the day before, then moved everything back in. it looks great, I like this new carpet a lot better (yes, I am commenting on the carpet...it's what I do nowadays :). So, at the end of the day, it was discovered that they needed our stuff moved out so they can start tomorrow. We were pretty bummed out. Oh, and the phone was unplugged, and then refused to turn on, which kind of drove everyone into a panic since that is the phone that everyone calls on. Crazy.

Wednesday: they finally come in and take out the desks and filing cabinets and everything. Then the carpet. Then lay down cement. huzzah! we're getting new carpet! oh wait.........they're going to paint in our office, right? because, right now, there's a lovely black line around the wall where the desks were.......so..........are they going to paint before they lay down the carpet on

Thursday: the workers come and finish some rooms downstairs. President is trying to get ahold of the people in charge to see if they can paint in our offices. so, the workers just kind of leave... like, for the day. Nobody working. Just quiet. All day. Finally we get the news that they will be painting. Yay! but we have to wait for

Friday: the workers come back and paint our offices. Oh happy day! it looks great! Some paint got on the floor, but who cares, they're just going to lay carpet down on top of it. Which they then proceeded to do. and then put our stuff back in. hooooray! it looks great. Now we can go help at the Friday night activity! movie night! yay! okay, let's get everything set up...oh no, the computer's not working....somebody bring in the dvd player....ok, how does this connect here, what do i plug it in to, where's the volume knob.......ok, everything's good, start the movie! wow, i like the first minute or so of this movie, i can't wait for the rest...oh, somebody left their coat at the stake center and need to catch a bus home.........ok, i guess we'll drive him.....i mean, i've seen the movie before and we'll only miss the first half.......ok, drive to the stake center, get the coat, oh, here's the sisters! hi........oh, someone needs a belt or smaller pants for their baptism? ok, well, we're dropping someone off at the bus station, i guess we can hop on over to the mall and see if we can find anything.......first store, nothing, second store, unbelievably expensive, too short, too flashy, who puts this kind of stuff on a belt? i guess we'll just go and buy the pants.......enter first store again.....there's the pants........oh, but here's more belts.......a white one! and it's long enough! yay! ok, drive back to the stake center now (after paying for it, of course).......we got the belt! oh, wait, someone is just bringing a jumpsuit? so, the belt is completely superfluous? well, not completely...we can use it for future baptisms......alright, we'll mozy on back to the mission home...oh boy, i love the last two minutes of this movie almost as good as the first few! and that was it. pretty awesome, right? nothing happens unless it all happens at once. it was a pretty fun night. :)

Saturday: we got up and ran over to Moszkva Tér (i guess it's Széll Kálmán Tér now), bought some tickets, rode the 61 villamos all the way to the end where a member picked us up and drove us to his house. we had gotten a call Friday night asking if we could help them move. It was pretty fun, they're just moving about a minute away from where they were living, so we spent a few hours packing stuff into their van, driving it down the road, unpacking it all, driving back, and repeat. pretty fun stuff. afterwards, a member drove us back to the mission home where we started putting stuff back into the office. then, the zone leader from Dunaújváros (Elder Rowland, he came up for the play) came over and drove us to the mall so we could do our shopping. then they went on to the stake center and we took the metro back to the mission home. we got ready for the play, packed some stuff out of the chapel, realized we hadn't had a legit meal all day, so we ran over to McDonald's (can't get a more legit meal than that, right?) and came back to meet the other people going to the play. we were kind of worried as to whether the weather would hold out because it had been raining off and on all day, but it was a beautiful night, we didn't get wet at all. The play was in an open amphitheater, so it was pretty cool out, but people had brought rain ponchos in case it rained, so they whipped those out and put them on...apparently they were pretty warm (I had brought my coat, so i missed out on that one :) . The play we went to see was super amazing, probably my favorite, just because of all the symbolism and motifs and themes in it..........plus, the music is just amazing. It was kind of hard to understand the hungarian (it seemed like they were singing super fast, but it was probably just because it was in a foreign language and the songs are so intricate), but all in all, super awesome. It was Les Miserables.

So, that was our week. super fun, super boring, not too much in between, i guess in one word, memorable. haha, i forgot to mention, on Wednesday, President still wanted the office to be running, so we packed up our computers and moved downstairs.....to the nursery room. it was funny, they just had the little nursery room tables, so we set up on those (don't worry, i took pictures :) towards the evening we figured out that the APs' office was finished, so we moved HQ up to there. fun stuff. and then on Thursday, Elder Lundeen was reapplying for BYU, and was super nervous about pushing the button to finish it, but he finally did it....we documented that a little bit too.

so yeah, i think that's everything. i'm sure Elder Miller and I have lost several years off our lives from the fumes we've been breathing all week (not really, just whenever we walk past the rooms they were working on). I hope you all have a great week, and i'll talk to you next week!

Elder Murray