Ahh, this is what Fall looks like outside our apartment window.
We had an activity (actually in October) where we took the YSA's to play Teke.
That's nine pins, the game that was once outlawed in most of America because
of gambling and corruption. That gave rise to the invention of 10 pins (bowling).
Here are four Szeged Elders just before transfer day, wondering what will happen
to them. Elder Rummler, Elder Bullock, Elder Nielson, and Elder Allen (sitting/it's his
birthday). All but one of them missed their guess by a mile.
So, we went to Romania!! Refer to Sister Adams' informative and entertaining
email for details. We are in front of the Branch House for Oradea, Romania. It
occurs to us that we haven't sent you a picture of the outside of our Szeged
Branch House. We'll have to fix that.
Here are Hungarian and Romanian YSA's doing a Greek Dance. The next day
they will be taught a lesson by us in English. What a Church!!
When the conference finished the next day, we all took off for a tour of the city.
Here is one of the prettiest sights in Oradea! Yes, it looks like a horse is standing
on her head. Sorry about that.
Me and my friend Gergö with his ukelele. He's not bad!
Andrea and Timi and the city hall.
Just some interesting Romanian architecture.
This area of Romania is actually part of Transylvania. Have you heard about
the little wooden stakes I passed out as part of my lesson? No, really.
We walked around and into a very ancient citadel.
This is what it used to look like. If you Google Earth Oradea, you can get a nice
satellite view of it. It's really pretty impressive.
Andrea and her Mona Lisa pose.
After the Oradea weekend, we had to drive to Budapest to return the mission
van that we had borrowed for the trip. That gave us a chance for this picture
of the famous Chain Bridge over the Danube. It was a cold and breezy day.
So, on the Monday after Thanksgiving we held a Thanksgiving Super P-day for
missionaries in our area. Andrea made the meal as traditional as Szeged would
allow. We had 8 Elders and 4 Sisters over, from 3 different cities.
It took two pictures to get them all. It looks like 13 instead of 12 because Elder
Allen is in both pictures.
The first activity after the meal was Whipping. Practically every Hungarian
Missionary has taken to this p-day activity. They're really good at it!
The second activity was watching Ratatouille, in Hungarian of course.
Well, congratulate me! This is the only picture that is unintentionally out of order.
Andrea on a visit with branch sisters to a lady who recently had a baby. Andrea
drove the two sisters by herself, 38 Kilometers out of town. Andrea was with the Primary President whose name is also Andrea. Oh and, the new mother's name is Andrea. Oh, and
while we think of it, she has a daughter whose name is Andrea. Holy cow, there were
four Andreas there! It is not an uncommon name here.
These are some of Andrea's primary kids pretending to be prophets. This was
what Andrea was able to come up with for costumes. Not bad for our meager
resources. Well, that's it for November. Have a wonderful December, Christmas,
and New Years. What will December be like for us?
We can't wait until the end of the year to do this post or you would need popcorn to finish it. Before we post again we will have passed into the New Year, passed back to the USA for Matthew and Torri's wedding, and then come back to Hungary. We plan to take a lot of pictures and it should make a blog posting of its own. So let's just finish off December at this point. I had a birthday! Notice the expensive looking little cake. One candle is for 61. I would have gone for my usual full count but the cake would have been destroyed.
The unusual birthday present was that our friends Joe and Sandy Biehl brought me the Sacher torte from Austria! They came to spend four days with us and see what this missionary life is all about.
So, I'm not sure they got the right impression since we insisted on taking them all over Szeged to see what the city was like.
So we got our pictures taken all over again in some places you've seen in our blog before.
Then we insisted on taking them all over Budapest to see what the capital city is like.
We took them by car, on foot, and by three different kinds of public transportation. Who on earth could they be talking to on the trolley?
So here we are on Castle Hill in Budapest.
And here are some Christmas lights in Budapest.
Then we took them back to Szeged and took some pictures of our Christmas lights.
Once again, we can't resist giving you a new picture of the younger Elder Adams in Texas, along with his little companion. We've just recently had that grand opportunity to Skype with Nathan for Christmas! He really looks good and sounds good. Can Andrea hold out til Mother's Day when we can Skype with him again?
Our grand Young Adult activity for December was to take them ice skating. We didn't skate ourselves because we didn't want to make them look bad. Or maybe we didn't want to show up for Matt's wedding in a cast.
This is one of our YA members on the left, Viki, and two non-member participants.
This is the whole group: 6 Young Adults and 4 missionaries.
So, Andrea and Sandy Biehl see these really neat molds to make these cute Christmas tree cookies with. Predictably, the young adults are making them at our next Young Adult Family Home Evening.
Here is a picture of a colorful character at the Christmas market.
Here's the runner up.
We had three different Christmas concerts to be involved with.
They were all a good cooperative effort between members and missionaries.
These four pictures were all taken at our little branch in Békéscsaba where they have essentially zero active priesthood holders and so the Branch President is the young missionary at the piano.
Six missionaries and four members in the chorus. Attendance was really good for such a small branch. The members and missionaries did a good job getting family and investigators out for this. Sister Adams did a great job helping with the food.
On Christmas Day we spent most of the day with a member family, the Magda family, along with our four young missionaries. We had some delicious traditional Hungarian Christmas Fish Soup. Yes, it was delicious! This is Sister Magda herself with her husband and two of her four children in the background.
12 year old Györi did not want his picture taken.
But I got the best of him.
Missionary work stops for a couple of days for Christmas. We had most of the missionaries from our zone spend a day with us.
It was a big meal and Sister Adams, as the chief cook, and I, as the chief bottle washer, put on a spread that we were proud to serve. A couple of nice, lean, ham roasts were the center piece.
Then it was back to the ice rink for the missionaries' P-day.
And a good time was had by all.
Here is our outstanding Christmas tree. I for one, have been very pleased that there have been a minimum of ornaments and decorations to deal with. A real holiday for me. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your missionaries in Hungary.
