Almost The End Of December 2011

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.