November (+) what I forgot.

 What did I forget?  The last week of October.  It's really a very important week for Hungarians.  They celebrate the revolution of 1956 on October 23rd.  It's Hungary's biggest political holiday.  Never you mind that the revolution failed and that Imre Nagy, whose statues are all over Hungary, was executed by the communists.  The Hungarians are very good at revering their fallen heroes.

 We witnessed three different public observances of the day here in our fair city.  Many will claim the the revolution started as a student movement right here in Szeged.  We enjoyed seeing the old veterans in their various uniforms. 

 Of course, October saw a few Halloween happenings.  It's totally not Hungarian but missionaries tend to carry the Halloween spirit with them wherever they go.

 This was a young single adult party in Budapest.  Yes, we used the same easy costumes we did last year.  Our resources are limited.  

 Here is Andrea with a couple of our YSAs from Szeged.

Our little Békéscsaba branch did a Halloween party too.  I made the spider pinata.  I was very pleased with it but glad to see it whacked to pieces so we could finally get it out of our apartment.

 November 1st was All Saints' Day.  We took the missionaries out to the cemetery to see the candles and decorations.  Here we are with Elder Snyder, who is Nathan's friend.  We met him before our mission.  He joined us for Thanksgiving when he and Nathan were both in the BYU marching band.  It is a small world to have him sent to Szeged to be with us again.

 We and our young adults, along with other branch members, have been working hard to finish 75 blankets for a children's hospital in Szeged.  Service is one of the mandates of the young adult program.

 This is an accidental picture.  We take a lot of accidental pictures of the sky or the sidewalk, etc. but I liked this one.

 We went to Debrecen, about 3 hours away, for a CES conference for young adults.  On the way we stopped for lunch in this famous Inn in Hortobágy.  It's been in operation for a couple hundred years.  We made a point to stop in Hortobágy to buy a Hungarian whip for my birthday.

 This is the Debrecen town square in front of the Great Reform Church.  We went up the tower on the left side.

 The Reform church is more starkly functional than any of the Roman Catholic churches we have toured.  These stairs up the tower were almost treacherous.

 Here's the whip we bought.  I'm actually not very good at this yet.

 More blanket making.

 A farewell lunch for a couple of missionaries moving on to other areas.

 Andrea wanted a picture of some common products.  That's the biggest milk carton (1 liter) available.  Vanilla comes a a tiny bottle.  Baking powder is in a little envelope and all the eggs are brown.

 Some things are big though.  These loaves of bread weigh 6.6 pounds each.

 We used them to make huge French toast for breakfast on Thanksgiving Monday.  Thanksgiving is not a Hungarian holiday.  The missionaries all worked as they normally do on Thanksgiving Day and then had an extended preparation day on the Monday following so that they could celebrate Thanksgiving.

 We have 6 sisters in our zone,

And 10 elders.  It was such a pleasure to see that they all had a proper Thanksgiving feast.

 Just some interesting Szeged architecture.

 Under the category of strange things that we have seen:  About 10 young men with hunting horns played a charge as other young men and young women wearing animal skins on their backs raced down the street in the middle of town.

 There they laid down on the ground to be poked and swatted lightly with sticks.

 We showed the pictures to our young adult friends and they don't know what was going on either.  I think it was an initiation into a hunting, or hiking, or outdoors club of some kind.

In November we had visits from three other senior couples.  Here we are having lunch with two of them.  They figured out that if we were going to host them on a trip to Szeged, they had better get down here before we leave.

Have a wonderful Christmas,

Love,

Tom and Andrea

Október

It is amazing to me that even though we were in Hungary at this same time last year, we still seem to find plenty of things to take pictures of.

 Here are the three sisters of Szeged.

 It took Andrea and I a year to locate this statue in Szeged.  It is titled "California Einstein".

This is a "Where's Waldo" type of test for my video game playing sons.  Can you tell why I took this picture in our splendid Catholic church on Dom Square here in Szeged?  The answer is in the close up picture featured as the last photo of this post.

 We took a drive out through the countryside to visit this dear sister with our young elders.  She faithfully comes into Szeged for Sunday church services and for various other activities by taking a bus ride and a train ride.  It takes us about an hour to drive to her house.

 Another be-nice-to-the-elders meal provided by the Adamsék (Adamses).  These are our elders from Békéscscaba: Elder Rosen, Elder Vanderpool, Elder Forsythe, and Elder Hansen.

 We made a special trip to Budapest this month to attend the opera (Carmen) with our fellow senior couples and mission president.  We are eight couples in a row.

 We spent an evening along the peaceful Tisza River.

 We had our last campfire of the season with our young single adults.  It's getting too cold to do it again.

 This month, one of our favorite young single adults, Evelin, was baptized.

The baptism was held in the round pool in the center of this elaborate public spa.  It was the only location that was available for the date.  It was a little lacking in privacy but it actually turned out quite nicely.  We did have a private room to hold a before and  after program in as pictured in the previous photo.

 A reception was held afterwards in our Szeged branch house.

 Here the young missionaries are doing the cooking.  Following a district conference, they wanted to cook french toast with slabs of bread cut off of an absolutely huge loaf of bread.

 Back to Budapest for our quarterly seniors' training seminar.

 We visited the parliament building again and I took this picture of the famous Holy Hungarian Crown.  It is a national treasure which was hidden away in Fort Knox for a number of years during Hungary's tempestuous history.

 Here are two other national treasures.

 Occasionally, we appear in the same photo together.

 This site is called "Shoes on the Danube".  These bronzed shoes are here to mark the location where the Nazis massacred Jews and then threw the bodies into the Danube; but not without having the victims take their shoes off first so that they could be reused.

 This is a view of the Buda side of Budapest taken from Gellert Hill.  Gellert Hill is where Hungary was dedicated for the preaching of the Gospel by Apostle Russell M. Nelson in 1987.

 For a Friday YSA activity, Zoli (sitting) taught us how to make balloon animals.  Perhaps I will have a new career when I return to the states.

 An end-of-transfer lunch.  Elder Hatfield (without the coat) left to serve in a different city in Hungary and Sister Hall (in the white blouse) was finishing her mission here and was on her way home.

 We notice a brand new scale model of the town square here in Szeged.  Why don't we have something like this in Corona?

We pulled over to take a picture of the setting sun on our way back from Békéscsaba on Sunday.  It is getting dark so early now.

And so, we finish with our little photo game.  Yes, it is the Triforce of Hyrule symbol from the Zelda games.  There must be a very powerful secret hidden here in Szeged.

We love you all.  Until next month. Tom and Andrea.

September 2012

Here are a few highlights from the month of September.

On our way to participate in a Branch social in Békéschaba we took some time to check out a palace.  It's used for a school and a small museum now.

 We took a little walk around the grounds.

 Yes.  I think this is a better picture too.

 I took this because I have never seen a Smart convertible.  I bet you never have either.

 So, the activity was a Mexican night.  We ate tortillas and beans made by the young missionaries.  We played 'Pin the Mustache on the Mexican'.  Not a game that is likely to catch on in California any time soon.

 We had a hot pepper eating contest.  This picture is to document that I am breaking out into a Habanero sweat. 

 Of course, there was a pinata for the kids.

 For my pepper prowess, one sister gave me a little hot pepper plant the next week.  The week following that, this sister gave Andrea a string of hot peppers from her garden.  The word for 'pepper' is 'paprika'.  In case you don't know it, Hungary is the home of paprika and so the Hungarians take their peppers very seriously.

This is our district.

 A pose with our sister missionaries in Szeged just before Sister Kramer, on the right, got transferred.

 This is a shot of our outdoor market place in Szeged.

 There was a baptism in the Szeged branch this month.  Three from the same family.  We rented the Seventh-Day Adventist church again.

 After thirteen months in Szeged, we found out that the best picture of this church can be taken from this corner.

 Have they released the Pepperoni Whopper in the States yet?

 Not wanting to waste a good idea, we began plans for a Mexican night for our young adults in Szeged.  Here they are making pinatas.

 We took a preparation day this month to visit the zoo in Szeged.  We'd meant to do it for many months.  The penguin exhibit is new!

We took pictures but I expect you won't be too interested in any that we're not in. 

 Who's watching whom?

 Ditto.

Andrea organized this project for a primary activity day.

 So, we had our YA Mexican night.

This is our good friend and Zone Leader, Elder Velasquez.  No, he is not Mexican.  He is actually Canadian. (His parents are from Guatemala.)

We hope you all enjoy these few pictures and that you are all having a great October.