A Busy February

This was the month that true winter hit.

This was the first snow fall, so we were impressed. Little did we know what we had in store.
I don't know why this one is underlined. Just one of those blogging mysteries that we all have to live with. Anyway, we took our Young Adults out to dinner. Call it an etiquette dinner if you want, but I don't think I learned anything.
Ahh, the underlining is gone but the snow is back. This was when it really decided to snow in a serious way. There's a video of this at the end of this posting.
Szeged ended up getting about 18 inches of snow.
I submit this picture for those of you that are following the change of seasons out our apartment window.
So, just how deep did I say the snow got? The locals tell us that they haven't had this much snow in Szeged for 25 years.
February saw the conclusion of our stocking hat service project. We went to two different places; a day facility for handicapped young adults, and a home for permanent care of handicapped individuals all the way from infants to adults.
We were able to personally deliver some of the seventy-three caps that we knitted.
In an effort to find something different to do for an inside event, we held a Western Night for one of our Young Adult activities. This is as western as we were able to get with our limited resources.
There was food; hamburgers and hotdogs. There were games, including a seed spitting contest. Guess who won? And there was line dancing. Our young adults love 'Cotton Eyed Joe' and 'Boot Scootin' Boogie'. (See the Video at the end of this post)
Here the whole group that attended. I think I must have taken the picture.
February we attended a baptism in Békescsaba. It wasn't the first baptism there since our arrival; just the first one we could attend. Gréta is a fine addition to that small branch.
Where do you hold a baptismal service in Békescsaba? In a hot tub in a hotel. It was really hard for the Békescsaba missionaries to find a place.
Here is a snapshot of all of the missionaries serving in Szeged in February. Our sister missionaries operated in a threesome for a few weeks.
Just in case you didn't get enough snow pictures, this is what the flat countryside looked like on the road to Békescsaba. This is our cute little Skoda.
Valentine's Day is no big deal in Hungary but Andrea made a point to serve pink, heart-shaped pancakes at one of our Family Home Evenings.
In February we finally figured out why the Hungarians don't care about Halloween either. They have Farsang! It's like Mardi Gras. That's when the Hungarians get a chance to put on costumes! So who needs Halloween?
This is the costume idea that Andrea came up with for us.
This the the costume you do when you have seemingly unlimited ties. This is Elder Beaumont and Elder Moffet.
And our remaining two Sister missionaries, Sister Papritz and Sister Suranyi, came as doctor and patient. Please note that Sister Suranyi was doing her very best to look very bad.
Andrea is still taking any chance she can get to hold a baby.
A major benchmark for our little Young Adult Center was the arrival this month of our Foosball Game! Gergö was able to beat Laci and I single handedly. What I mean is, after the game pictured here, we made him try again with just one hand. I don't think I'll play him anymore.
In February, we went to Budapest to hold a second committee meeting for the July Eastern Europe Young Adult Conference that we are hosting near Budapest. We took our committee of young adults by bus out to see the site of the coming conference. Besides Hungary, we had people from Poland, The Czech Republic, Romania, and Serbia.
This is the Hotel where the event will be held in Dobogókő Hungary.
This is in the dining hall of the hotel. The distinguished gentleman (no I'm not talking about me), is Elder Mannfred Schütze, our supervising Area Seventy from Germany.
Dobogókő has a beautiful view of the bend in the Danube River North of Budapest. Sorry nothing is green yet but I promise to get you a more colorful picture in July.This is Andrea's Valentine's Day flower. Just because the Hungarians ignore the day doesn't mean I'm off the hook.
A birthday lunch held for Sister Suranyi at our apartment. See, she's all better again.
I had to close with this very Valentine appropriate photo from home of Esperanza Bartell.

Below: Tom demonstrates roping.

Hungarians line dancing. and

Clearing snow off of the car.

January's Posting

Happy 2012 everyone!! This posting will start with 8 pictures to finish-off 2011.

There was a transfer right before the end of the year in which two missionaries serving in Szeged finished their missions, Elder Rummler and Elder Allen. This pose with them reflects their personalities. Elder Rummler was here when we arrived and was a big help to us!
And here is a pose with two of our Young Adults, Timi and Viki. If it seems like every name in Hungary ends in an 'i', that's just about right. Viki is actually Viktoria, Laci is actually Lászlo, Zoli is actually Zoltan. Etc., Etc. It's just like Tommy is actually Thomas. Most Hungarians like to use a shortened, 'familiar' form of their names.
We couldn't leave out the other two missionaries who were serving in Szeged at the time.
And so, the New Year came. We went to Budapest and participated in a Young Adult New Year's party. It was actually held on the 30th (a Friday night) to avoid running into the Sabbath. At 12:00 they had an interesting observance where they sang their national anthem and then observed about two minutes of contemplative silence.
This is the whole group of Young Adults from all over Hungary that was there.
The next day, the 31st, Andrea and I hung around Budapest since we would be flying out on the 1st for our trip to the US of A for Matthew and Torri's wedding. Here is an interesting piece of artwork representing the 'iron curtain'.
Here is Andrea in front of the National Opera House.
We found an out of the way restaurant and had ourselves a very traditional Hungarian New Year's Eve dinner.

About our Flight the next day:

A two hour delay in London caused us to be unable to connect with the planned flight out of Los Angeles. So we had to wait in LAX for 5 hours for a later flight on another airline. We didn't get to Provo until 3:00 am. Talk about the super jet-lag!
So, here are some pictures from the wedding event!! Most of our Grandkids are in this shot as we all wait around for the Bride and Groom to appear after the sealing. Don't miss Jackie way in the back. Espy was elsewhere keeping her father busy.
And here they are, Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Adams. The little girls all thought that Torri was a real princess.
Here is a pose of our immediate family which we are presently using for our computer wallpaper. We love it but we miss Nathan when we look at it.
And they're off!!
We hosted a luncheon in the afternoon. Here's the happy couple opening some presents that we brought them from Hungary.
A wonderful reception was held that evening.
This is a group of old Diamond Bar acquaintances that were there; Wares, Johanssons, and Bringhursts. The Biehls were also there, but missed being in the picture.

Since this is a Blog about our mission, I (Tom) am not putting in the other gazillion photos of the wedding, luncheon, and reception. Sorry.
We held a family belated Christmas event while we were there. My wonderful cousin Ruth arranged for us to meet in her Church building. This is the before picture.
This is the after picture.
Amelia loves her little doll from Hungary.
The boys play with marionettes that we brought them.
Afterwards, we all went to see dinosaurs on the BYU campus.
And here are our little animals posing with others of their kind in the Bean Museum.

We were sad to part with everyone but we had no trouble making the separation. I (Andrea) had a little more trouble than Tom, but we knew we belonged back in Hungary.

About our flight back:

Everything went right until we found that our luggage did not make it to Hungary at the same time we did. So we had one interesting night at the mission home in Budapest without much more than the clothes on our backs. Our bags caught up with us in Szeged the next day.

Back to making stocking caps for our service project. We'll give a report on its successful completion in next month's posting.
A little bit of snow. We'll give you pictures and a report of the real snow that we are in the middle of right now in next month's blog. (most snow in 25 years)
In January we enjoyed a visit from our mission president and his wife, the Baughmans. They graciously took our Szeged and Bekescsaba districts out to dinner.
Here is a sample of the artistic open faced sandwiches that the Hungarians like to prepare. These were prepared for a funeral luncheon, after the funeral mass of the mother of one of our branch members, Toth Zoli. She was Catholic and it was an interesting experience to be a part of both the funeral mass done under the big cathedral in town and the luncheon given in our branch house afterwards.

These are a lot of the finished hats that our Young Adults are modeling.

We'll try to get the February blog post done in a more timely fashion. The truth is, we're kind of busy, and that's good!!!

It looks like we have finally succeeded in putting a couple of short video clip on the blog!

'Puppets' and 'Thriller (in a bridal gown)'.