Counting the days!

Hello friends and family!!!

Another week here at the MTC and this marks my 7th week out here! Can you believe it??? In just one and a half short weeks I will be on a plane headed off to my new adventure!!! We are all getting so excited and are just counting down the days till we get to step off that plane in Budapest. We actually get our flight plans tomorrow, and we are all super excited for that. That will mark 10 days before our departure and it really is hard to believe that it has come by so quickly!!! We all really need this next week to go by super fast, because this is megszentelési hét (consecration week) which means that from today till next Thursday, we are only speaking Hungarian. So today is our first day and it's really not that bad, because we've done days of speaking just Hungarian, but what we are all a little worried about is day 4 or 5, when we are just burnt out and want to go back to good old English. But it's gonna be a really great experience and is definitely going to prepare us well for when we actually leave (when we only speak Hungarian every single day!).

But I'm quite sorry, once again, there is not that much exciting that goes on in the MTC. I mean, it's kind of like when I come home from school and my parents ask me, "how was school", and I always just respond, "fine." because it's really just kind of sitting in a class and studying stuff. So imagine that is what I am doing, except it's just Hungarian and it's a lot longer. But I will try and pick out a few of the more interesting spots. So we did have Skype TRC again this week, which was actually a lot better than last week. We actually skyped with a women out in Hungary and two missionaries who were out there right now, which was super interesting. The woman was super nice and she talked nice and slow for us which was helpful. It is still pretty hard on skype, just because sometimes it cuts out a little bit, and with english that might be ok, because you can kind of just assume what they were talking about, but when you are struggling to understand as much as you can, it is a little bit harder. Not super excited to make telephone calls in Hungarian, because I already hate talking on the phone in English... Anyway, it was also great because the missionaries told us (partly in english) that the language is going to come soon enough and not to worry about it, and it was super reassuring because I think that one of them had come into the MTC in March and had only been in Hungary since May or so, but I might be wrong, because you can't quite catch everything they are saying. That's probably going to be the hardest part for me when I get out there, is understanding people. I don't know if I have described to you all the Hungarian language before, but it's pretty terrible. There isn't any real sentence structure, there are a couple of rules, but for the most part, you can just put any word where ever you want. You know what they are saying because you add a T to the end of the direct object, so in each clause or phrase, you have to find the thing that's doing the action, what is being done, and then what is being acted upon, and they could come in any order. Then you kind of have to rearrange it all in your head so that it can make sense. It will probably be a bit of a struggle, but our teachers keep reassuring us that eventually it becomes natural (but I think they might just be paid to say that...) 

Anyway, other than that, things have been great. I am super tired of the food over here, and really excited about the food over there. Our teacher tells us about it all the time, and apparently it is just super cheap, but really really really good. Apparently they have life changing cereal over there too, so Logan, I will have to send you some boxes. We actually did have one more interesting experience this week. We were teaching a lesson to one of our teachers, and while we were talking to him, he fell asleep... It was a little embarrassing for us, and he said he was really tired and that it wasn't our fault, but if I had to sit there and listen to three kids struggle to speak Hungarian for 30 minutes, I would probably fall asleep too... So lets hope that real people don't fall asleep when I talk! 

Alright, so I don't have a whole lot of time left, but I just want to say how wonderful you all are! Thank you so much for all the support you have given me, and really just thanks for reading this. I love hearing feedback from everyone, or just knowing that people are interested in what I'm doing! I absolutely love my mission and am so thankful for this amazing opportunity. I know that God loves all of His children and I have come so much closer to my God here at the MTC. I have seen how much this gospel has blessed my life and my family, and I am so very glad to have the opportunity to share it with the people of Hungary, and to be able to help those who are less fortunate than myself. I love you all and thank you for everything. 

Love,

Elder Dalton

Moroni 10:32
Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is His grace sufficient for you, that by His grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God