Another sweet week here in Pécs, although we had a lot of stuff going on. First off, on Tuesday we had to travel to Budapest for interviews, which was about 7 hours of total travel, and then the next day we had a zone training in Dunaújváros, which is about another 7 hours of travel. So for the first half of the week we were basically just traveling the whole time and didn't actually get anything done. And it was pretty exhausting, but other than all of that, everything was pretty great! We got to meet with some super cool people this week, and still just having a good time down here!
On Saturday we actually went with one of our friends to this random animal shelter or something like that. Kind of weird to explain, but we basically went to this random field with a bunch of random animals (seriously, horses and sheep and yaks and a cow, all inside the same fence...) and then they gave us a dog that we got to play with for a little bit. It was super muddy, and kind of gross, but the dog was super fun and so that was cool. Probably not going to wear our nice clothes if we go again though, because we got super dirty...
Then on Sunday, after church, we went out with one of the members to this tiny little falu (village) about 20 kilometers away, and when I say tiny, I seriously mean it. We had to take a train out, and then walk for about ten minutes through empty fields till we got there. And it was seriously the tiniest little town I'd ever seen. They said there were about 150 to 200 people. Even coming from Maine it seemed too isolated for me. Just this totally random cluster of houses in the middle of nowhere.
OK, this post is pretty random, but I don't have a whole lot more time, so it's whatever. Yesterday, we were going to email, but then we had some stuff we had to deal with. So after our entire day of doing stuff around town, we were just heading back to our apartment, and I checked my pockets, and I couldn't find our keys anywhere. We started searching all of our bags and every pocket, but we couldn't find them anywhere. We then spent the next couple of hours, retracing every single step we took that whole day, going back to the mall, looking through all the stores, restaurants, and every other place and we just couldn't find them. We finally searched every single place we could find, so we decided to just see if we could get into our apartment somehow through a window or something. We had to call one of our neighbors to open the door to the building, and then walked up to our door, pushed, and it flew open. I'd left the keys in the other side of the door. So that was pretty dumb but we were super pumped we found them.
Anyway, nothing else very exciting, hope you all have a great week and we will talk to you next week!
Elder Dalton
What's up everyone!
Another week here in Pécs and things are going super well! The branch down here is amazing, there are tons of really cool people, Elder Barbour and I are having a great time and finding a lot of success! Unfortunately, this week we didn't get to meet with as many people as we wanted to because we had a SNOW STORM!!! Couldn't believe coming to the warmest part of the country, and we were the only ones who got snow, but it was actually really great. The city looked beautiful, but unfortunately, didn't get any pictures of that. But it's snowing again today, so hopefully I can show you all just how beautiful this place is.
Anyway, with the snow and cold weather, we actually had a ton of fun. So first off, we wanted to take advantage of the snow and use it to find some new people (and have fun in the mean time) so we just started a ton of snowball fights with families and other people walking around town. We would just be standing there with our English class sign and table, and then yell, "Hócsata!" (snowball fight) and start throwing snowballs at them. Then they would just start throwing them back, and actually was a great way to start a conversation with someone. Try it out sometime, I suggest it. Then after that, we saw a little girl building a snowman, so we went over and started helping her. We got to talk to her and her family, and built a huge snow man in the middle of the town square. It was probably the best snowman I had ever made in my life, and we set our table next to it, and people just started coming to us, wanting to take pictures, and wondering where we were from. It was a ton of fun and actually really effective.
The Extra Missionary helping out with the work!
So my mom was also asking me about the family that we met with last week. Well, they didn't come to church last week, but we actually ran into them on the street one day and talked to them for a little bit, and they said they were really struggling. They said they got kicked out of their house, so not exactly sure where they are living, but they said they really wanted to talk. They said they would come to church this week, but again, they didn't show up, so we are hoping we can run into them again (it's pretty common in Pécs, pretty small town) and try and help them out. But we did get to meet with a great lady from English class. We just talked to her and she said she wanted to meet and that she wanted to come to church! She is all alone so I think the church is really going to help her and she's really interested in hearing what we believe in.
Things are going great and I'm loving it down here. Hope everything is well back home and that you are all surviving the snow storms!!! Love you all lots and hope you have a great week!
Keep it real!
Elder Dalton
First week in Pécs and things are already going great. First off it was pretty hard leaving Buda. Mostly because of the people. I mean, the city was great, but it's the people that really make something special. I made a lot of great relationships, but I'm glad to be in such an amazing area now!! Seriously, I'm already in love with Pécs. So first off we had about a 3 hour train ride down here, because it's in the very bottom of Hungary, and then my companion, Elder Barbour, and I had to get our keys and phone and all the stuff from the other Elders, because neither of us had been in this city before, so we kind of have no idea what we're doing. But the first walk through the city was gorgeous. Seriously, it looks super European with coble stone everywhere it's amazing. Unfortunately, our apartment isn't the most luxurious. It's pretty crappy actually. We couldn't get the heater working for the first couple days (luckily, its going now, so no worries there) and the kitchen and bathroom are just straight up nasty. It's good enough though and we haven't seen any rats or bugs so far. No complaints.
This place is seriously amazing though. We walked around and started talking to people about our English class and handing out fliers, and seriously, every single person accepted a flier!!! I couldn't believe it. In Budapest, everyone is always in a hurry and you can't stop them for anything, but out here, everyone is just relaxed and are way more willing to stop and talk for a minute. I really already love it out here so much. We've already made some good friends from the ward too. Everyone was all pretty accepting, and next week, we have 3 dinner appointments with members, so it seems like they feed us pretty well out here too! Didn't get that in Budapest either.
My Dad asked about the language and stuff, and I will say that things are still getting better, but still have a long way to go. Elder Barbour is one of the best speakers in the mission, so I have already learned a lot from him, but it's still difficult. I can pretty much have conversations and talk with people no problem, but there are still lots of times that I don't understand what they say. And on that note, I got to introduce myself in church, so that was interesting. It's a little harder speaking the language with a microphone in front of you, but I think I did alright. Another thing, is that there is a zöldi (greenie or someone who is brand new) in my area, so I can really see how much better I actually am in the language than I used to be. Seriously, you can't really see the progress day by day, so it's nice to think back to how much I used to suck.
The work is really going great too. We made a lot of phone calls and have found a lot of new people. Probably the best part of the week, was when we were making a ton of calls to people on the phone, and there was one guy named Gangsta Mate. When we called him, he asked if we could meet right then, so we jumped on a bus and went out probably 15 minutes. He met us out there and said he wanted us to go visit a family that is going through a hard time that he thinks we can help. We then proceeded to go to one of the most torn down, trashiest houses I've probably ever seen in my life. It's this gypsie family (they are heavily discriminated against here in Hungary) with a single Mom and Grandma raising four or five children. It was really humbling for me to see conditions that were so much worse than anything I had ever experienced, and also cool to see that this random guy we never met before, trusted us that we could help this family. We had a good talk with all of them, and will get to go back some time this week. It really helps to get a reminder every once in a while, why it is I came out here. It's to help people like that who just have no more hope in their lives and can't find the right path to take. I love this work and I'm super grateful for this opportunity to serve. There's a lot more I could say about Pécs because I really love this city, but that's probably enough for this week, so I will just see you all next week. Thanks for all your support!
Love,
Elder Dalton
P.S. GO PATS!!!!!
