Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey there! 

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is probably one of my favorite days of the year! Plans for us are currently none.   Sadly, it won't be like last year with the Turkey bowl, since it's just us, but we are hoping that we will get to go somewhere for dinner or something and have a good time. But it looks like we might be having a pretty  normal day for Thanksgiving out here! But hope you all have a great time!  Family, food and football? Where could you possible go wrong?

My comp and I are doing well. Same old same old. We have a lot more programs for the next week, so the work is actually going really well! This week we had a guy randomly call us and say he wants to learn more about our church which was super awesome! Believe me, that RARELY happens, so you gotta take those tender mercies where you can! And I just ended up talking to another guy here at the library for a while and we are going to meet with him sometime as well!  So we are pretty excited about stuff coming up! 
 We were pretty busy (relative to Pápa) with a lot of stuff going on. Also, my bike tire blew up at a rather inconvenient time, so we were walking around a little bit more than usual. But everything was good through out the week. We had a zone conference in Győr which was cool. Got to see some mission friends and a few more people from Győr (including Janka, which was great!) Other than that it was just kind of the normal stuff! I know that's probably not what you like to hear, but sometimes (most of the time) there just isn't that much interesting stuff that is going on! 
K, gotta run now,  hope that everyone has a great week! Go Pats!

Love,
Drew

Some pictures from our hike.




Monday, November 9, 2015

Working in Pápa


We're already almost half way through November and then it will be Christmas time!  Exciting!  The sun has been out the past couple of days and you wouldn't even need a coat or anything. Pretty weird in the middle of November!  I'm sure the cold and the snow will be coming soon.  This week we had a baptism which was super awesome!  The woman's name is Kriszta and she is the wife of one of the members here in Pápa and has been waiting a long time to get baptized and has finally been able to. There was only a few of us there, because we have to go down to Győr for it, but afterwards we went back to Pápa for a little branch party! The members had decorations and a bunch of snacks and treats and it was a lot of fun! The branch is awesome and they were super welcoming-it was great to see them being so loving. 





We also may have a stalker.....  trying to avoid that situation. More updates later. Other than that things are going well here! It is a lot of fun going to visit  the kids over at the school and I think we are going to be doing something with them for Christmas, so more updates on that later. As for the orphans, we weren't able to go over there this past week, but we are hoping to next week! I think they enjoy it! It's pretty hard for them and they are pretty troubled. Some kids 12 years old and already smoking. Pretty sad, but they don't have a strong family, which makes it harder! Really grateful for having such an awesome family. This week my Dad asked me  what I typically eat so in case anyone else is interested...as far as what we eat at the apartment it's mostly pretty basic stuff. You will have to wait till I get back to EXPERIENCE Hungarian food, but it's actually really good!!! We usually don't do anything special just sandwiches, pasta, meat, throw stuff together and see what comes up. But some of my favorite Hungarian foods are fruit soup (basically like a smoothie you eat out of a bowl with whole chunks of fruit in it), rakott krumpli (stacked potatoes. it's like, layers of potatoe, kolbász, hard boiled eggs, cheese and tejföl (kind of like a sour cream thing, but not that sour), and paprikás csirke (chicken in a peppered tomato sauce). There's a lot more good stuff, but those are my personal favorites! 

 I'm grateful to be out here in Hungary serving a people that I have really grown to love! It's a real blessing for me to be out here and I know that the Lord watches over us and loves us. I have definitely come to love the Book of Mormon and the Bible a lot more on my mission and really enjoy the opportunities that I have to study and think about the people, the stories, and what it all means!  I am also thankful for all of the thoughts and prayers from back home and all the support. I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Dalton