March 6: Long Ride and 2000 Dollars from Make-Up

Szervustok,

This week has been pretty full. We had a zone training which is a blast. One of my zone leaders has been my zone leader for my whole mission. He has been following me around. He is super cool so I can't complain.

So on Saturday, bcause I am district leader, I was on splits with one of the missionaries in my district. We were going down to a place called "Sziget Halom" where one of their investigators lived. It takes about an hour and a half to get down there. So we set up an appointment with their investigator and with another potential investigator. We also had a referral from Salt Lake that we needed to look up. So we had 3 programs that we were going to. Well.... We got down there and one by one all of our programs fell through. We picked up some lunch and went back home. 3 hours of traveling for some interesting food. And blessings of course! But it was a lot of fun. Elder Harris (the missionary) and I were able to talk a lot and get to know each other. 

This week we were at a members house, and since she was a single woman we brought a male. During the course of our meal the topic came up of "seasoning". Our male told a story about when he was in America a person gave him some cornbread. When he took a bit out of the cornbread he said to the person who gave it to him "this doesn't taste like anything" the man responded "it isn't the really thing, sorry". Man 2 left the room and came back with a jar, he proceeded to dump a whole bunch of sugar on the cornbread and said "now try it" our male then tried it and said it tasted great. So now our member says that when Americans don't think something has taste, they just get a whole bunch of sugar an dump it on top and then eat it. It was pretty funny. 

This is a clip from my email to my mission president about on of our, almost, investigators.

There is a golden investigator in our area. Her name is Luca and she is 17. She is currently not an investigator right now because we have not been able to meet with her with her parents permission yet. She finally got her parents to sign her paper that says we have their permission to teach her. She has come to church for three weeks without being invited, she has taken the indexing challenge and wants to come to the mission prep class. She has also invited random people to come to church. She fits in really well with the ward and went around getting the other youths numbers so she could ask them questions if she needs help with indexing and other things. We are so excited to start teaching her this week. God has truly prepared her for this.

This girl is super cool. She started coming to English class and then got invited to come to church once. She came the next week and has come ever since. I am super excited. She loves the youth and has met with the bishop a couple of times already, everyone has accepted her as part of the ward (I am actually in  ward now, not a branch).

So explanation for the second part of my subject line. A new sister in my district has a makeup tutorial channel on youtube. She has 25000 subscribers and makes a steady income of 2000 pounds each month even when she is on her mission. That was the explanation. Might spark some interesting ideas. I know my younger brother Drew has had a dream about doing a makeup tutorial channel! 

Sory fr alll of teh mistkaes in spleling. My Compture dosen't sohw when it is wrng adn I dnot wnat to go bck adn raed evertythngi agian.

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I hope all of you have a great week!!

There will be email with more pictures!!

Love you all!

Elder Biesinger

We ate at an Mexican restaurant which was pretty good!

So the picture of the other elder is awesome because of his choice of shoes.

December 19: Drunk lessons (Out of order...just found it as a draft)

Hi Everyone,

So this week has been great! I have had so much fun with my new missionary! His name is Elder Cushing and he is from Kansas. He has also been going to west point for the past 2 years! He is super cool and we are having a good time so far. I have been able to get us out of all of the situations we have gotten into, so that is a good sign. 

This week we were tracting at like 8 at night (not a good idea in Hungary, but we had to do it) and we got let in by an old man and his mom. The man was drunk and his mom was a very strong religious person. While the man and I were speed talking back and forth and repeating things over and over again (cause he was drunk) the old lady was talking to my companion about her bible and how beautiful it was and stuff. So during this time I was trying to talk to this old man, and keep an ear on what the lady was saying just in case she asked something. It started getting crazier and crazier to talk and so I resorted to offering a book of Mormon, switching numbers, and getting out of there as fast as we could! It was such a fun experience, especially because it was the first let in for my new missionary. 

The night before transfers we had some time and so at 8:30 we went to this park (this was still with my old companion) and we climbed some trees in the darkness. It was pretty great. We got some fun pictures (which are on his camera and so I will send later).

The first one is a picture of my comp and I before we went climbing trees. This explains him pretty well!

Second is just him.

The rest are when my new missionary and I met for the first time!

I think that is everything. Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Elder Biesinger

February 27: Crazy nénis are everywhere

Hi everyone.

So like I said last week, there was a transfer and I am now in Kispest. It is a lot bigger than Pápa. The ward is 4 times bigger on a bad day than Pápa on a good day. 

Um... nothing has really happened. My companion is from the same group as me and we are excited to work together. Our district area includes downtown Budapest and about half of the pest side of Budapest, so every P-day we can go see a lot of cool things. Today we are going to see  "The museum of Terror". It sounds pretty interesting.

We have the coolest ward ever. 3/4 of the people speak almost fluent English, but it is super nice cause most of them said that they wouldn't speak english to us unless we truly didn't understand something. It will be good practice. 

There is a young woman that comes to english class every week and is just now starting to take lessons. She has come to church two weeks in a row, and that is before she even recieved a lesson. She loves it and is excited to take the lessons.

There is a lady that we have been trying to meet with for some time. She called us one night and started talking about random things. When she would say something my companion would say "ok ok ok" just to show that he understood and was following her, but after a while she just blew up and was lik "what is ok? Why do you keep saying ok, it is not ok!!". Well... He explained to her that he was american and he wouldn't do it anymore. We think she was drunk because she would just randomly start laughing and then right after she would break down sobbing. It was a very weird phone call she kept saying she was trying to find the good God and happiniess, which we told her we could help with. We had to go somewhere so we told her we would call her later and ended the conversation. She called back like 2 hours later (still drunk) and told us she figure it all out. She now believes in animals. She said "there is no God, it is all animals". Interesting opinion. She then continued to sing a song and then laugh, and cry, and laugh and cry. It was a very weird interaction. She ended up hangin up on us, but that was after she said we could call back. Well... we called back the next day and she was not drunk. We hada good little talk and we are meeting her next Sunday. 

So a quick update. We now have 2 hours to email. Before, when we had 30 minutes less, I would run out of things to do. So know you all can feel free to email me because I have plenty of time to do everything!! Thank you everyone for the emails that you do send, and for your prayers, the truly do help.

Have an amazing week everyone!!!

Elder Biesinger

P.S. I didn't get any pictures this week because it was crazy. Maybe next week!! 

February 21: Kispest and giving birth... err... I mean bread.

Hi everyone!

So this week has been pretty normal, until today.

We had cleaning checks this week. If you are familiar with missionary work and cleaning inspections you will know how much dread it brings. At least for Elders. Sisters are "perfect" and so they probably don't worry. Well, the cleaning inspection was scheduled for Saturday so we were going to use all of our free time to clean and use our companionship study time to also clean. About 12 in the afternoon on Friday the senior couple calls and says that it would work better for them to do it in an hour. They asked if that would be ok, and being the awesome missionaries that want to accommodate everyone, we said yes. That led to a furious running around the apartment cleaning furiously. When they got there everywhere was clean and we passed with flying colors! They even decided to take us out to lunch. The  senior male was very picky with his food and made us take him to the nicest restaurant in Pápa. We went there and had some super good food and a great time! I would be willing to do that again any day.

Today we got our transfer calls. I am leaving Pápa, after being here for about 6 months, and I will be going to Kispest. A large area of Budapest, the capitol.

Today we were walking down the street and we saw this gruff homeless looking man come out of a bakery with a bag of rolls. I recognized the man from when we talked to him on the street. He had told us that he loved Jesus and that we always prayed. He said that he respected us and loved what we were doing. He was a little tipsy so I thought that he was just being weird. Well.... back to current time. He walks out of the bakery, immediately turns to a small group of homeless people and gives them the rolls, without taking any for himself. When he started walking towards us he saw us and did a cute little victory dance. We had a really good talk about how he finds joy in serving others, even though he doesn't have any food or money for himself. His source of happiness is through Christ. 

I thought that this was really cool. We can get tons of money and tons of worldly possessions, but without Christ we can't be truly happy. Even though this man didn't believe in some of the same things we did, he was trying and he was a very happy man and would frequently praise God all through out the conversation. That was a really cool thing that happened this week to us, and a good send of for me! 

We had a fun discussion this week with an investigators who didn't understand why we didn't have girlfriends and why we don't date and "hire" girls. It turned out really cool when we talked about it being special and our member talking about eternal families. We left her (our investigator)  with some things to think about and we hope that it will do her some good!

Well... I think that was it this week. I only have one picture and it is of my dead shoe. My favorite pair finally died, but I have a couple other pairs so it is all good. These are just the first ones worn to this point of death.

That's all for today folks. Tune in next week for more!

Elder Biesinger

P.S. I found some other pictures. I found a street called cocaine here in Hungary (that is what is pretty much sounds like in Hungarian) and then I took a picture (kind of fuzzy) of my cute little city while we were in a small falú (village) tracting.

View from Apartment

February 6: Kicked out by grumpy, pokoli, néni

Hi everyone,

This week was pretty good. It finally started to get a little warmer which is super nice. 

We had splits with some missionaries in Tatabánya. We were tracting an apartment building (in hungary you have to ring every ones bell until someone lets you in). Well we were running out of people and everyone said no. A man finally let us in and as we were walking to the door we were on, this old néni comes charging out of here door and starts screaming at us and telling us to get out. We tried to politely fight her and tell her that since someone let us in it was completely legal for us to be there. She said that the apartment building was a special exception (which it wasn't) and told us to get out before she got her husband, who was probably just as old. Well, we didn't want to accidentally hurt either one of them when they tried to beat us, so we left. We rang one more persons bell and that person let us in. I really wanted to go back to the nénis door and knock on it. Oh well... trials of a missionary! Gotta love them.

This week we didn't really teach lot. We have the flu going through the city and so most of our investigators got sick. We met  with an inactive family that had promised to come to church the week before but didn't. They told us that their kids were sick with the flu and that they hadn't wanted to spread it to the rest of the branch. I was a little confused. They didn't want to spread the sickness and so they had two young men come over who's only job was to interact and talk to as many people as they can.... Not very logical, but luckily we didn't get sick, and as far as we know we didn't pass it either.

We did meet with one of our investigators though. We are only meeting with the mother (member) and father (non member) because their son (non member but wants to be a member) is ready and so we just want to focus on the father. We taught our lesson and then he, rather smugly and proudly, pulled out his bible and gave us 5 scripture passages. We didn't understand them completely because there are two types of hungarian, normal, and biblical. Biblical is extremely hard to understand. So we asked if we could write them down and bring back our answers later. They said yes, and we did just that. We wrote them down and read them. Let me tell you the scriptures. 

Ezekiel 18:21-23

St john 12:47

St John 8:11

Mark 10:9

Luke 15:20

If anyone can see why he gave us these scriptures (besides him thinking that Christ didn't judge people) please let us know. We aren't sure why we got these scriptures, and with the ones that did sounds weird, you can find the answers like 5 verses later. This is just an example of the truthfulness of Christs church. We believe in all the commandments of Christ, we don't need to pull out part of a verse here, a couple words there, and one verse over here, to prove that our church is true. You can look anywhere in the bible, as long as it is translated correctly, and our church will never openly contradict it. We can use any verse to show what we believe. 

Well... We had some luck tracting. We were let in by an American who was really interested in finding the truth. I thing we can help with that. It was really nice that it was in english. My companion talked a lot because I was in a kind of shock and just didn't know what to say because I had never done it before in English. Super weird! We are going back there later this week to teach him more and give him a Book of Mormon. He is leaving to go back to the states in a couple weeks and so we will teach him as much as we can and then hand him over to the missionaries there! It doesn't matter who baptizes him right!

This week we got a sports day organised this week! I am super grateful because I have another, fun, way to exercise! This week we played soccer. It was kind of illegal and a little sketchy. We thought that we were just going to play in a field behind a boys house, but for some reason that didn't work out, so we went to this other place. Well... all of it was locked up, it belonged to this summer school thing but they just walked around the fence and up to a field, that was separately sectioned off. To get into the field there was this little section of the fence that had the bottom pulled up a little bit, so you had to get into a very wide push up position and kind of slide your way through, without touching the ground because it was a puddle. Well, to make things worse we had a bigger guy with us. After 20 minutes of working with another guy, while we played (I didn't know this was happening till after ) he used a lighter and melted some zip ties, that were used to patch another whole that had been in the fence,  and kicked the fence a bunch of times to break it a little bigger. Well... after this week we told them that we were never going to play there again unless someone got a key. It was pretty interesting, but a lot of fun to play. On of the guys played soccer for a profession. He was really good! 

Well... I think that is the highlights of the week Thank you all for your emails! I read them all and reply to as many as I can.  I can always read them because I take a picture of the screen and read them during free time! I love reading about the happenings!!

Szeretlek titeket!

Elder Biesinger

1. Snowman our upstair neighbors kids made.

2. My sweet Hungarian party hat!

3. The people we played with. Big man I talked about is one the far right, pro is right next to him, and then everyone else (my companion is taking the picture.)

January 30: Breaking Eternal Habits and Making Aquatic Friends

Hi Everyone!

So this week has been crazy. I think that I mentioned in the last letter about someone who we nicknamed "the hooker" while we were streeting on the street. Well... in case she is not known of. She was kind of flirtatious and she kept touching my arm. Well... we met with her, and I know that looks aren't accurate. But let us just say that I am glad we brought a member. The discussion was good and she wants to meet with us again! Oh, and her name is csizmadia. You can all call my dad and ask how to say it in Hungarian. Or you can look it up online.

This week we had a little taste of South America. We had two days in a row where we had 4 lessons the first day and 3 the next. That doesn't happen very often here but we all of our investigators just happened to fall on two days. It was pretty insane.

On Saturday we started playing soccer with a boy who we teach in Angol ora (english classes) and we are hoping that we can use him to start a sports day in Pápa and get to know some youth! It was a pretty fun experience. My companion and the boy are a lot better ball handlers than I am but I was able to hold my own as goalie! It was a lot of fun. 

We had a lesson with a really religious catholic lady. Somehow the topic got to alcohol.  Well... I know how. I asked her what her favorite drink was, because it was something that was brought up, and she said polinka, a Hungarian liquor. Then she went on about the health benefits and she started naming the "few" occasions that she would drink a small glass of it. I think her "occasions" were broad enough that she somehow convinced herself that every day was an occasion and that she needed to drink a glass every day. Crazy Hungarians!

Well... I am trying to think of crazy things that happened... Sorry, we were really busy this week and so we didn't have idle minds to do stupid things. Well.... I take that back. I did do a stupid thing. My companion watched a TV show where the people drank live goldfish. Well it was my dads birthday and I had no other way to celebrate it. So I downed a live gold fish. Pretty great, pretty inhuman and evil and definitely took lots of time to repent. Although... there is the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants

 12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

Well I can't think of a better way to get protein and be sparing than by eating a goldfish. Small but nutritious. I am truly sorry to all people out there who are offended. I  know that God made us all differently. Have no fear that I will apologize to the fish when I meet him, or her, in Heaven.

The best part of the week was when we tracted into a man that had met with the missionaries, wanted to be converted and be religious, but just thought that there was a problem inside of him that made it so he couldn't get answers to his prayers. It will be very interesting to see where it goes! 

Sorry I didn't get a lot of pictures this week, if any!

Have a great week kivánok!

Elder Biesinger

The only picture goes a long with my title. I have not eaten oatmeal for many many years, with the exception of when I was starving on a long high adventure. This is a miracle turn for me. I learned a very good way of making oatmeal and have now had it many times! cook oats, put in diced apples, jam, and some crispy chocolate granola for texture and taste. I absolutely love this stuff!! 

January 23: Ummm.....

Hi everyone,

So the subject line describes this week perfectly. Um.......

We were in Pápa for 3 days of working because we had so many other mission-wide meetings. It was pretty great. We were meeting with one of our investigators (two actually, but they are in the same family). The father and son are not members and the mother is. Well... things happened and the mother said some rude things to the father and the father got mad at us and yelled at us for 5 minutes. It was pretty fun. Luckily we had had an incredibly spiritual lesson up to the point and it was still with my companion and me. We were able to be calm and after he was done... Well. first. He had yelled at us for being to persistent and aggressive with his son. Which isn't true because his son wants to be baptized and so we are mostly focusing on the father. But back to the end. We were able to testify about how the gospel has blessed our lives and how we gave up a lot of things so that we could be here to share the gospel. The father calmed down a lot and looked a little embarrassed at the end. Hmmm.., I would be embarrassed too if I yelled at two young men who didn't speak my language. But it turned out better than we thought.

Our branch president came over to us one day when we were helping move some things around in the branch house and told us "You two need to start talking to more cute girls. You are both cute and we need more youth in our ward. If the girls come then the boys will follow". I don't know if I have described our branch president before. He is very serious and talks about the gospel a lot, maybe too much in church, and has never really talked to us or recommended anything to us before about missionary work. With that said, I was incredibly shocked when he said this. I had to ask him to repeat it a couple times to make sure that he really had said it. Well... I guess that we will be talking to more girls. He also later said that it will be good practice for us. As we talk to the girls it will make us brave and so that when we get back to America we will be able to get married fast. Words of wisdom to everyone!!

So This week I just wanted to end with some scriptures that I found that are incredibly helpful with daily life. It is Proverbs 21:9, 19

 9 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

 19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.

I found these very helpful, especially now that we need to talk to more woman. I think that these are beautiful scriptures and should be applied to everyday life.

Picture is of a freaking old elevator that I thought was going to break as we were going up this really tall building. It was pretty great.

Elder Biesinger