April 10: Reliving...Some time in the past

Szervusztok! 

This week was pretty uneventful! 

I found out that there is a mini person coming along in my family... Last week I "learned" but I wasn't sure whether or not it was true or a joke. Super confused all week! But... Sweet! 

This week we were at 21 Fonal st Budapest (look it up on google maps so you can better imagine this). So imagine what you see (it is the 3 story building and there are 2 big ones.) but like 5 times worse. There are bricks missing and shattered windows everywhere. Well... my companion and I were looking up a former investigator. We found his building, after we asked around because it wasn't marked. The front door to the building was smashed in and there was debris in the hallway. None of the doors were marked in the hallway so we climbed around peoples things and asked for the man at a door. They pointed us down this long dark hallway that, if we went down, well... lets not go into that for  the sake of mothers everywhere :) Just kidding, I wouldn't go places that crazy. But it was pretty bad and creepy. We found him and things went well... But both of us had adrenaline pumping through our weakened bodies (we were fasting). Fun experience!

This week was our investigators confirmation and was amazing. We met with her family the day before because we hadn't met with them yet because her family situation is pretty crazy. Her siblings loved me, especially a 2 year old. He was almost as crazy as maiapapaya (my little sister). I let some of them use my camera to take pictures and they loved it. I would hold the camera and the 2 year old would turn it on and off and scream in excitement when the lens would open and close. Super cute! Her mom (the reason we were there) was super late but when she did come at first she was closed off to us, but then as she saw how happy her kids were she opened up and started smiling and laughing with us! It all turned out really well! One of the boys loved to dress my companion up. I loved it! 

On Saturday we were coming back from an Easter conference that the stake put on. We got off our bus and I saw a group of people standing at the cross walk that we were going to. One of the guys turned and saw us and had this creepy grin come over his face. He kept turning as we walked by and to the other side of them. I was pretty creeped out. As we were standing there he said "hey elders!" in perfect english. Well he ended up to be a YSA who was attending a huge conference in Budapest for the young single adults. We ended up talking for like 30 minutes. He decided to leave home at 18 and has been traveling around Europe for 10 years. He tries out different schools and decides he doesn't like it, lives in the place for a while and works, and then moves on. He grew up learning 4 languages and learned 3 more while he traveled and wants to learn like 5 more. Crazy people out there! 

Well.... I think that that is mostly all that happened this week!! 

Have an amazing week!! 

Elder Biesinger 

April 3: Great Week!

Hi Y'all!!

This week has been uneventful besides a baptism and awesome P-day.

Last Monday we did a last minute escape room! Super fun. Evidentally they were invented in Budapest. I am not sure though because Hungarians really like to claim everything. A lot of them say the George Wasington was of Hungarian decent and that he used Hungarian tactics in the war... But anyways. The room was really fun. It was really tricky and we ended with 18 seconds out of 1 hour. As we were using our calculator in the phone the sisters called us and almost killed us. My companion quickly hung up on them and we finished in the nic of time. We are part of the 20 percent that have every finished it! We are so cool :D 

The baptism was amazing. The young woman started officially meeting with the missionaries 2 weeks ago and we have met with her every day. She is now excited to start preparing for a mission. She is so cool! The Bishop baptized her and we will be confirming her next week. 

General Conference was  super awesome! We were allowed to watch it in English in another room and so we did. Except for the priesthood session and the last session. I loved it and was very spiritually edified by it. 

I hope this pictures satisfy expectations! Have a great Week everyone!!

Elder Biesinger 

On splits with  our investigator the day before her baptism! Those are her sunglasses and my name tag. 

March 27: Passin the Tacs

Hi Everyone.

This last week I haven't done very much. 

Visegrad was great! We had to take a boat across the danube before we could get there and then we found out that the bus was closed for the week and so had to hick up this muddy hicking trail in our church clothes to get to the castle on top of the hill. We were quiet the weird sight. Several people will probably never forget that day in their lives. 

Explanation for the subject. I was sitting next to a Néni at church and she got out this box of tic tacs and took one, and handed it to me and I took one. And over the course of the meeting she got one to almost everyone within 3 rows of use. To everyone else it seemed like a common occurence. Well... I am down for free tic tacs every week. I have now found the person I will be sitting to every week! 

Well... I think that was all the big things. The last couple days have been crazy so I didn't think a lot about what I was going to write. I will write a better email next week! 

Oh.. There was a hip hop night where missionaries could go if they brought an investigator. Well.. We brought two and had a great time. One of the missionaries was super good at hip hop and he taught a lot. It was also fun to listen to some "worldly" music. It was a lot of fun. I also got to meet with some good friends that I knew from before the mission when I lived here before! Super fun! Loved it!

Have a great week!! I will get better pictures next week because I need to use someone elses camera and they are not with me right now. 

Elder Biesinger

Nevermind. The pictures aren't working so... sorry, but I will not be able to send any pictures...

Have an amazing week without them!!!!! 

March 20: PICTURES!!!

Hi Everyone!

This week has been crazy! We have had 2342516.4256 million lessons. Not really, but we have been crazy busy. Last Sunday we taught Luca the Restoration (First lesson) and she asked us if she could be baptized. On Saturday we had her baptismal interview and she passed. She has her date as April 1st at 4. Right before General conference. She is crazy. She has read all of the pamphlets we use to teach, like, 4 times and has read the "For the Strength of youth" Pamphlet like 3 times. She is super ready.

Well... Nothing has really happened besides that this week. We are having a great time here in Kispest. Right now we are about to run to a place called Visegrad and so I don't have a lot of time this week.

We met with a néni who told us that she thinks baldness is so sad. She said that God gave people hair for a reason and that baldness is such a tragic thing. Super funny! Made me think of my dad. He often has said that God made a few perfect heads and the rest he put hair on. Well,... He and this lady can talk it over! 

The Jehova Witness church has a big program coming up and so they tracted EVERYWHERE before us. We went for 90 minutes never finishing our approach before they closed the door. Crazy People.

I would like to apologize for not spelling something right last email. I wrote "Csokolomstok" and it would be "Csokolomsztok" but that technically isn't right anyway... Well... It is Hungarian so I guess it is okay because... yeah... I don't know why.

God loves all of us and always is watching over us. That is something that I have personally experienced on my mission. Life is wonderful!!

I hope all of you have a great week! 

Elder Biesinger

Pictures. One is of an amazing burger that I got. Super yummy and tall. 

Other ones are of me after a long tiring day and my companion was having a fun time with taking pictures. I guess someone has to help hold the crowds of picture-wanters away :)

Love Y'all!!! 

March 13: So much for being a "seed-planting mission"

csokolomstok!

This week has been super great! On Monday after I emailed and after P-day we were tracting and we were looking up a less active member. It was like 8:30, which if you know Hungarians you will know that everyone goes to bed at 7 and wakes up at 10 during winter/spring and if you tract then then the people will want to swear you to death. Anyway, we were tracting and this lady leans out this window on the second floor and yells out asking who we are. We tell her that we are missionaries and that we are looking for this man. She told us to wait while she comes down. She came down to her gate and said "who are you and how do you know him" in a stern way. We told her that he was a member and that we just wanted to see how he was doing. She told us he was dead but that we could come in if we had time. "Sweet! I love to talk to people!" Well, she was really nice as we walked to the house and she was asking why we were here and how she was looking for something else in her life. We talked about the Book of Mormon and she told us that that would make sense because there had to be more than the Bible. We walked up to her 2 story house and walked into her living room and LO AND FREAKING BEHOLD there was an active family sitting around the kitchen table. I took a double take, looked at the lady, and realized she was the mother of the family with 3 less layers of makeup. She was pulling our leg the whole time. The old man on the record was their father and he was inactive because he was dead. They fed us dinner and we shared with them a spiritual message. It was pretty great!

We were finally able to officially meet with Luca, the golden investigator, and we taught her about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She excepted everything and then at the end she shared an experience about a youth activity, that the churched organized, that she had been to the day before. Things had happened in a certain way there and so she asked people there how she could be baptized. They told her to talk with the missionaries and so she did. She asked us when she could be baptized. We seriously were speachless. This girl went to every single activity the church provided, she indexed, and when mission prep was announced and they said that it was for members preparing to serve a mission she almost cried because she was planning on going to it. She was found 3 weeks ago and has come to church every week without any reminders and goes to activities that the missionaries don't even know about. 

This week in addition to her 4 of our investigators have accepted to be baptized, this ain't no "seed planting" mission, we are going to rival those South American missions!!! Of course that is not the reason why we do things, but it was a annoying thing that was told to most of the missionaries that were coming here and we are all working hard to prove it wrong, and God is blessing us with his Elect children!

Well... This week we only got lost at night running around in the slums of Budapest twice this week, pretty awesome!! If you are ever planning on visiting Budapest this advice will help you. Budapest is split up into Buda and Pest. Each of those are split into districts. And the Hungarians are so happy about keeping their culture that they can't create new street names and so there are multiple streets with the same name all over Budapest. Well, we knew that, but we still stumbled into this trap. We went to "Árpad Utca" because it was a stop right next to our house. Well.... This "Árpad utca", that this bus took us to, was about 20 minutes outside of Budapest and a 50 minute bus ride from the other "Árpad utca" stop. It was pretty great, we ran around trying to get on the right bus, and since it was so late at night we would have to wait for a long time for another bus to come because they were more spaced out than normal.

Oh... I almost forgot. There is an interesting néni (elderly lady) here in our ward. Her name is Kati. She is very hard to deal with. Well.... on Sunday, in our investigator class (for some reason she is always there) and out of no where came out and started talking about how the Bible isn't true and that it isn't from God. Well... that was shot down really quick and then we told our investigators that we believed in the Bible. Well... After our lesson with Luca, which was right after church, Kati was still there and she saw Lucas Bible and went up to her and told her that the Bible was wrong and that we can't trust it. She then went on to say that you can't find answers to our questions in the Bible or the Book of Mormon! A bunch of members shut her down and very quickly told Luca that we did. Luca has had some interesting experiences with Kati already and so she understood and wasn't bothered by the experience. Good thing!! 

Well... My companion took a lot of pictures and I will send those next week!!

I hope you all have an amazing week!!

Elder Biesinger

February 13: Hmmmm

Hi everyone,

Good thing I had an extra long email last week, cause this weeks will be pretty short.

This week we had interviews with our mission president. It was super good! We got to Győr at 10:40 and didn't have anything to do until our interview times (2:30). We were there so early because that was the only train that would get us there on time. So while we were waiting we went to the mall in Győr and got a basketball! We went to the branch house (where the interviews were being held) and played basketball in suits for a while. Pretty fun!

This week we are trying something as a district. We heard that if you drink a lot of apple juice before bed you have super weird dreams. Well... for some people it is true. It is not true for me though. One of the Elders did it and in his dream I was the head of a Jehovah's Witness university in Hungary, and that I would order people to be killed if they didn't accept my religion. It was kind of weird.... 

Nothing else really happened this week. I also didn't take any pictures... So, sorry! 

Transfers are next week and so I will be emailing on Tuesday! 

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Biesinger

Actually... Looking through my camera I found two.

So the first one is of my shoe. This shoe lasted 6 months. I still wear them, but the bottom has rubbed of enough that I now have to take rocks out of my shoe every night. I don't feel them at all when I walk, they just get stuck in that lovely hole that you see!

The second is of a little package I got from my last companion. He found my favorite Milka bar (chocolate brand) that they don't sell very much any more. When he found it he lovingly thought of me and sent me it! He has a stamp and seal kit that he uses whenever he sends stuff! He is a goofy elder!

KK I think that is everything!!