December 13: Y'all Didn't Pray Hard Enough...

Hi everyone!

Well this week was filled with excitement! A large reason for that excitement is because it is transfers week!! What a great time period for all missionaries. Lots of stress!! Well... I will explain what happened. We wake up at 6:30, awake in an instant. The ringtone we are fearing is the special tone of our mission president. He usually starts his calls at 7 so we wait in dread for the call. If it  is later and our usual ringtone then that means that we will just be a normal missionary next transfer ( not a zone leader, trainer, or AP because those are reserved to the presidents call). Well it is 7:10 and we start to relax. We make a casual joke about how we are now safe from harm. No sooner did that joke leave our mouths and we heard the dreaded tone. My comp answered because he is the senior companion. Now we both know that one of us will be in the "different" group. I here that he is going to Szeged, a city where there is a Zone Leader spot open. I start to relax. I get the phone. "Szia Biesinger Elder. (after formalities) Egy Tréner leszel..." I almost cried. He just told me, a 3rd transfer, that I was training with a language far beyond my pay grade. I was shaking for like 3 hours afterwards from the shock! Next transfer will be great!! And none of those prayers that I asked for worked.... That is ok.

This week we had my first person yell at us and tell us that they were going to call the cops on us if we didn't leave the area. My companion casually told them to go for it! Well... No cops came and we kept tracting. It was great!

This week we did a small tradition that elder Hughes introduce. It is sajt night! It is super good. All you do is make cheese sticks, bread them, and deep fry them. It is super good but super bad for the body!! 

Pics.

Sajt night,

Nice sunset,

missionary tackiness. on splits they had to use a garbage bag to put their no-bake cookies on because they didn't have anything else!

some yummy desserts my comp and I got for our black monday (the long monday before the Tuesday that we get transfer calls!

Family we are teaching (inactive.)

I think that that is about it! I will let you know how next week is!!

Have a great week everyone!!

Elder Biesinger

December 5: First one down, 10 more to go!!

Hi everyone!

I apologize now for all of my spelling errors. The computer is being disfunctional and says that every English word I type is wrong. So I will not be able to notice unless, I look at every word, if I made an error. 

Reason for the subject line. Every transfer we have interviews with the Mission President. For first and second transfers he starts in Hungarian but when they stop understanding he just switches into English for the rest of the interview. Well....... I had my second interview COMPLETELY in Hungarian. I didn't catch what he said sometimes and when I asked him to repeat it he repeated it in Hungarian, not English, and I was able to do all of the interview in a foreign language! I felt so happy afterwards! But the only downside is that we have a lot of new missionaries coming in, and not very many leaving. We are now an extremely young mission with well over half of the missionaries being in Hungary for less than a year. Since the more experience missionaries are needed to fill the leadership roles, if you are able to survive with the Hungarian you know, you will be training in the next group! So all of you need to pray for me not to train next transfer!!! Just kidding. Don't do that!! It would probably turn out worse and things would get messy!

Thursday night we had pancakes with the American family for dinner. They were super unhealthy and incredibly good!! And the scariest things is, is that she was planning on making dessert to, but she ran out of eggs!! Phew, dodged that 50-days-worth-of-fat-burning-exercise bullet! But it was super yummy. They are a fun family, just really inactive and sometimes, sadly, kind of lazy about living the gospel. Oh well... We can only try!!

On Tuesday we had splits with Tatabanya in Pápa. I went with first transfer missionary. It was really good! We only got kicked out of one building... well... we weren't even in the building. We were ringing the bells and the man came down adn said that no one was interested in the building. I told him that our message was very important and we would like to continue ringing the bells trying to talk to people, just to make sure. Well... He didn't like that and told us to get out of there. So we left... for 5 minutes. And then we came back and finished the building! We had a great time! 

Well... That was our week in a short email!! I will be sending pictures next week that are now on my companions camera that he forgot to bring!!

Love you all!!

Elder Biesinger

1:So we didn't get a lot of pies... So I needed to make the most out of the pie I did eat

2:Went falu blasting. that is where you go into a village and just tract there all day cause you will never go back because it takes so much time, unless you find someone to teach. This was just a pretty sunset that we saw

3-4:This is a puzzle that I have been working on for a little over two weeks. I have only used the free time that I have, so no one freak out cause it seems like I am not doing missionary work! I promise it was all between 9:30 and 10:30 at night! Very exhausting and VERY annoying. There are 12 missing pieces. And when I was finished with this one and was looking at another one I was startled to find 4 of the missing pieces in a different puzzle! I was very upset with the missionary who did it!! But it was pretty funny and brilliant how he did it!

November 28: I Am Going Vegetarian

Hi everyone!

Ignore the subject line, I would die if I did that. But... the reason for the title is that on the only meal that you really have to have some kind of meat... I didn't. We had a district meeting on Thanksgiving (just coincidence) and so everyone brought some food. One person brought mashed potatoes, another orange loaf, another apple crumb bread, another cheap Spar (a small cheap store here) rolls (don't ever do that). My companion brought Banana bread and I brought a couple pies and some stuffing. In all.... Besides that apples in the pie and the potatoes we only had flavored bread for THANKSGIVING. Good thing that holiday isn't just about the food! We had a good discussion on what we were thankful for. A lot of it was things about America and sports... Actually, it was family and friends...

Luckily we got invited to go to the NATO base here in Pápa by an inactive American family. So we got all the papers signed and we were permitted to go onto the base. If you were to picture a communistic base, this would be it!! But he zoomed us around the base and was able to take us up to the HUGE plane that he flies on. It was super cool. 

We had a great time that night! I don't think there was a single person speaking Hungarian there except for the Hungarian ambassador. We had super good food and MEAT!! Being vegetarian is definitely not a bad thing, I just like meat and I like it on Thanksgiving day. I inhaled one huge plate and finished of one of the American families kids plate (It was in a cafeteria type of thing and so we would have to wait in lines to get our food). We left  the party with two extra pies in our possession that the Mother of the family got for us! When we got back we received three heaping bags of goodies from the American family who had gone to an American base in Italy and had shopped at an American goods store there. It din't have everything but it had some amazing treats in it!!!

Last Tuesday we had splits with the Elders from Győr. It was super fun. The Elder that I was with this time was one of the best Hungarian speakers to have been in the mission for a while. He was almost a native (that is what the natives said). He didn't have an accent and he had amazing word order! I have found my goal!

So some people have been asking me about my schedule.

6:30- wake up and exercise 

7-8 - B-fast and getting ready

8.- personal study,

9- companionship study

10- go out and tract or street (find)

12-lunch

1- Find

5-6 -dinner

6- finding 

8- language study

9- nightly planning and relax until lights out at 10:30   

That is my schedule with fluctuation in the finding hours. That is when we travel and teach lessons. It is a blast! Sometimes we have to tract at 8 instead and people are not happy. Cause guess what?' Hungarians all go to sleep at 7... Isn't that interesting. Not really!! It is super weird and annoying!! Silly Hungarians. It doesn't help missionaries very much that it gets dark at like 5:30 here now.

Well... I don't think we did much else this week! We are missing American Football and Christmas music. We don't have anything to play it on so we celebrate this new season in silence!

Well... I wish you all well in your various endeavors!!

Elder Biesinger 

November 7: Short Week

Szervusztok,

So this week is kind of really short. 

I cooked some super yummy chili and choco chip cookies today!  

We went on splits last Friday and Saturday. My splits companion wouldn't stop talking about politics which drove me crazy! First of all, we aren't even supposed to talk politics at ALL as a missionary, second, his "huge expanse of knowledge" about politics is mostly just about who will give him the most guns and who is against abortion. While I agree with some of his points I rarely agreed with them for the reasons he did. I am sorry to say that I broke once on the split. We were in the apartment and his lecture was getting long and I kind of exploded into him and told him more of what politics is really like and stuff, I don't know a lot about politics, but I attacked his logic and felt horrible afterwards. Now I see why we aren't allowed to talk about them. But don't y'all worry, I repented!

So my companion has yet done another thing to bring laughter to Pápa. We have a long wooden pole in our apartment from a broom that broke. We were about to leave and he picked it up and pretended like he was going to hit me as soon as I got out of the kitchen. Well.... As he was winding up he perfectly placed the point of the pole. It perfectly smashed into one of the light bulbs in our chandelier type thing and COMPLETELY shattered it. There were tiny pieces of glass everywhere!! It was super funny!

This week I accidentally broke the back of a bench while we were tracting. We were tracting into a big apartment building. In Hungary (and other places) you have to ring through an intercom system to get people to let you in. Well... While my companion was ringing in and trying to talk to someone, I was leaning on the side of the bench.... I picked me feet up, for a reason I still don't know, and the back fell out from underneath me. The wood was super super rotten. Well. I was able to wedge it back together. A little later (same building) I noticed that I could do it better. So I kind of knocked it back apart and wedged it a little better. While I was wedging it again a little néni had seen me knock it back apart and came running out with a couple other people she had called and started screaming at us and telling us how new the wood was (How is the new wood rotten then?) and that she saw me break it. We tried to talk with her but she yelled and some of the other people just told us to get out of there. So we left. The annoying part was that she didn't even see me initially break it. She just saw when I was trying to put it back together better! 

Ever since the oreo has come to Hungary they have used it in almost every way they could. The Donut was actually pretty good!

Well... That is about all! Have a great week!!

Elder Biesinger

October 31: Holy COW this is a long week

Hi everyone!

So this week has been longer than usual. We usually have P-days on Monday but due to a Hungary holiday it go moved to Wednesday. Well... On Wednesday the library is closed and so we couldn't email using the library. All of the other internet cafes and whatever were all closed also due to various reasons! So after we walked around for like 2 hours of our precious day we just went back to our apartment and our mission president told us to start working again early yesterday and then take our emailing time today. Our P-days have been insane this transfer so far!! 

On Halloween we were tracting really late at night and we were walking past this bike shop and this HUGE dog slams up against the gate and I almost died! But I didn't jump very badly. My companion on the other hand could have joined the US Olympic team because he jumped so high! He felt so embarrassed about it later that he went into our room and sat by himself. When I went in there the window was wide open and the screen was up. I thought that he might of just gone out and then went around to the front door so I left the room and went and unlocked the front door and looked out. He wasn't there. While I was wondering where he was I heard him call our from our room. I went in and saw where he had been. Since he had felt bad he wanted to scare me (also because it was halloween and he is just a goofy person) and he crawled into my bed (our beds have like storage area beneath them and the mattress folds up to reveal the area.) and had sat there for 30 minutes waiting for me to come into the room! 30 minutes!!! Sadly it didn't work...

I made lasagna this week for the first time! It was incredible!! I have tried to cook a couple different things without success so far on my mission. I was really hoping that this would turn out! Well... I really like it, and my companion also says it is good!

We were going into the government building where we change our addresses on our residency cards that all missionaries get. Every transfer, if we move, we have to go and change where we are living. Well... when we were there the lady who was helping us got really concerned and was like "why are you moving so much! That is impossible to move this much!". Well.... sorry to tell you lady but as missionaries we kind of move around a little...

This week I bought a wire whisk and some measuring cups. I now have like 9 different kitchen appliances that I have bought here! I am the  moving kitchen!!

So. Pictures 1. super cool mug I got from my parents that I think my friend made! 2. Homemade madartej. Oh... so the whole bird milk thing a couple of emails ago is just a weird Hungarian thing. It is actually usually like eggnog or sweet vanilla pudding. But the place we got it did a really good job! That is also my companion 3. I am holding a beet that one of the members in our ward had gotten from his garden. He had like 3 of them!!! And they have this huge monster tomato plant that is growing out of a crack in their sidewalk! 4.We were throwing a party for a super rendes person in our ward and my companion was a table dancer! 5. This is a picture of a rose (not my companion). The person who drew it drew it in like 5 seconds. I am not even kidding. It was ridiculous!!

...

I wasn't done and I accidentally sent it. 6. My companion and I are making one Hungarian food a week and we made paprikás csirke this week! It turned out really well! the pictures on this email now. 1. There is an Aldis here in Hungary!! There is one in Medina (where I lived in NY) Super weird!! 2. My companion was cutting onions and he got so tired of crying he struggled to get saran wrap stuck to his face to protect himself! 3. And awesome apron that I got from someone in my family!! It says "You can call me elder Cook" Love it!!!! 

KK I am done now!! I wish you all a good week!!

Elder Biesinger

October 18: Bananas Heal Heart Disease

Hi People!

So we were walking out of the Spar (Grocery store here) and I had a bag with some Bananas in it. A man that was sitting around the corner came up to me and told us that he had a hear disease and needed my Bananas.... Who knew that Bananas were all you need for a heart disease!

Scary moment this week. So some Hungarians give "puszi" kisses. It is just the traditional cheek ones. Well... In Hungary you go right to left when you are giving them. Well... I was exhausted one day and we got a let in! (My first one) The lady was kind of crazy and spoke with a really weird accent. At the end she was giving us puszi and she was very enthusiastic about it with my companion and so I was kind of laughing and getting scared at the same time for my turn. Well, I botched the right left thing and went to the left and she almost just fullout kissed me! Luckily I have amazing reflexes and dodged to the right for a regular puszi! Super scary!

This week we had a hilarious District meeting. Our district leader was on splits with the Zone leaders and so we also had the Zone leaders there. We were working on tracting approaches on each other. It was great! But the best one was when Elder one was tracting into the two zone leaders (Elder 2 and 3). Elder 2 was playing the part of a grumpy middle aged man and Elder 3 was playing the part of his grandma who made him stay at the door. At the end Elder two was getting tired of the missionary and when his mom said that they would listen he turned to her and said "anya! öreg vagy. Azért buta vagy!" (Kind of like "Mom, you are old, therefore you are dumb!"), and Elder 3 ,perfect old lady imitation, turns to Elder two and says "Én vagok az anyad!". Now... Unless you know a Hungarian you may not get the crudeness of this phrase. I cannot tell you because was bad but if you want to email my dad, unless the term got slagy after he left, he may tell you what was said. But all of the missionaries laughed and Elder 3 promptly went back home and prayed for repentance! (Sorry if no one finds this funny, it was mostly a journal entry for me to look back on)

This week we had cleaning inspections and we wanted to see how could we could get our apartment before the couple came to check it. We  got it to about 60 degrees F plus wind chill. The couple was in and out in 10 minutes AND served us lunch! But we got Godly wrath on our heads! (The intent was not actually to get them in and out faster, it was just a joke thing. Our apartment was just super nice and clean so everything went fast) Our water heater wouldn't work!! So it stayed super cold for a while and our shower and faucet would't give us any hot water! Well... at 11:30 that night (Lost track of time) I finally found what was wrong with the water heater and fixed it (duh)! It was super easy once I found out what was wrong, which is super nice because I heard that it goes out once every transferish. And now that we don't have to call the Land Lord every time it will be easier!

Well. We got our transfer calls today. I am staying in Pápa and I am getting a companion named "Elder Hughes!. I have heard only good things about him so this next transfer should be a blast!

K. First pic A smile faced pastry that was cheap but kind of gross!

2nd. Did you know that you could milk birds? madar is bird and tej is milk! Hence the ice cream is bird milk flavor!

3rd A new members son loves to use our cameras! He took that without us knowing and I was wondering why I had the picture on here!

4th This is a farewell phrase from an elder who "died" (lost enthusiasm) right after he left the MTC. And he left having served the whole time. The picture goes along with his departing words above it. His actual departing words was the entire Bilbo Baggins quote about Butter being spread over  too much toast and about the journey. It was a sad farewell quote! But kind of funny, he was clever, just not enthusiastic. 

5th the phrase on this wall says (while you are reading this I am picking your pocket"... I read it and nothing happened! He must have been on lunch break!

6th The hole and dent on the box full of copies of the book of Mormon were caused by my little toe and the one next to it when I accidentally kicked the box. Needless to say it hurt!

7th This was the most vivid rainbow I have seen! It was perfectly clear. You could see every single color. And later it turned into an almost perfect double rainbow! It was pretty spectacular!

Well... That is all from the thriving city of Pápa! Talk to you all next Monday!

Elder Biesinger 

October 3: Spicy Bulls

​Sziasztok,

This week has been full of.... Hmmm. Nothing much. We had Zone training and I got a cool new coat. At the Zone training we had a cop come and talk about bike safety and Hungarian bike laws! Guess who was the reason they had him come? It was because of my companion and I! We left the Zone conference at about 4 and got home at 9:45! I love traveling to my cute little city! 

This week we had splits with the Zone leaders and I got one who is the most fluent person I have met who didn't have experience before with Hungarian. He sounded like a native and people thought he was. While we were on the street talking to people we got some super hot peppers from an old man (My real companion is eating one of them in the video below). Oh. At the end of the video he was like "it wasn't that bad". Five minutes later the real heat kicked in and he was frantically making chocolate milk to cool down his mouth and throat! Guess you shouldn't eat peppers that old men call "The Bull!"

This week we went to go billiards finding and we talked to a man and he said that he would come to General Conference this week. He came to a session and said that we could meet with him this week and that he would come to church with us next week! Super cool!

Well... I think that is all for this week! Hope all of you have a great week!

Elder Biesinger

P.S. BYU WON THIS WEEK!!!!

P.P.S. The ginger ale tastes like soap and I found some Mountain Dew! Although, I don't drink soda anymore :S

Sept 26: Hot dog diet and Bomb

Hi everyone,

So this week has been rough as far as missionary work goes, but fun in every other aspect!

This week we went on splits with the Tatabanyái Elders. I went with Elder Szuch again. Again we talked with a lot of people for longer then usual and we got a return appointment-kind-of-thing with one person who seemed interested and accepted a Book of Mormon and wants to go to English class!

Elder Szuch has had quiet the crazy life. One night he and his friends were driving and throwing water balloons at people from their car (illegal) and his friend, who plays baseball, hucked one at this girl and it hit her in the chest and made her stagger back... Well they neglected to consider her boyfriend who was a massive muscley guy. Well, they zoomed away and the angry boyfriend chased them. And then came the stop sign. They couldn't run it and the boyfriend dives through the sky roof and starts to strangle one of the boys in the car. The driver started to drive and kind of serve trying to get the guy out of the car (Only the Boyfriends upper half was through the sky roof) and was not successful. A cop drove by and pulled them over and since they both had charges for assault, the water balloon and then the strangling boyfriend, the cop canceled things out because it was just stupid teenagers!

The picture with the blue shirt over my nose is from a messy mess we had to clean up. A couple of weeks ago we did service in someones garden and they gave us a huge bag of vegetables (mostly tomatoes) and then a week later we did service in their garden again and they gave us a slightly smaller bag of produce. Both of which rotted before we could finish it. One of them was really bad and the bag had holes in it and so there was rotten tomato juice everywhere. It was incredibly stinky! But we cleaned it up!!

This week I have eaten only hot dogs for every single meal, besides while I was on splits and for breakfasts. I guess that isn't the worst diet right? It is just so freakin easy to do and then you can do something else with your lunch break!

This week we ran into a lot of youth who you greet us and say high! During one such interaction they were on the other side of the street going the opposite way and they yelled out and asked if we spoke English. We said yes, they said "hi" and laughed. As we were getting away one turned around and yelled the "B" word. I guess they learned what is important to learn when learning a different language right? 

I think that that is everything from this week.... oh... I forgot! The sock is my relaxing time apparel. There are four keys in our apartment that go to the doors. So my companion and I are in a war with locking each other in or out of places! They are the old-fashioned keys that have the big key holes, and if you look the door you can turn the key sideways and then the other side cannot stick their key into the hole and unlock it. Well... Some of my shorts don't have pockets, so now I just wear one sock and always have the key with me wherever I go and I never forget because everytime I switch socks I have to also switch the key! Perfect system!ű

Well... I have to go now! Good luck everyone with your weeks!!

Elder Biesinger

P.S. No missionaries were hurt from the bomb in Budapest!

Sept. 19: Chanting and special Néni powers...

Hi everyone!

So this week had some fun things happen! My companion has not been struck with the wrath of God yet so I can't complain. 

So this week we had to go to a government office in Győr (about an hour away) to get a residency permit for me so I wouldn't get kicked out of country... Well... We went there and we waited for about an hour in line, and we got in and the lady was starting to stamp papers and she stopped and was like "which county is Pápa in" and her partner was like "I think it is in Veszrém"... Well, it is! and since, evidently, not all government offices in Hungary are the same, now we have to go to Veszprém which is about two hours away and we have to go into Győr to get onto a train going to Vesyprém! So HUGE waste of a day :S

We found a lady who let us come back this week and is now a new investigator! The first time we talked to her through her gate she told us that she prayed a lot to the heavens and she said a prayer for us. It went something like this "tettetettetettetetetteamatetetememmamtetet" I swear she only used t's, m's, a's and e's. As far as I am aware there aren't those kinds of words in Hungarian, but I could be wrong! We went to her house several days later and a little into our conversation she informed us that she is a spiritual healer and she has powers to heal people physically. She told us how there was a man that was injured and he didn't believe that she could heal him, but she did her chant and "healed" him. Interesting.... And the she made us, like, hold out our hands, kind of like holding a big invisible bowl in front of you, and then she started chanting/praying and asked if we could feel her power that she was sending us... We weren't sure what we were supposed to feel, she told us  that it was a warm feeling. I guess our next lesson is on the Holy Ghost and how it manifests itself!

On Saturday we served a member of our branch. We picked up firewood for a couple hours and then had lunch, which I guess is a big meal here. We had soup, stuffed cabbage, and then some chicken and mashed potatoes. I almost died on the spot from overdose in food! After we left her house we went to teach a youngman some english then went to another members house to do service (about an hour after our lunch hour). When we got to his house he informed us that we were switching up the schedule and eating before we worked. We had lunch again and I was praying very, very, fervently that I would have room in my stomach to eat so that I didn't offend anyone. I was able to eat a decent amount and not die!! God works miracles! And luckily we were just picking up potatoes. The week before this we had helped him and he had given us like 20 pounds of potatoes. At first we weren't sure what to do iwth them. But all that changed yesterday when I made a trial batch of french fries. We are now going to experiment wit those potatoes and make them all into different kinds of fries to see what is the best! This will be a very unhealthy week!

So one video is an object lesson that I kind of came up with. I am sure someone has done it before but I have never seen it and so I will stake my claim! Both of the elders have their eyes closed and one of them is feeding the other one. The graphics weren't that great so I din't get very much of it. But it represents missionary work without the Holy Ghost!

The other video is of the rain storm that happened while we were picking potatoes. It was super crazy and the power went out several times during the storm. It was insane!

Picture are of places we have tracted and of our long walk from last week, since I didn't have my camera when I was emailing. 

Well... I think that that is all for this week!! I hope everyone's week goes well!

Elder Biesinger

Not for the faint at heart

Classic Hungarian shot

(Sigh...I miss this place)

There is a song that goes with this..."soka golum, soka sar" (lots of pigeons, lots of poo)

This reminds of the street our family lived on in Hungary