If you can't tell by my email titles every week, I might be a little bit obsessedwith Buda. For those of you who don't know, Buda is actually just half of the city of Budapest divided by the Duna river. The Hungarians don't actually refer to it as Buda, it's all just Budapest to them. And they always call Budapest just "Pest". So we always sound silly as missionaries when we say "Buda". But for us it is Buda because to us it is a proselyting area, just like to us Pest (the other side of the river) is another area. The bridges are like neutral territory. If we want to live on the edge we go onto the brigdes.
There is an island in the middle of the Duna that they turned into a huge park and since it is beautiful and there are always lots of people, we do a lot of tabling there. Tabling is where we have a table set up with copies of the Book of Mormon and other materials on it and we talk to people or hand them flyers as they walk by. I love the island but soon we won't be allowed to go anymore because the weather is getting too nice and people will start getting skimpy since this is Europe.
Even though our work isn't super easy here, I just love this place so much. It is for sure second only to Debrecen in terms of favorite areas. I love the city itself so much. It is beautiful and I love the feel of it. Especially this side of the Duna. It seems a little older and more austere. There is a road and a sidewalk that lines the Duna and at night it is soo gorgeous to go there and look at the big Parliament building that is across the river. It is a masterpeice of architecture and it is always lit up at night. Maybe when they build a temple in Hungary the will put it by the Duna so that it can glow too.
A few tales from the week include us talking to a crazy man on the street named Tamás who was in prison and then became a believer when his friend died. He had a picture depicting her pulling him out of hell tattooed onto his left bicep. He said that "they are writing a book about my life" and he wanted us to help him translate part of it into English or something. He was hilarious.
A cooler story is that we talked to another lady on the street who had just moved from Provo with her two kids after getting a divorce. She is Hungarian but moved to the U.S. and married an LDS guy there. She never got baptized but all her friends were LDS and she even knows of a few Hungarians here who are married to Americans. She says she wishes she could stay in America but she knows that she can't raise her kids without the emotional support of her family being near. She was so excited to talk to us and said she would happily meet with us and wants to come to church. Unfortunately she didn't answer when we called and didn't show up to church but I think we will be able to contact her eventually.
This is the last week of the transfer and then I will only have one left. Sister Dinehart and I totally love eachother so we keep joking that this will be a rough break up for us. I will most likely stay in Buda but they are threatening to send me to a part of the city that is further out because the missionaries that live there now are the Assistants and they need to live closer to the mission home for meetings and such. But really they are just coveting my apartment because it's really nice. I don't care about the apartment but I do want to stay here because all my investigators are here and I love them. We have some cool new people that I want to work with. If I do stay then this will be the very first time in my entire mission that I will stay somewhere a full two transfers.. So I'm praying to stay and trying to convince them to switch with another companionship that is close to the mission home too.
Wishing you all the best and a great week! Much Love,
Naegle nővér
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