10th Mission Report 22 April to 27 May 2007
We are doing well and staying fairly healthy here in Budapest. Sister Dukelow had a short bout of indigestion but is over it and enjoying eating everything she wants. We both went to the dentist for check-ups and each of us had only one cavity.
Two weeks ago we were wearing coats because of a cold spell but it has definitely turned warm now. Elder Dukelow asked the other missionaries if what the women were wearing (not wearing may have been a more accurate question) would get worse as the weather turns from warm to hot. The young men replied it gets so bad in the summer that they cannot even speak to women on the street because of their inappropriate attire. We will keep our eyes open and keep you posted on related developments.
The good news to report is that if we get through the last four days of May without an accident we will have had two months with no damage to our cars. We had one lost telephone this past month. Only one person went to a hospital for a knee problem. Our housing situation is fairly stable but we urgently need to find an apartment in the next three days. We thought we had a deal last week but the real estate agent wanted to have an instant eviction clause written into the contract in case the neighbors complained about the missionaries. He refused to believe we would be quiet tenants with no loud late night parties. We could not live with that because we have a 30 day termination notice in our standard contracts as a non-negotiable factor.
Our on-going saga of interesting experiences with Vodafone continues. On Mothers’ Day the missionaries were permitted to call home for 30 minutes at the mission’s expense. We set up the deal on Friday with Vodafone customer service. It was a struggle because the customer service rep kept telling us our phones would not work in the United States. Finally we convinced him we could call from Hungary to the United States and all he needed to do was program their computer to permit such calls on Sunday. Sunday came and at 0630 missionaries started calling Elder Dukelow to complain that their calls to their mothers were blocked. A call to Vodafone revealed the customer service rep had entered the instructions on Friday to remove international call blocking from our system on Mothers’ Day but no one had implemented the instructions. The customer service lady on duty on Sunday had no idea how to make the change. About noon the calls started going through and everyone got to call his mother. We never did find out who reported the sisters phone stolen as some type of prank.
We now have marigolds blooming in our window garden from seeds planted by Elder Dukelow. He also planted morning glory seeds behind the mission office building but they apparently did not grow. We are getting more and more plants at home and in the office as the weeks go by.
We visited Szeged this weekend to provide training and speak in church. If you want to know the details, we can send you our trip report. We also inspected six missionary apartments on this trip and found them all in good shape and clean. This is the Pentecostal weekend and it seems many communities are having “children’s day” activities. We saw a carnival, a circus, and a Hungarian version of a rock concert. The star singer was wearing what could be called a romper suit with huge pockets that stuck out to the sides. Her voice was good and she was certainly energetic as she presented her songs. These folks apparently also believe volume equates to quality in their music.
We also had a very nice supper outside at the Methusalem restaurant in Szeged. We both started with strawberry in yogurt soup. Sister Dukelow had salmon and shrimp on creamy pasta and Elder Dukelow had a pork steak buried under tomato sauce with many vegetables (almost like salsa but definitely Hungarian and not Latin American in taste).
We had been having regular gatherings of 5 or 6 people on Monday nights at our apartment and inviting people who were new in the church. Our goal was to introduce them to the idea of Family Home Evening. We thought we were doing a good job teaching them the basic ideas of Family Home Evening. We would sing a song, have a simple gospel discussion, play a game, and then have refreshments. One of our new members, Gyorgy, Balint’s mother received an assignment from the local church leaders to hold similar gatherings at the church for the new members. We cautioned her it would not be the same because it was not in someone’s home. We went the first time to make sure at least some people were there. She had 13 people show up including 6 missionaries. We thought she did a very good job. We decided not to go last week because some other missionaries were planning on bringing new people. We heard later she had 21 people show up including four missionaries and several friends brought by other friends. Who knows where this will all end?
We received an interesting referral recently from a non-member who had met some missionaries in Switzerland. This woman said she had a friend in an assisted living home in Budapest who was interested in religion and speaking English. The friend, Kiss Csaba, has a degree in theology, a good command of English, and is working on a degree in informatics. He is severely handicapped with very limited use of his limbs and mouth but he is also extremely smart and talented. He operates his computer with a stylus attached to a headband and can type with his head almost as fast as a normal person using their fingers. He gets around in an electric wheel chair that he operates with his head on a joy stick. When he talks he is very hard to understand. He has a beautiful and sensitive fiancé who can understand him perfectly and often translates for him. Elder Dukelow guided him the mile from his home to the mission office the first time so he would know how to get there without encountering stairs. The next time he came by himself. The missionaries are amazed at how smart he is because he sometimes corrects their English. They are happy to be teaching him.
Elder Dukelow continues to improve his Hungarian skills and Sister Dukelow continues to pray for the gift of tongues. A bi-lingual sister named Noemi who has two degrees from BYU comes to the mission office once a week and listens to Elder Dukelow tell her faith promoting stories in Hungarian. It is good for both of them.
Two weeks ago on Friday we had the large trash collection day in our district of Budapest. We were surprised to find Gypsies watching each street starting on Thursday morning. They were there to stake their claims to each block and pick out anything of value that might be thrown out. Unfortunately for them most of the stuff thrown out was of no value to anyone but this apparently did not faze them in the least. They apparently stayed on the streets from early Thursday morning until Saturday morning when the last of the junk was collected.
Sister Dukelow needed some skirts and blouses so she checked out the big mall after her visit to the dentist. After looking at the prices, she decided to go to a little second hand shop next to our green grocer. She found 2 light colored skirts and a blouse that would work for her. All three items cost 4150 Forints or about $20. This will give her something other than suits to wear during the hot summer months.
One morning we were surprised to find two men fully equipped with rock climbing gear at our office door. They were there to inspect the outside of our building. They spent the morning crawling around like “Spider Man” checking for loose bricks and stucco. Last week we had two other men power wash the outside of our building. We watched with amazement as two window cleaners working without any safety equipment balanced on the four inch wide window ledges of the building across the street from our apartment.
Hungarian ants apparently have a use for grout. We have ants working from time to time in our shower. They are hauling away the grout. We spray them with insecticide to discourage them but they keep coming back.
One Sunday in May an American tourist couple showed up at church. The man was Archie Albaugh who had been with Elder Dukelow as they went to Germany in December 1962 on their missions. Elder Albaugh almost missed the flight from New York because he pretended to be sick. He laid down in the Swiss Air waiting room when the group arrived from Salt Lake City. He said he would stay there for our three hour wait because he was sick and the rest of us could walk around the airport. As soon as we left, he jumped up and caught a bus for Long Island to visit his aunt. Swiss Air decided to fly an hour early as everyone had already checked in. It was only as a result of intense prayer by the four missionaries on the plane that the plane stopped on the tarmac and the door was opened so this errant young man could rejoin his group. Elder Dukelow had already prepared a telegram for Elder Packer, who at that time was in charge of the missionaries, and left it with the ticket agent to be sent in the event Elder Albaugh did not return in time to catch this flight.
We had an unusual mix up in our office this past month. A missionary’s mother asked by e-mail if she could send her son a package with some medicine to be carried by a doctor friend who was visiting Budapest. The doctor would leave the package at his hotel desk and we would have someone pick it up. Elder Dukelow asked some sister missionaries who live near the hotel to pick up the package which they did and delivered it to the son. The elders who work in the mission office later read the e-mail and not realizing the matter was already settled, went to the hotel and asked for the package for this missionary. The missionary has an unusual Slavic family name that is very much like ours but it is spelled starting with Tch. The person at the hotel checked and found two items left for a person with the same name and the office elders returned with a sports bag and an expensive roller bag. They were surprised when they called the missionary and he told them he already received the package from his mother. We then had a heart to heart discussion about coordinating activities in the office and not assuming something needed to be done without checking with others who may have already handled the action. The missionaries said it was highly unlikely that two more items would be left at the hotel for someone with this unusual name unless they were for our missionary. We looked into the bags and found they contained clothes and toiletries for a woman. Ooops. Elder Dukelow told the young men to take the bags back to the hotel. They were reluctant to do this and called to find out whether anyone was missing these bags. The hotel personnel assured them they had received the correct items and no one was missing anything. It took two weeks but they finally returned the two bags to the hotel because they were certainly not ours. Strange that no one was asking about them at the hotel.
We have 5 elders and 2 sisters missionaries coming in on Tuesday from the missionary training center in Provo, Utah. Wednesday is transfer day for many of our missionaries and Thursday 2 sisters and 2 elders will leave the mission. This will be a busy and exciting week.
We hope your week is exciting too.
Love,
Elder and Sister Dukelow
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