Old mission reports number 11

11^th Mission Report (28 May-14 July 2007)

In response to popular demand, we are sending this report to all of you. Just hit the delete if you are not interested.

Late in May on a Saturday we visited, Rozalia, an older Hungarian woman at her home in a small village, Pusztaszabolc, at the end of the local train line. She was a bit concerned because she speaks no English and she had no confidence in our Hungarian so she also invited some young missionaries. The young missionaries did not show up because they had other things to do but we got along fine. Rozalia had several dictionaries out but we did not need them. She has a little farm on a property no bigger than half an acre where she raises pigs, chickens, ducks, and every imaginable kind of vegetable that will grow in Hungary. No space is wasted on her property. She has two houses but the second house which was intended to replace the first house had some legal zoning problems so it is still under construction and now houses the pigs and chickens. We came home with ten pounds of fresh peas. Since then we have received two deliveries of zucchini and more peas. We share the zucchini with the other missionaries but keep the peas to ourselves. They are delicious.

As we travel around the country we see numerous fruit and vegetable stands. It seems like everyone is selling watermelons these days. Watermelons are called Greek melons in Hungarian. We think the watermelons come from outside Hungary but they are delicious nevertheless. We saw one pick yourself orchard that had apricots and peaches. People were there picking. We have enjoyed cantaloupe, cherries, and strawberries. The apricots we bought were not very good. A nectarine we bought was as hard as an apple but still tasty.

Every block in Budapest has a flower shop and one if not two hair dressers. Most blocks also have a small grocery store and a tavern. Every other block has a green grocer. Some stores are very small, about six feet wide and twenty feet deep. Many stores are in the basement with a door below the level of the sidewalk.

A friend of ours named Zsacky (sounds like Jackie) Andrea brought Sister Dukelow a beautiful bouquet of roses, laurel, and other flowers. Andrea has many useful talents; and floral arranging is one of them. Everything about this bouquet was symbolic; it was even shaped like a heart. Andrea’s mother’s name is Rose and her daughter’s name is Laura. Andrea has a degree in theology and is close to joining the church. She has many questions but she knows it is true.

On 19 June we visited the Parliament building and other sites of Pest with a group of other missionaries. The Parliament building is very beautiful and has many stairs inside. You can read all about it on the internet. We also visited Saint Stevens Basilica in Pest. It is very ornate inside. That afternoon, we left the other missionaries and took a look at the brass shoes memorial on the banks of the Danube near Parliament. During the last days of World War Two, the Nazis rounded up the last of the Jews in Budapest and took them to the river. They made them undress and take off their shoes. They were then shot and dumped into the river. The brass shoes are a fitting memorial but very hard to find unless you specifically look for them. We will attach a picture.

June was a significant month for us as we have now gone a historic three months without an automobile accident involving our missionaries. We have two new cars waiting to be delivered next week and another one on order. We did have one missionary’s phone and one wallet stolen by pickpockets. Elder Dukelow jinxed himself with his bragging. On Sunday 14 July, a lady backed into President Gasser’s car in the church parking garage.

On 30 June we took the chair lift to the Janos Hill, the tallest point in Buda. It was quite interesting because we rode silently through the air above people’s back yards, a Seventh Day Adventist Church, and among the trees to the top of the mountain. Then we hiked a short way up to Elizabeth’s tower and looked out over the city and the surrounding country. It was cool and a bit rainy so there were no crowds. We are sure to go again on a sunny day.

The last of June we also made a trip to Szeged to do some training and speak in church. Elder Dukelow was asked to use a translator because some of the people in Szeged could not understand him when he speaks Hungarian. This was disappointing but he is now working harder than ever to speak correctly. He spoke last Sunday in our small beginning branch in Bekescsaba and the people there seemed to understand what he was saying without too much difficulty. He talked about the parallels between Hungarian and Mormon pioneers. The people were fascinated by the lists of Hungarian and Mormon inventors that he reviewed. The Hungarians are proud of their inventors and scientists.

It seems like every time we visit Szeged they have some event going on in their main square. This time it was a summer festival with hundreds of picnic tables and dozens of vendors selling good things to eat and drink. We were fortunate to be able to see a beauty pageant and a belly dancing exhibition. Some of the young ladies in the beauty pageant did not seem to be having much fun. The belly dancing was good but one of the ladies was suffering from a wardrobe malfunction and had to keep hitching up her costume to avoid losing her skirt.

We did not eat at the festival but went across the street to the Methusalem Restaurant for our dinner. Sister Dukelow had the same meal she had ordered there before, strawberry cream soup and pasta with seafood. It was not as good as the first time. Elder Dukelow tried the beef tenderloin stuffed with cheese. That was excellent.

We had another memorable meal at our favorite Greek restaurant in Pest on 27 June. It was one of our senior missionaries, Sister Giauque’s, birthday so we joined the Giauques and President and Sister Gasser for this meal. Sister Dukelow was unusually adventuresome and tried the baked artichoke heart menu which will be the last time she will order that particular dish. Elder Dukelow had the lamb cutlets which was very good.

When we visited Sopron a month ago we asked the young missionaries for their recommendation for a good restaurant. They gave us an enthusiastic unanimous recommendation for their favorite place to eat. It turned out to be a pancake house. Mediocre food (lousy food may be more accurate) but you get what you pay for.

On that trip to Sopron the air conditioning for our train car did not function and it was hot. Sister Dukelow went to another car to see if the air was working. It was so we moved from our reserved seats to unoccupied seats in the cooler car. We sat across from a young woman who had just finished her bar examinations and was starting her career as an attorney in the national department of education. She was impressed with Elder Dukelow’s ability to correctly use the Hungarian word endings.

Our weather that was very hot in the middle of May turned cool for the last few weeks. We needed to sleep under blankets. It is suppose to get warm again this weekend. Maybe because we did not have a real winter we will not get a real summer. We are not complaining and we still have half of July and all of August before the summer normally starts to cool off.

On 5 July we had a fire inspection of our building. We passed. We had a pre-inspection two weeks earlier and one of the things that had to be corrected was a big supply of Books of Mormon that Elder Dukelow had stacked on the floor near the gas meter. All those boxes had to be moved to a different location in his supply room.

The supply room was also the scene of a big adventure about four weeks ago when the sump pump stopped working one weekend. We called the people who are suppose to take care of such things and they said they would send someone right out to take a look. No one came on Monday. The sump filled up to the top and Elder Dukelow used a small bucket to bail out the sump. We called and e-mailed again for help with no response other than assurances that someone was on their way. No one came so Elder Dukelow and the office staff of young missionaries took matters into their own hands on Thursday. They dismantled the sump pump and found it had become completely plugged up with gunk, little pieces of plastic bags and packing tape that had accumulated over the years. Even after cleaning the impeller thoroughly so it would spin freely it would not start. We bailed out the sump again. It was raining heavily so we called again and we were told the repair man could not come that day because there was too much rain.

Friday, a week after the initial call, the repair man came and after his careful examination of the defective pump which we had cleaned, decided it was broken and needed to be replaced. Our building custodian told us we should not have messed with the pump because we did not know what we were doing. After the new pump was installed, Elder Dukelow checked again to make sure it was working correctly and found the sump full to the brim again. He drained the sump, called the people back and had the repair man set the pump switch float lower so we could have a few inches of water in the bottom of the sump rather than it being full to the brim.

In all this sump pump business we learned another quirky thing about our building. The baptismal font which can hold approximately 500 gallons of water drains into the sump in the supply room. If we would have had a baptism while the sump pump was broken we would have had a big soggy mess in the supply room because we have many boxes of books and pamphlets stored on the floor as we have run out of shelf space.

This week we sent 13 missionaries home and gained five new missionaries. The group that we sent home included all four of the professional musicians who performed concerts throughout the mission last year. The new group of four elders and one sister seem to be a very enthusiastic bunch who were not fazed in the least that their luggage did not arrive with them. The last of their bags finally arrived today, only three days late. We have had delayed luggage take a week to be delivered.

There is a big Catholic church near the mission office. One Saturday the Catholic Church was the scene of a big traditional Hungarian handcrafts market. The ladies were dressed in their traditional costumes and had made many very nice items for sale. Elder Dukelow liked the beautifully embroidered little girls dresses, thinking his granddaughters would like them but practical Sister Dukelow said, “No, no, no.”

On 14 July, we went on an outing to the Gellert Hill. This hill is where Russell M. Nelson dedicated Hungary for the preaching of the gospel on Easter, 27 April 1987. President Gasser takes all the arriving new young missionaries to this hill so they can look over the city and the Danube River and enjoy the spirit of the place.

Our outing started off with a sad event. A man had died (no details available at this time) and his body was on the streetcar tracks. Many policemen were at the scene and the streetcar was not permitted to take its normal route. The streetcar driver told us to all get off and take a substitute bus that would stop across the street. The substitute bus never came but we took a different bus and got to where we needed to go.

There were many tourists on Gellert Hill today because it was a beautiful sunny day. There are also many vendors selling all kinds of souvenirs on the hill. We looked at the only three remaining statues from the Communist era in Budapest. All the rest of the communist statues were collected and moved to the statue park outside the city. There is a 120 feet high pedestal on top of the hill with a 46 foot tall statue of a woman holding a palm leaf that is called the freedom statue. This tall statue can be seen from many places in Budapest.

We took a bus to the top of the hill but walked back down because we wanted to eat our picnic in the forest. On our way down the hill we heard children playing and found them at a very long, huge plastic tube slide, much like one would see at a water park. The kids would bunch up in a group and slide down together screaming at the top of their lungs. Then they would jump up and run back up to the top to slide again. Too bad we had our nice clothes on because we could have slid on that slide. Next time we will have to wear our casual clothes, ha ha.

We went to a double baptism service in the afternoon. It was special because one of our departing missionaries who was picked up by his family last Thursday performed the baptism of a man he had been teaching for the past few months. The other baptism was also special because a man who had joined the Church around Christmas baptized a friend who he had taught the Gospel. The talks were given by new members. The special musical number was by a convert of less than one year. This entire service was extraordinary because of the new members’ participation. It is wonderful to see these people progress in the church. We also had four or five investigators at this baptismal service.

Saturday was also memorable because we heard that thanks to many friends and relatives, our daughter Laura was packed out of her apartment in Alexandria, VA, and started on her U-haul journey to Utah. She will be traveling with and then living with her Aunt Ann in Orem, next to Provo.

Our daughter Gwyndolynn and her family are now looking for a new home near Salt Lake City. Our daughter Rebecca and her husband, Sergio, have just moved to a new home in the Phoenix area. It looks like our daughter Lydia’s family is the only one not moving at the moment. It is a good thing that e-mail addresses don’t change.