Old mission reports number 6

Dear Family and Friends, this is our 6^th mission report; 12 Dec through 7 Jan 07. Just delete if you are not interested.

The Saturday before Christmas we went to the open air Christmas market in the city and purchased some very nice blue cotton aprons. These aprons are made in Szentendre (Saint Andrews), one of Europe’s favorite Hungarian tourist destinations, in some ways the Williamsburg of Hungary. Afterwards we went to a nice Greek restaurant next to the Danube. Sister Dukelow had a big tossed salad (peppers, lettuce, mushrooms, olives, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, squash, and more) with salmon. Elder Dukelow had lamb kebabs with assorted veggies.

After lunch we went to the Vajdahunyad vara, a fantasy castle built by a rich Hungarian family that is now a city treasure. In the castle was a display of a hundred or more nativity scenes constructed by Hungarian craftsmen. Some were very carefully carved wooden displays or beautiful glass and ceramic portrayals of the nativity and others looked like a 5^th grade class homework project done on the school bus on the morning it was due. One crèche particularly caught our attention and it is in the attached picture.

Christmas was quiet in our home as we planned to have a single sister over but at the last moment she found she could not come due to a family obligation. She is supposed to come next Wednesday. New Years was quite noisy with many very loud explosions nearby but we stayed in bed because there are very little fireworks or rockets to watch in our neighborhood.

Between Christmas and New Years, we did a pretty thorough inventory of our supply room in the basement of the mission office. We could find no trace of a prior inventory and many of the items we found were obsolete. We found we had many gaps that need to be filled. Some prior person who was in charge of ordering supplies apparently thought it would be a good idea to get some copies of the Book of Mormon in every language in which it is printed. Hence, in our supply room we have copies of the Book of Mormon in almost every Polynesian language you can imagine, and several African dialects you cannot imagine. We do not know when the last Polynesian in Budapest asked for a Book of Mormon, but if one ever does in the future, we probably have one ready for him.

Following the big inventory we tried to ship out our annual curriculum to our mission congregations. Elder Dukelow had asked the leaders to let him know what they needed and sent them an inventory list of items available from the Area Distribution Center in Germany. This may have been a mistake because one leader wanted five copies of each of the seven Primary manuals even though he only has about 12 children total in his Primary. Some of the unit leaders admitted they did not know what they were asking for but it sounded interesting on the inventory list so they requested it.

On New Years Day we did missionary apartment inspections in the city and in Kecskemet, a small city thirty miles south of Budapest. The roads were wet and very muddy which made the driving unpleasant. We were able to get nine apartments inspected and found them all clean and safe. One apartment which really surprised us was a long narrow dwelling on the ground floor of a big house. You enter through the bedroom at one end, the living room is in the middle, and the kitchen and toilet are at the far end of this unit. These are connected rooms with no hallway. The shower is in the kitchen. Some missionaries are quite uncomfortable taking their shower in the kitchen.

We have found that giving the missionaries a couple of days notice before an apartment inspection usually allows them time to get things cleaned up if they don’t keep them clean all the time. We can usually tell if the cleaning was a last minute effort. When we close apartments, those that are clean and well cared for are a joy to close; those that are a mess are a real headache to close.

Hodmezovasarhely, one of our newly opened cities produced six new members in December. They were baptized in Szeged in the far southern part of Hungary in a service where a total of nine people were baptized. We had to lend them some white clothes from Budapest. The other newly opened cities have not done so well but we are now holding church services in Kaposvar and Bekescsaba. The missionaries are excited in the new cities because of the welcome reception they receive when they talk to people. Most of the missionaries are hoping they will be selected to open another new city.

Buda Ward was packed today but the International Branch had a very poor turnout. Balint, the boy who reads with Sister Dukelow and was baptized on 25 Nov, now turned 12. He received his Primary graduation certificate today from the Bishop in our Sacrament meeting and sat with the missionaries and other men in our Priesthood meeting today. It is exciting to see the progress in the lives of new members of the church here. Some of the Hungarian church leaders want new members to somehow prove themselves before they are given any responsibility in the church. This leads to all sorts of complications. We are working on an extensive training program with the other senior couples to help the leadership in our various congregations learn to trust their new members with simple assignments as a way to help them grow in the Gospel.

We bought ourselves an office table from Ikea on 23 December and carried it home on the metro (subway). It is about a 5 minute walk to the metro from our house. We rode to the end stop and another 5 minute walk to IKEA and since the table was light and in 5 parts, a hollow core table top and 4 metal legs we could do it. We need a place for people to sit when they come to dinner and we need a place to study. We already have 2 folding chairs and we wanted to buy two more but they were out of stock. Maybe next time we can buy two chairs. Finding a large rectangular table cloth was a trick but we did it.

We have had three groups of people to dinner and the new table works fairly well. We put it next to our sofa; put our pillows on the sofa to give those who sit there some extra height and then our four chairs on the other three sides of the table.

The office missionaries came to dinner on Christmas Eve. We had the Hauck family over on 29 Dec and greatly enjoyed the evening. The Haucks came to Budapest several years ago as Church Educational System missionaries and then stayed on after their mission. Brother Hauck is the second counselor in the Budapest Stake Presidency and the general “get things done” person in Hungary. He worked for an insurance company in Germany before he came to Hungary and now does business consulting which makes him travel quite a bit. The Haucks are an extremely strong family.

We had the Doyle family to dinner on 6 Jan. Jake Doyle is a very interesting fellow, tall, strong features, nice looking, with a pony tail. He is an American of Jewish/Roman Catholic background from New York who works here as a journalist. He has many good friends in the Church but has not joined yet. His wife, Lucinda, is Russian from near St. Petersburg. She is a small dark, very good looking woman with a taste for extreme fashion, e.g. four by six inch polished stone belt buckles. Lucinda enjoys the attention she gets from the missionaries and has no real desire to join the Church but comes regularly because she likes the fellowship and the spirit she feels in our meetings. Their son, Eldar, six years old is a very smart little human dynamo, with so much energy it is hard to keep him entertained for very long. He has a good command of English and Hungarian and understands Russian but has not yet learned to read Russian.

We saw on the Budapest Public Transportation web site that retired people can buy discount monthly and annual passes which would allow us to ride all the public transportation within the city for about $16 per month, less than half the normal monthly pass price. The first time we tried to buy the passes, the lady was willing to sell us passes but we did not have our passport size photos with us so we could not make the purchase. The second time we ran into some unfriendly women who said the discount passes are only for Hungarians citizens not for foreigners. The third time we tried to buy the passes we were asked by some friendly ladies to produce documentation that would prove we are retired. We have no such documentation so we still have no discount passes.

Hungarians love to smoke and some just love to carry cigarettes. We followed a very stylish couple for an entire city block who were both carrying lighted cigarettes but never put them to their lips. The woman was wearing brown sued knee high tight boots with three big rhinestone buckles on each ankle. Her pants were rolled up to above her knees and her cigarette was just part of her accessories. We watch to see if others who carry cigarettes actually smoke them and some do but others just seem to want to carry them for their cachet value.

Our winter continues to be mild. We had one morning with light snow on the cars but generally the coldest days and nights are not much below freezing. We are wearing our winter coats because walking around in thirty degree weather is a bit cold for our light raincoats. We notice some people like extra big scarves, something like wrapping a table cloth around ones neck, but apparently it keeps them warm.

Our long period of uninterrupted good health came to an end at Christmas when Elder Dukelow caught a cold and then unfortunately shared it with Sister Dukelow. Then on 1 January after coming home from our long day of apartment inspections we had a big bowl of chili followed by a big bowl of popcorn for dessert. That was too much for Sister Dukelow’s delicate digestive track that was already struggling with too many days of too much chocolate and it refused to work properly. So Sister Dukelow is slowly recovering from this incident and has vowed to be more careful in what she eats.

This weekend the people in Budapest are putting out their expired Christmas trees on the sidewalks for collection. Many of the trees are still quite green and others have absolutely no needles left on the branches. In Berlin the elephants in the zoo are apparently enjoying eating the green Christmas trees. Elder Dukelow wonders whether the elephants spit out the left over metal icicles but they probably just chew it all up without any concerns.

We are greatly enjoying our mission. We need more senior couples. If you are able to do so, put your paperwork in now. Don’t worry about being assigned to an office wherever you go. The work in a mission office is difficult but critically necessary and we do get a chance to teach the Gospel in the evenings and on weekends. We heard from our friends from the MTC who are in the Ukraine and we are thankful we are in Budapest. We appreciate your love and prayers on our behalf.