Coming Soon

Jeff's work has slowed down a lot the past month. Our part of the dome is finished--it just is being painted, filled with sugar beets, and landscaped. Jeff spends his day wrapping the business up here, selling things, and making sure Hungarians don't cheat the company out of money. We gave our nice car back about a month ago. It was sad.

outside our door--the parking lot

We have this other (cheaper) car that the other workers were using. Now that they're gone, it's ours for a bit.

The other day we were walking through the town square, looking for "Hungarian" souvenirs. "Zsolnay" is what we wanted. It is very pretty porcelain, and we figured something really little would do. It is hand painted with gold and such. We didn't see anything worth it at the little shop in Kaposvar, so we decided to look in the bigger city--Pecs--and see if we could get something there. On our way back to our car, Jeff spotted a little old bookstore! He knows how much I love books. We looked for the prettiest, oldest covers and bought those books:) It's cheaper than Zsolnay, so I was happy with our purchase.

I just noticed that some of them are upside down...I think...

We have had our translator over quite a bit lately. Her name is Bettina Fekete (Betti Black), and she's my age. She went on a mission to England and is going to BYU-Hawaii in January. She has been a huge help to Jeff at work, and we have her over for dinner and games or movies a lot. She and her family put together a little gift for us--Zsolnay! It's little and everything--exactly what we wanted. A true Hungarian souvenir:) They also gave us a little doily that her grandmother made; it's a traditional Hungarian design. This gift was perfect. It's even more special coming from Hungarians that we know and love.

Jeff and I gave the 5th Sunday lesson on home teaching and visiting teaching. They haven't done it yet, here in this branch. Some don't have cell phones, they all live so far away from each other, and sometimes can't afford a bus pass. But they're trying to start it up, because it is important--especially when the branch is so small and new and spread out. I hope things go okay. Jeff and I were asked to just talk about the basics. I thought Jeff did really well. He said you really are supposed to contact your home teacher for help before the bishop. The home teacher is the middle man; if you need help, he will let the bishop know, or help you himself and give the poor bishop a break.

For my part of the lesson, I listened to questions and answers on the mormon channel with Sister Beck. She said that when we report to Heavenly Father, he won't ask us if we did 100% of our visiting teaching. "He doesn't want numbers, he wants our hearts." He will ask if we loved and served the sisters we were assigned. Like they said in Conference, 15 minute lessons each month don't cut it. We need to pray for guidance for that specific sister, then listen to the Spirit and actually DO what he tells us to. I hope they do well here. We are excited for our branch; there are going to be 3 more baptisms by the end of the month:)

Conference weekend was different, but of course it was wonderful, too. We are 8 hours ahead, so it doesn't start until 6pm here. It goes 6-8pm, and the second session is 10-12am...so we watch the later session the next day. That means it is one loooooooong Sunday. We started it off by sleeping in, then I got breakfast in bed by using one of my coupons from my Valentine's Day gift:)

Hungarian paper is longer than the standard U.S. size

My breakfast is an "alma" (apple) pastry, with yogurt and chocolate granola. For Valentine's day, Jeff got me this notebook to draw in, and it had a coupon book for me to use up while we're here. One of the coupons is for breakfast in bed. We talked with both of our families that day, and it's crazy to think that we'll be seeing them all so soon!