A New Month

 Elder Nyman celebrated his 19th birthday this past week.  He is our fabulous greenie.  He is so good at the language and everything else;  he is amazing! His mother would be proud!  He and Elder Cutler are now companions and besides being great elders they are a lot of fun.

SOPRON

 As part of our Hungarian experience we got permission to travel to Sopron to see another part of Hungary.  This is a quaint little city, just like you would expect European cities to look, and it is right on the Austrian border.

 These are some Roman ruins that were uncovered.

 The old wall.

 Cobblestone streets

 This view is from the top of the fire tower.  This is the old part of town; the inner circle.  There is a church, and a statue is right in the middle. I love the tile roofs.  The statue (which you can't see) is giving thanks for surviving the plague back in the 1200's I think.

 Sister Weberg and I atop the fire tower

 The mountains in the distance are Austria

 We went to a park that commemorates the 1989 Pan-European picnic.  It was the first breach in the Iron Curtain.  It happened on the border of Austria and Hungary in August 1989.  The Berlin wall came down in November 1989.  This statue depicts the crumbling of socialism and people rising up out of it  to freedom.   It's a pretty amazing story.  We are so grateful for freedom.

 Virgil just had to walk over the border into Austria.

 This statue in the middle of Sopron depicts 3 important dates in Hungarian history  The one holding the barbed wire is the 1989 crossing the Iron curtain into Austria.  Everyone who crossed was given a piece of barbed wire.

 Sopron -- a pretty city

 The fire tower

 We also took a bus and visited this estate of Szechenyi Istvan, a very prominent Hungary about 150 years ago.  The whole trip was great! Sister Weberg is very good at navigating and getting us on and off the right trains.  We had nice weather; couldn't have been better.

DISTRICT MEETING

 We meet once a week with the four missionaries from Niregyhaza (sp? for district meeting).  They are part of our district so we get to know them pretty well also.  We think at next transfers we may lose Sister Ruperd.  It has been wonderful getting to know her.  She is really a great missionary--humble and hardworking.

 We think we may also lose Elder Guytan also (you never know for sure--they think when they've been in a place for 2-3 transfers chances are good they will get transferred.)  He is a fairly new elder.  Niredgyhaza was his first area.  He is great also.  I'm amazed at the wonderful missionaries we have.

 The District.  They always go for pizza afterwards.

SUNDAY DINNER

 Wonderful Agnes is a family history missionary is Debrecen.  She is a Hungarian so I asked her if she would help me make a Hungarian dinner for Sunday.  She is such a sweetheart.  It was just the two of us and we had fun trying to communicate but we did fairly well.  She came over Saturday afternoon and we spent 3 hours making paprika chicken, cucumber salad, and nukedli.  We just reheated it on Sunday.

 Chicken paprika bubbling in the pot

 Making nukedli was work!  The dough was really sticky (Agnes said it was bad flour), but with a lot of muscle, got it done.

This is my Hungarian family.  These are the people that I love.  Virgil, Sister Weberg, Elder Nyman, Sisters Kernnedy and Oberhansley, Elder Cutler, Michael, Dori, Agnes, Jonas.

This Sunday dinner was especially nice.  I asked the missionaries to sing a song in our primary program on December 8 so we practice every Sunday after dinner (A Child's Prayer--beautiful!)  After we practiced Elder Cutler wanted to play the piano so we sang some hymns.  Music  brings the spirit.  It was so beautiful and I felt so much love for these wonderful people.  It's such a blessing to work with them.  There will be changes, of course, and we will love the new ones also, but this group has really been special.

A special note:  I had record-breaking numbers in primary on Sunday!  Three children!  All three children were there!  Also the Primary President and Chorister.  It was great!