FROM SEPT 8:

So this week was a good week! We taught S the Plan of Salvation, and and I think it went well. Oh, I love him. We also went to B’s and T and J were both there, and so we were able to teach them them, too, so that was great! Teaching P.O.S. so much has made me just think of my family and how incredibly grateful I am! Seriously, I’m not just saying that, you are all so wonderful and I love you all so much! Thanks for being the best family ever--and now to have the kind, sweet, smart, lovely K join our family soon when she and J get married! How did we get so lucky??

We also went to P's in our ward and she made us this egg-onion-pepper soup thing that was suuuuper yummy! I know some of the food sounds really weird, but don’t doubt me when I say it's actually HEAVEN. On Wednesday we tracted this old guy who had lived in Australia for like 40 years and so he had this cool Hungarian-Australian accent and he was suuuper proud of having lived in Australia. He was like "come look at my lawn and my house, this is how the Australians do it!" --both of which were super neat and clean. Then we saw a different P from our ward and talked to her for a bit.  She is seriously the CUTEST, tiniest little thing with the tiniest little voice you’ve ever heard. AHHHH –she’s sooooo adorable. And she does the most BEAUTIFUL Hungarian embroidery! I’ll send a pic of her work.

Sunday, yesterday, was SOOO GOOD! So, I think I told you about G from last week, S's friend that we taught tithing to on the first lesson. I called her on Sat. and invited her to church and she CAME!! Ah she was sooo cute, just holding her Book of Mormon the whole time! She could only stay for sacrament meeting, but that was fine! And T was there! So that was awesome, too. Sacrament meeting was so good! It was testimony meeting, and everyone was just bearing these awesome testimonies about how they know the Gospel is true, the Book of Mormon is true, and the Prophet is called of God and stuff like that. The Spirit was really there. And I was SO glad G could have her first meeting be testimony meeting!!! So that was awesome. Also, C came for Sunday School, and so did one of our less active members, so we had 4 of our teaching people at church!!! WOOHOO!!! Now if we could only get that darn S to come!! 

After church we went to L's and Elder E was just like "We're going to teach about the Gospel of Jesus Christ... and Sister VanDenBerghe is going to teach about faith!"--out of nowhere, so i just whipped out this thing on faith! But it went well! We practice teaching SOOO much! I am sooooo grateful to K, my trainer, for that, because now I feel like, if I really had to, I could pretty much handle the basics of the first 3 lessons by myself, which is a good feeling. 

I love Hungary, I love missionary work, and I love you ALL! It’s almost transfers!!!  I CANNOT believe that. I honestly am kind of hoping to stay in Pápa, but we will see what happens! Also, zone training in Győr this week! woohoo! 

Remélem hogy ezen a héten a legjobb hét lesz nektek! Szeretlek beneteket! 

sok szeretettel,

FROM SEPT 15: 

Sziasztok! I cannot BELIEVE I am almost done with my first transfer! This has been going be so scary fast!  This coming Sunday, the 21st, i will have been on my mission for 4 months! That is not even real. AND MY BROTHER IS GETTING MARRIED TO K. Oh my goodness, I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU BOTH-- you're more of a power couple than Jay Z and Beyonce, I'll say that for sure! 

So this week!  We taught S about prayer, obedience, scripture reading and Church attendence. We again asked him to come to Church, and W. Nővér even offered that we walk together! But again he just said he had to take the néni to church. I really do love S, but I feel like more and more I’m realizing that he kind of just likes to talk to us. He likes to learn about the Bible and The Book of Mormon, but he doesn't really have a desire to know it is true. He likes learning, but he doesn’t think he needs to make commitments, baptismal covenants, or necessarily do the things necessary to change and really come to Christ. 

Zone training in Győr was good! President and Sister S came and President just talked about how we need to be doing missionary work the LORD'S way, not our own. If we do it our way, we'll get our results, but if we do it the Lords way, we will get the Lord's results. I totally agree. The zone training was good, too-- we talked about giving and following up on commitments. Commitments are SO important! Probably the most important part of missionary work even. If you aren't committing people to pray, read the Book of Mormon, and keep the commandments, then you aren't giving them the opportunity to gain their own testimony, to really feel the Spirit on their own outside of our lessons, and really know the truth for themselves! I know that is still something I need to work on, and our goal is to pray for our investigators and what commitments to give them. If they don't keep commitments, we try to do it with them, like read the chapter of the Book of Mormon that they didn't read. This is probably old news to you missionaries and RMs, but something that future ones could pay attention to. 

On Thursday, we had pizza night, and enjoyed our tap water from giant Heinekin mugs! So there ya go. Friday was Institute, which was really good! I know I always say this, but I LOOOOVE this branch! There were about 10 of us, and we talked about Joseph Smith, the first vision, and the appearance of angel Moroni. They know so much!! Even the 16 year old who has barely been a member for a year! I know these people love the Gospel so much, and they just have this beautiful desire to learn as much as they can whenever they can. It amazes and inspires me. Sunday was good too, even though none of our teaching people came; A gave a really good talk on courage and I understood quite a bit of it! But honestly, just when I think my speaking and understanding is skyrocketing, I’ll just hit these days where I’m like, "Okay, I can’t speak or understand anything!" But I take it day by day.  

SZERETLEK TITEKET! Good luck with the wedding-- it will be fabulous, I know it! Make sure to take a lot of pictures with my cardboard cutout-- haha!

FROM SEP 23:

So the WEDDING!!! AHHHHHH I am literally dying, all the pictures are SO great, seriously. Thank you for taking so many with "me" haha! Sorry, I really don’t have a ton of time this week to email, because TRANSFERS are taking place-- okay, so the big news..... I’m staying in Pápa! I’m getting Sister S, who I have heard really good things about! She is only one transfer ahead of me, so this should be an adventure for sure!! But I’m really excited, and of course I’m gonna miss my lil trio! I love this branch more than anything though, so I am glad to stay. The work in Pápa isn't great, I'll be totally honest. But hopefully we can continue on and see a bit more success.  I will write more next week….Love you all SO MUCH and I am so happy the wedding turned out so perfectly. I FREAKING LOVE  being a VanDenBerghe!!!!