Suddenly Speaking Hungarian...

Elder Giacalone and Elder Loveday

A new way of Tabling...serenading with the Ukelele

Our pass-along cards

Lunch with the Sisters and Elders before transfer day

 

Hello everybody! 

Still here in my grand city of Szolnok. Yes, for those of you who have your KSL Weather Apps on your iPhones and were watching the weather everyday for me last week (or maybe that's just my mom?) it was very, very hot! But, it has cooled down to a mild 88 degrees. Fun stuff. Gotta love being out here in the heat!

So yeah, we are offically in Transfer Two! Yay! The Szolnok crew has changed a bit, but the drive is still here! Elder Loveday is my new companion. He has like three transfers left, and he is from Colorado. He likes to fish and to cook and to play baseball. He made me last night a really yummy chicken paprika dish with rice! SO good! He's a great elder and I cannot wait to get to know him more!

So, because Elder Loveday is brand new to Szolnok, I found myself kind of leading...everything! I made all the phone calls (that I could), I took the lead in all of our programmes, and I planned for our next meets with our investigators! Literally, this sudden "taking the lead thing" has totally changed my use of the language. My confidence has SURGED. I literally have no problem talking to Hungarians anymore, and if I don't understand, I can get them to simplify their sentence down and understand it then. Literally, this was the biggest miracle I have seen on my mission. Because of this though, I planned a spiritual thought at one of our meetings with some less actives, and I wanted to share the story of Alma and his people praying in their hearts instead of outloud, but I ended up sharing the one about Ammon boasting of his God. So after I had one of them read it, I talked about (seeminly random to them) about prayer. Good times. Gotta love Hungarian right?!

 

Also.....get this: So Loveday is DL now, so he HAS to go on splits with EVERY ELDER in the district...and we just got in our district one of my "kicsi", or little ones, from the MTC. So guess who will be going Senior for 24 hours on Thursday? Yep. THIS KID. Yikes! Me and Elder Flake will be ruling Szolnok on Thursday to Friday morming. It will be very interesting! I scheduled three programmes that day, and it will be me and Flake with Hungarians! Oh goodie....pray for me! We will see how it goes! I think I'll be fine, just over thinking it.

 

Cool moments: 

Elder Loveday and I were tabling in the main square and some random lady came up to us and asked us "What makes you all so happy?" Literally I wanted to hug her and tell her everything, but she wasn't interested in meeting. Like seriously, come on lady. But it was just a little reminder that people are indeed watching us and seeing something different in the way that we live our lives. It was interesting to think about.

That same day tabling, we had three people approach our table at the same time! Ok so usually we are the ones trying to grab people and this time it was people coming to us! Like WOW. It was absolutely insane! We got a few numbers out of it and we might meet with one soon! Tender mercies...

Also, when Elder Loveday and I were coming back from a programme, we were sitting on the bus really, really tired. And then suddenly "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift came on, I looked over at Elder Loveday, and we just started jamming out to it together on the bus! I considered it a bonding moment between the two of us. Love me some T-Swizzle. 

We also got a new bapdate with P! In the middle of the lesson he asked me if I remembered our last programme with him where I had asked him about thinking about a bapdate. He got one...March 16th! Woww...a little ways off, but I was so proud of him! We are working on shortening it down, but I was WAY pumped for him :) And "E", the lady I said I could see a Relief Society president in the future, came to church and loved it! However, she did have to get a "smoke break" in between sunday school and relief society...we'll work on that! 

I've been reading "The Infinite Atonement" in personal study recently and besides the fact that it is totally blowing my mind right now, I am really learning more about my Savior and about His sacrifice for me. I encourage y'all to go read about it! 

Well, that's about it for this week. Hope everyone has fun getting ready for school and stuff, sounds like everyone is hating it! Haha. Have fun :) 

Lots of Love,

Giacalone elder