Sziasztok! (Hello everyone)
Before I start, the Hungarian keyboard is
a bit different from the English one.
Im in Hungary!!!!! In Eger!!!!! Eger is a
glorious city in North East Hungary of about 50,000. It is, in my mind atleast,
very Hungarian. I really want to send pictures but now that I have a bit more
time to send pictures, I cant because the computers dont have sd slots, Ill look
into and figure out some way to get you all some pics. My new companion is Elder
Quinton, who is way awesome. I really like him and we get along very well I
think. He is from Seattle and played football and golf in highschool, did a year
of BYU before his mission, and has been in Hungary for a year, which might not
seem too long, but he speaks great Hungarian I think he has picked it up faster
than others.
I want to talk about patience for a bit.
I have found patience is a very important Christ Like attribute and it is
something I focussed alot on in the MTC. I appreciate all of your testimonies
that you sent me so much, theyve really helped me and I want to be able to write
about something that can help you all. So I want to bring up patience with
ourselves. It is important to be patient with God and other people, but it is
also so incredibly important to be patient with ourselves. This is something I
need to work on alot, being a new missionary who can hardly speak the language.
These past days have been so much fun. So exciting. But so frustrating. So
frustrating. I want to help these people and bless them. I know they would be so
much more happy with the gospel. And I have a testimony. I have this knowledge
that they need. But sometimes I cant express it how I want or alot of times I
cant follow the conversation to even know what theyre talking about.
Thats where patience with ourselves comes in. I think its something we all
need, not just me. I know I need to work on it a ton but we all have trials and
challenges in our lives. Im sure we all have question and doubts. We all lack
faith in some things at times, or strugle in some way. God wants us to be
perfect but I dont think we should expect ourselves to be perfect immediately.
We can grow, we can learn, we can be happy, but it takes time. We just need to
try every day to be just a little bit better.
One family Ive gotten pretty close with since getting here is the Putton
family, theyre recent converts and an awesome, way fun family. We were at their
house recently and the Dad asked how I could stand being away from family, I
told him that I love you all and that I miss you all so much, I gave him a
number of reasons (D+C 31:2, I always wanted to be a missionary, it helps me
focus, I like serving people) but I also told him that they all were my family.
The branch has about 30 members which is pretty small but theyre great and were
growing.
My birthday went great, The day before at the branch game night Sister Herd
(The Herds are the senior couple that serve here, Elder Herd is the Branch
president.) brought a cake and they sang to me in English and then in Hungarian
(in Hungarian its a different song). Then on my birthday me and my companion met
up with Elder Sterri and Elder Buechannon at a really cool restaurant.
My companion is a great cook and has made some awesome Hungarian dishes,
which require Hungarian ingredients to really taste great. My favorite was this
one dish where there was a lazer of sliced potatoe, then a layer of sliced hard
boilded eggs, then a layer of super good Hungarian meat, then a layer of Tejfö
(Hungarian stuff, super good), then a layer of cheese, and then all of those
layers again. Then baked. Its delicious.
Ive found the people here are nice and we have had some success finding.
There are these buildings called 10 stories and buildings called 5 stories,
theyre super communist, and theyres a ton of them. Basically theyre all just
like identicall square apartment complexes. We go door to door in these alot but
I really like streeting. We tried tabling (Table with a sign in a public place)
but it wasnt too successful, apparently other cities it works ok but not
Eger.
Just a second left for one last thing. We had some neet experiences where
one night we got back to the appartment just a bit early. We decided to go back
out and work just a little longer. In that short time we found someone who
seemed interested and Im really excited about. I think thats so neat that
because we worked a little longer we found someone else and Ive seen that happen
a few times already.
Thank you all so much for your love and support. I love the birthday
testimonies they mean so much to me.
Sok szeretettel (with much love)
Elder Shoop
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