Week 33

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

I realize that I might have sounded a tad bit dramatic in the last email. I apoligize. But we all know that I am a dramatic person so I don't think anyone was surprised :)

Ok so sorry about the whole Tuesday thing again. We ended up having to go up to Budapest to do the whole residency card thing again because mine got stolen when I my wallet got stolen a few weeks ago. So we switched our Pday and came up a day early for Zone Conference. The area President came in for Zone Conference tomorrow so that will be exciting! 

So today was Pday and after the whole hivatal thing we went to the Opera House and took the tour! It was amazing! I love that my companions wanted to go! It was sooooooo cool. Seriously so worth it. The inside is so beautiful. We got to take the tour in English which was awesome so we could understand it all. Seriously that place is beautiful. Unfortunately we didn't pay for the wrist band to be able to take pictures inside, but they did do a mini concert of sorts and a woman sang 2 opera songs. AMAZING. I love the culture and history behind the building. It was built when Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire so it had to be smaller than the opera house in Vienna. Wild. But apparently it is prettier. 

So we also did missionary work this week too. No worries there.

Szombathely. It is pretty great. We are like right on the border of Austria so actually several of the kids in the branch go to school in Austria. wild. And then a few of our investigators go to college in Austria while living in Szombathely. So most people speak German. It was like a 3 and a half hour train ride from Budapest so plenty of time to get to know the new companions on the train ride. I am with Sister Daniels who got to the country in September and with Sister Curtin who has been in Hungary since January. Both of them are the best and great missionaries. Sister Curtin is the oldest companion I have been with, and unfortunately we will probably only be together for like 2 more weeks because this past week was just a mini transfer and the real one is in 2 weeks. wild right? So I am trying to just soak up all her wisdom and knowledge while I can. She is a great missionary. They both have done lots of traveling so it has been fun to swap stories. They both went to BYU before their missions and actually Sister Daniels is in the nursing program like me! She got accepted then left on her mission so she hasn't actually started the program yet, but it is still something great we have in common. We already have found a pretty great rhythm teaching and finding and things so that is pretty great. So fun fact about were we live. There is currently a senior sister from the Szombathely branch serving a mission in the country so we are living in her apartment so it is pretty nice. We have a piani maker and a dishwasher. not real life!!! so much lunch quality has gone way up. 

We have some great investigators. There is an awesome man who just got baptized and so we are really trying to focus on his wife and help her gain a testimony so that she too can receive the same blessings as her husband and then one year from when she gets baptized they can go to the temple. Right now we are trying to get her to let us teach to her instead of her husband. she is literally just the most amazing wife. she supports him 100%. she comes to church with him everyweek and it was so tender in our lesson to see just how much they love each other. It was really cool to see the great marriage because it isn't the culture in Hungary to marry. 

The Szombathely branch is super solid. They are wonderful. Bigger than Szolnok and they are just 2 melchizidek priesthood holders away from becoming a ward. 1 of which with be the guy I was just talking about who got baptized. 

We teach a few other great people and have been doing some good finding together. I love being companions with them! It is great being with someone who speaks the language so well. We had a let in while tracting together and I was just amazed and listening to her and then I remembered that I should probably help her out and speak too. haha. 

We have this one investigator who unfortunately missionaries have never taken her seriously. But she is super cute and has great potential. We met with her and it went super well. I feel like we are soul sisters. And so I made a deal with God and my companions that if she gets baptized I will name my first born girl after her. I can't tell you what the name is because you might not approve. But I love it. It was cool we bap challenged her and she was like well I guess I should probably came to church and so she came and brought 7 people with her!!!!! wild. It was great. 

Love you all and have a wonderful week!

Sister Grigg 

me at the step on the opera house. i am a little obsessed with this place.

This was the investigator that brought 7 people to church. She isn't related to all the kids but the rest of the kids are all one family. The 15 year old boy loved church. A family in the branch likes to have the missionaries over for dinner and their investigators so the mom was the nicest woman in the world and invited them all over for dinner and so this was at their house. The food was great and the family was so kind! 

mini transfers

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Dear Family,

I am so sad right now because we have a little mini transfer tomorrow. Since we switched to the 9 week transfers, the going home dates are all messed up so there is a group going home tomorrow but there aren't any sisters going home so we thought that sisters wouldn't be effected by the mini transfer. Then we got a phone call this morning from the assisstants and they told me I am leaving Pest and going to Szombathely. Opposite side of the country out in the West near Austria. At first I wasn't the biggest fan of the city, but I love love it now. We have some really great investigators and 6 baptisms coming up next transfer all of which we put on bap date since I got here so it is sad that I won't be there for those. One and doneing is hard. I didn't get a chance to really say goodbye or anything because no one thought sisters were getting moved. I thought the whole going where you want me to go and stuff would be easy on a mission but right now it is going to be really hard. I am sure that tomorrow once I get to the train station and meet my new companions and get on the long train ride out to Szombathely I will be excited and have a great attitude about it. Fun fact thought. I scheduled programs for tomorrow because no one thought we were leaving and I don't want them to not get taught so I asked Sister Smith (the presidents wife) if she could be my companion for a little bit so that my companions can still teach the programs with the investigators. So she is going to come pick me up and take me to the train station to meet everyone for transfers! fun stuff going on splits with Sister President for a bit and don't have to take the trolley with my heavy suitcases. woot woot. 

It was a great week once again! Pest is doing so well. We taught tons of programs, put someone new on bap date, had lots of people at church. So many that I couldn't handle them all! A mom we teach showed up with her son, and I was sitting there and I am like oh my goodness I don't even know who the primary president is for the Hungarian primary! We the ward members were champs like always and helped us out. It was so great. Speaking of church the English Primary President asked us to do sharing time because it is all about missionaries so we did the sharing time and I forgot how wild kids are! We were having them introduce themselves and I didn't notice that 2 of the girls were fighting until one goes those 2 are fight and one of the girls fight goes, "My name is Grace, and I have a dead arm." so funny. hahahaha. One of the high council members spoke on Sunday and he is german and helps us out once a week with one of our bap dates. He is such a great member, and in his talk he talked about his experience helping with us and stuff and seeing how the gospel has been blessin the investigators life and said that he is getting baptized in the coming weeks and had him stand up and wave to everyone. sooo good!!! I just know that the gospel can bless everyone's lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and as one of our investigators says," it contains messages meant specifically for us." We can find amazing amounts of comfort, spiritual strength, and answers to our questions if we diligently study out of it.

All the investigators are doing well in Pest! I am sad to be leaving, especially because next Pday we had planned to go to the zoo. we all know how much I loves zoos and how upsetting that is. but it will being fun getting to know a new area, new companions (I am going into another threesome!) and new investigators! I have heard the city is super pretty and that they have a great strong, branch out there. So this will be an exciting new chapter of my mission. 

I love you all and hope that everything is great back home! 

Sister Grigg

We went to the house of terror today on pday. It was super cool and really enlightening. We always learn about lots of things during world war II with the halocaust and such, but it was really neat to learn about how Hungary was effected during communism and post world war II. 

Last Pday we did Sajt night with the elders. Which is cheese night. Which is really like just making homemade mozerella sticks. 

Then while we were tracting this week I got gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. so lame. 

Such an amazing week!!!

Dear Family and Friends!

This week was so wonderful!!

Let us start with the highlight of the week! Imre's baptism! President gave us permission to go to Szolnok so that I could be there for Imre's baptism. I have written about him home a ton. With when we first found him and his teaching process! It was such an amazing experience. We were waiting for the train in Budapest and I saw someone we baptized in June from Szolnok, which was such a weird coincidence, and it was great! And then we got on the train, walked to the hotel, where the baptisms are, and we walked into the room and Imre was standing there in his baptism clothes looking out the window. I just had flashbacks to the first time that I met him when we knocked on his door and then the first time we met with him in a program when he showed up wearing a super inappropriate shirt and reeked of smoke and then here he was wearing the white baptismal clothing, not a hint of cigerette smoke! It was so wonderful. He was so ready and prepared to get baptized. I got to talk to him for a little bit before. Then I gave the talk on baptism. rough.. but it was ok. haha. We sang in the choir musical number (which was almost everyone there..not a big deal) and the spirit was just so strong. I got so see a few of the Szolnok branch members again. And Zsuzsi, which was so wonderful. Biro elnők baptized Imre and unfortunately we had to be bap in Pest for another baptism so we had to leave right after that and couldn't stay for longer. But I got to talk to him for a bit before he changed, and he such talked about how excited he is to get the gift of the whole ghost and about how baptism isn't the end just the beginning and how he will be a church member the rest of his life and endure to the end. It was perfect! He is serious the best find ever. He was so prepared by Heavenly Father for the gospel. It doesn't mean that it was easy for him because he had to overcome a lot to get baptized, but I know how blessed he is for all of it! He is just such an amazing example to me and I am so thankful that I was able to help him along the way. I am so excited for him to get the priesthood! 

Ok so Pest is going really well too. Another highlight of the week was having lunch with a member and his friends. He invited us to his work place and bought us lunch (score number one) and then we got to chat with 5 of his friends. At first it was a little weird and hard because of the positioning of everyone to talk but then 2 left and we were positioned better and we could just chatt. They were fasinated about why we are here and things like that. Asked us why we came. And before my mission, when President Morgan asked us to say one sentence about why were choice to go on a mission I thought a lot about it and then after this lunch I thought a lot about it too. And an addition I came up with another answer. I am here in Hungary because I know that God has a plan for us. Christ is at the center of that plan and when we learn about God's plan and learn about our identiy as his children we see the world in different eyes and everything has meaning and purpose. I want other people to know about this wonderful plan of happiness! 

Ok so back to the lunch it was really neat. It wasn't the typically normal missionary work that we generally do like knocking on doors and talking to people on the street; it was great! I was also just so proud of this member because he was probably so nervous to have invited us to meet his friends! I think we will potentially get one new innvestigator so that will be fun to see what happens.

We met with this one woman from English class a few weeks ago and she has been bringing several friends to English class and we found out that they all know each other from the 12 step drug alchol anonymous program and the second step is all about finding God and the relationship with God so they are all interesting in meeting with is great! Different but really cool. 

Our main invesitgators with bap dates are progressing so well! They both fasted for the first time yesterday! so great. One came to church for the first time yesterday (he was at conference) and he goes I started my fast. It isn't too hard yet and Sister Magda's stomach growled. so good. A member showed him about the LDS gospel library app so he is way into that and he found LDS.org (he wouldn't let us give him the address because he wanted to google it haha) and has been rewatching some of the conference talks. so great. I love being a missionary and being able to help the Hungarians come closer to our Heavenly Father.  

Love you all and until next week!

Sister Grigg 

St István's basillica. because one time of seeing the creepy thousand year old hand isn't enough.

Our Zone leaders gave us a giant milka bar at zone training because our companionship got the most new investigators this past month! We are the youngest companionship in the zone...it just goes to show that the language isn't everything and the spirit is so much more important and does the converting.

today we walked be the American Embassy because our ward mission leader works there so we wanted to see that outside. what do you know... a statue of Ronald Reagan was there! Jon this is a shout out to you! Note how pretty parliment looks in the background.

Then we walked into the Opera House but unfortunately you can only see the big great cool part in tour so I don't know if we will be able to go back to see more inside but here is us in the main hall!

We went back to Szolnok so obviously I had to take a picture at the train station with the sign!

so that was a picture of Imre and I and the other picture was Biro elnők who baptized him, Sister Peterson my companion last transfer and then her greenie this transfer (who is in the nursing program at BYU a few symesters behind me! small world!)

Conference!!

Dear Family,

How amazing was conference?!?! It went by wayy to fast. Unfortunately we don't get to catch the Sunday afternoon session so I am excited to read it in the Liahona in a bit. We had a bunch of investigators come and a few of the less actives we meet with. One of which brought 2 friends! one of which we are meeting with this week. sweet. We were able to set up with a family that someone else brought to conference! It was just a weekend of wonderfulness!

It was fun watching the relief society broadcast knowing that Mom said she loved it and thought it was good. One of our investigators who came to that one said she wasn't impressed with any of the women, and I just had to laugh haha. I didn't really know what to say. But she loved the prophet so that was good. And she came to a different session as well said it was amazing and like it was meant just for her. Love how all of the church leaders were speaking to millions of people but how it feels like it can be just for us! A different investigator called conference exciting! I loved how he talked about the priesthood session. And was asking us all kinda of questions about home teaching because I guess they talked about it. So good!!

What were all you favorite conference talks?!

The one Elder Ballard gave about members and missionaries working together was so good! And it totally worked because right after that session one member who was watching it in English with us goes hey sister what are you doing Friday at 12:30, do you have a program scheduled. We responded no and he goes how would you like to come have lunch with me and my coworkers?! So great. So we are going to his work place to causually interact with his coworkers. Talk about a great leap of faith by this memeber. I am sure he is nervous and hopefully he doesn't know how nervous I am because the hardest part about Hungarian is the causual chit chat. I am so excited though! I know there is going to be someone in that room prepared to hear the gospel!

I loved the talk that Elder Uctdorf gave about how the gospel is for everyone. Elder Erying's was super good. I loved how he started off by saying what choices do we make that bring us unhappiness and then what choices bring us happiness. And when we know about the gospel and have experienced the blessings and happiness it can bring why do we ever make choices that would lead us to not experience those blessings and that happiness!?! But we are not perfect so we do. 

This week was good! We went on splits and now the sisters in my mission get to do real legit splits like elders do. So that was way fun! It is always neat to learn from an older sister missionary. 

A member that has helped us out in several programs brought us dinner after a program he helped us with. He takes the Elders out to dinner  and now he likes the sisters enough to bring us food! So good. He was so nice and so excited to tell us he brought us dinner. He said he was going to cook for us sometime. It is awesome to see how much the members support us and to help us in the work, but that trust had to be gained through a lot of prays and hard work. 

I love you all!

Have a fabulous week!!!
Sister Grigg

That same member we went to fed us Serbian food for lunch and Sister Messinger hit her head on the staircase and so the member gave her this huge ice pack and made her sit there with it on her head. So good!

we go tabling by a metro stop and so there are always tons of people and the drawing was perfect to narrow out the people who weren't in a huge hurry that we could stop and talk too. 

The ward here is working on get the ward missionaries to teach the new member lessons. So we took a ward missionary out to a lesson to a member who got baptized a month ago. She was great. Her name is Marta. This is her. We had to take 2 different buses to get out to the members house because its was way out in the 15th district. And sister Magda and I always take selfies so there is that one.

Splits with Sister Chamberlain. Sister Magda and I spent the day with her in Kispest. While our companions worked in our area. She is such a great sister missionary!

We went tabling today with the elders and drew out a great plan of salvation. It was so great! I talked with a bunch of cool people who stopped to look at it and was able to set up a few programs with them for later this week!

Week 29

Monday, September 30, 2013

So as we were emailing. The police came up and checked everyone IDs. Don't worry I was freaking out, even though I had no reason to be. Typical Sister Grigg. The mission hasn't changed somethings :)

The guy on the computer next to me is blasting gangum style. Ally, it makes me thing of you! 

Ok so it was an amazing week. Wild how the best weeks can also be the hardest! 

We were so blessed to but 3 people on bap date this week! Wild! It was amazing. They all all in December, but I wouln't be suprised if 2 of them get pushed up. The spirit was so strong in all of them, and it has been so cool this week to see them progress and see how Heavenly Father really is preparing the people of Hungary to hear the gospel. I love it. I heard from one of my zone leaders in a training a few months ago that offering the baptismal innvitation to someone is the time he has felt the closest to the Savior on his mission. So I payed close attention to that this week, and it is so true! 2 of them were people the three of us have found while we have been here together so that was even neater! One of the innvestigators after he accepted said it was so far away and we said if he is ready sooner of course we can push it up. He said the most wonderful closing prayer! It was so tender. He asked God to help him strengthen his faith so that he will be ready and to help him share about the wonderful church and the gospel with others because of how much he loves it! All in the closing prayer! It was so wonderful. 

 So I think I am going to go back to not using names any more because lots of Hungarians are now reading the blog, and I wouldn't want to accidently put too much information and offend anyone or anything. It definately makes it harder to describe to you how the week was.

We had several investigators in church this week, which was fabulous. I think I need to make flashcards or somthing for the ward memebers because I can't remember like any of their names, which is a problem when it comes to introducing people. It was also the primary program this week, and if you thought little kids were cute saying their things and singing the song well I have news for you because it is like 10x cuter in Hungarian! Real life. One of our investigators asked how Hungarian Mormon learned that it was ok to bring their children to church because the Hungarian/catholic tradition is that it is so not ok. Did they learn from the American families that go to church here in Pest? That was such an interesting comment because it is so true. Even in the states when you go to catholic church and things like that, there aren't really kids there. I am just so thankful for the primary system and things like that. I know it is truly inspired of God. How wonderful is it that we focus so much on families and teaching children from a young age that they are children of God and teaching him about him and his commandments. It is just such a blessing. And yeah sometimes the kids make sacrament meeting super noisy, but is ok. 

And ok let us be honest here, who hasn't sat behind the family with tons of kids on purpose because it is entertaining during sacrament meeting?!?!! 

We had some really cool let ins tracting this week, which was awesome. One that was super cool happened because someone we went to go back to a previous let in tracting and they said no thank the second time around and so we continued to tract in the 10 story, and we ran into this guy and we were talking about the Book of Mormon, he was in his pajamas at 1:45 in the afternoon, not a big deal. 

I am so excited for conference. What a blessing it is that we have a living prophet on the earth today, who leads us and guides us with God authority! So we start watching conference here Saturday night. Then on Sunday we watch the relief society recorded while the men watch priesthood then we catch the saturdayafternoon and then the sunday morning one we get sunday evening. We will miss watching the Sundayafternoon session. I am pretty sure I will get to watch all of them in English! so excited! We should also have a good number of innvestigators who are going to come as well! 

Ok so President and Sister Smith randomly showed up to our district meeting this week. Perks of serving in the city! 

Have a great week everyone! Love you all! 

Sister Grigg 

We went to this really cool street called Váci utca today. It had tons of really cool aricheture and shops. Dad talked about it in an email he sent me. 

So we went to the largest synagogue in Europe today. Unfortunately none of my companions or the Elders wanted to pay money to go inside. lame. It looked so cool from the open door. So we just took pictures on the outside. 

This is a guy we tracted into. He was so tender and showed us pictures of his family and himself. And he let me take a picture of him holding the picture of himself. He is in his 80s. It was so fun.

We went tracting again this week out in the 16th district. The stake center is in the 14th district so it is a little bit of a bus ride but not a big deal. And we were talking to this guy, and we introtroduced ourselves, and I always point down to my name tag at my name and my name tag was gone! I was shocked! It has fallen off. He wished us luck finding the name tag, and we started retracing our steps. We had been on 2 sides of the street so who knows where it could have gone. I was praying the whole time and after a little bit of walking I looked down and there it was! It had fallen on the sidewalk and landed exactly like this! I love that what is important to me is also important to Heavenly Father. It was a little miracle :)

The other thing about where we went tracting this day was that every house had a massive dog. Like huge. That wanted to bite our heads off. And they all had signs that say Vigazz! Harap a kutya. Which means watch out. The dog bites! nuts. 

csodálatos

Monday, September 23, 2013

Dear Family,

We have meet with this guy named Gabor 3 times now. It has been the coolest to watch him progress. He was just interested in English but now is interested in the gospel. He has started to praying for the first time in his life, and it was so cool to hear him talk about his experience with that and hear him bear testimony (although he has know idea that is what he was doing) as he talked about his new found communication with he Father in Heaven. He is getting baptized there is no doubt about it. We had a great member come with us once last week and he is coming to the lesson again tomorrow! I am so excited to keep helping him grow and progress. He responded super well to a soft bap challenge too! 

Laci (the investigator from Pest not the one from Szolnok) has been progressing too. We had an amazing lesson with him this week. We were able to find out more about his concerns about baptism and afterward and now hopefully we will be able to continue to work with him and address them. He is praying about a bapdate though so that is awesome. 

Renata is a new investigator as well! She is literally so cool! We found her last Pday during our working hours. She has the life, and I so want to be here. From meeting with her I realized how grateful I am for personal revelation. For the fact that our Father in Heaven wants to communicate with us individual and one on one. He wants to help us chose what is best for us and he knows. She has tons of amazing questions that make us think. We really have to tune into the spirit so that we don't say things hastely and give the wrong answer. It is so cool. She said the restoration makes perfect sense and of course the Plan of Salvation is God's plan. How cool is that?! Love it. 

I mentioned the cool thing tracting when I sent the pictures. It was just super fun to be in a neighborhood that looks like neighborhoods back in the states. I'll have to send a picture of the 10 stories that we normally tract in. We saw the biggest dogs at these családi houses though. Seriously, they were massive. 

We teach the cutes 10 year old girl ever. We talked about the 10 commandments this week and chastity (that was a first, teaching the law of chastity to a 10 year old) this week. She is so cute. When we asked why God would want us to be honest she said so we can live with our families for eternity. What a good answer. Every commandment God gives us is so that we will be better prepared to live with our families for eternity. So cool.

Did I mention that one of my zone leaders is Hungarian? The other is the youngest certified hypnotist in America. Pretty cool zone leaders huh?

The city is great. We have funny things that happen a lot. I love my companions. Our investigators are doing well, progressing, and our find efforts have been going well too. I love being a missionaries and I love the gospel!

Sister Grigg

Ok so we had a little accident today. We were with the elders and we were trying to get on the metro and the doors accidently shut. So one of the elders (our district leader Elder Seegmiller) went on splits with 3 sisters today for about 10 minutes while we waited for the next metro and caught up with the other 3 elders again...opps!!! (2 sets of elders so no worries no one was alone). so of course we had to take a picture to document it.

We went tracting in a different area today and found some családi houses. Normally we just tract in 10 story apartment buildings. One of the ladies was so nice at first we were talking with her neighbor and she was like you shouldn't be here and then we walked along her fence and she kept talking to us and wasn't interested so we handed her an English flier just to show that we are nice people and teach free English. See was like oh my grandchild might be interested and so I asked for his phone number and she invited us in feed us grapes (homemade) and water. We were fasting that day but looked at each other and decided to eat them because she kept telling us to. And we chatted with her for a bit and she is a nurse! so of course we were instant friends. Nurses are the same in every country (love you Jenny and Mom :))...they tell you how amazing of a profession it is and how you can work as a mom, a grandmom, and just anytime of you life.

so I kinda like the idea of sending the pictures before the long email. (Katie was upset that I called it short last week :)) so I am going to do it again. 

since I serve in the city ya know I am like a little hipster now (don't worry I totally know I am not really hipster). I wear my awesome glasses and take the metro. it isn't a big deal. as Sister Magda says how did the hipster die? He drowned in the mainstream. And way did the hipster burn her mouth on the soup. She ate is before it was cool. I love my companions. 

And the other picture is Sister Magda and Messinger as we wait for the metro. 

Katie's Mission Call!!!

New York New York North mission!!! 

She reports to the Mexico MTC February 5th to learn Spanish.