A Prayer in a Bottle

It!s been another great week here in Kispest!! On P-day last week we went to Buda Castle which was beautiful! Our week was a little bit more rough though, we had 8 lessons that fell through or didn't work out but hopefully we will be able to find a better time that works for investigators this coming week. 

We went to Békéscsaba on splits which was really fun! It is the smallest little town, but I love it. I went on splits with Sister Dorny and we even got to ride bikes! Sister Dorny is in her first transfer but one of the bravest people I have ever met! We met with a really sad lady named Rozsa and had a lesson with her and by then end we had her smiling! There was also a woman on the street who started speaking only German to me and it was the weirdest thing because I understood what she was saying! It was so cool! She knew Hungarian too so that's how we continued communicating because Hungarian is better for me, after she had told me a little bit about herself in German. 

In Kispest this week, while we were tracting, we found the coolest lady named Beatrix!! We were just about to leave the building and were by her apartment right as she was coming home. She and her cute family just moved in recently and are really interested in meeting with us. After talking to her for a few minutes in Hungarian, she randomly spoke in perfect English and asked "Are you from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?" Well, yes, yes we are! She was really nice and I hope to be able to go back and meet her and her family. 

We were able to meet Balázs this week and we taught him about the Restoration. He came to English class for the first time last week and just happened to come on the same week that another member came (she doesn't normally come) and they live really close to each other! After the class, they took the same bus home and were able to talk a little bit about what our church believes and he said he wanted to meet with us! Our lesson went really well with him and I am excited to meet with him again this week. For English class this week we had a scavenger hunt which the class loved! They had so much fun! 

One of my other favorite experiences from the week was learning how to cook with Gizi! She taught us how to make túrógombóc which were really yummy! Cute little Álmos was at home and was so excited to see us. At church yesterday he knocked on the door of the classroom we were in and he was asking everyone where the Nővérek were haha. At church I was also able to play the organ for Sacrament meeting which was really fun, I haven't been able to do that in a while! One last little story from this week is a referral we got. There was a missionary couple from Romania visiting Hungary and they were in a grocery store trying to figure out which water bottles were carbonated and which were not. A lady came up and asked them if they wanted help reading the Hungarian because she spoke English. Her name is Stephanie and after talking with this senior couple, she told them about how she had been looking for a church to join and how she wanted to know more about ours! We were able to call her last night and will meet with her this week! 

This morning we had a beautiful run by the Danube River and the view is more breathtaking each time I see it. I absolutely love it here. Transfer calls are next week so I will email on Tuesday. To end this post, I just want to put this little story from Winnie the Pooh that one of the Elders in our district shared with us the other day. Here's the excerpt:

IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY WATER

IT rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old--three, was it, or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.

"If only," he thought, as he looked out of the window, "I had been in Pooh's house, or Christopher Robin's house, or Rabbit's house when it began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will stop." And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, "Did you ever see such rain, Pooh?" and Pooh saying, "Isn't it awful, Piglet?" and Piglet saying, "I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin's way," and Pooh saying, "I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this time." It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn't much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share them with somebody.

For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder whether it would be coming into his bed soon.

"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could escape by--by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I, surrounded by water and I can't do anything."

It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until now it was nearly up to Piglet's window . . . and still he hadn't done anything.

"There's Pooh," he thought to himself. "Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it. And then there's Eeyore And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn't mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?"

Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him!

He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn't under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the paper:

                            HELP!
                        PIGLIT (ME)

and on the other side:

                IT'S ME PIGLIT, HELP HELP!

Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could throw --splash!--and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water; and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.

"So now," he thought, "somebody else will have to do something, and I hope they will do it soon, because if they don't I shall have to swim, which I can't, so I hope they do it soon." And then he gave a very long sigh and said, "I wish Pooh were here. It's so much more friendly with two."

I love this little story. We are all like Piglet at some time in our lives. It is okay to ask for help and in fact it is strengthening to get help. I have found comfort in the knowledge that God is our Heavenly Father who truly loves us and is always there for us in times of need. All we need to do is throw out our little note in a bottle and He will help us.

Sok szeretettel, Schoendorfer Nővér

Beautiful Buda Castle.

Pretty bridge on our way back to our area.

Splits with the gyor sisters.

You have to be careful, because your dress can 'blow up' from the metro station.

We talked with the man for a while, his name is Kovacs Janos (Joseph Smith in English) we enjoyed chatting with him.

Morning runs are so enjoyable along the Danube River.

We love cooking with Gizi.