Budapest
Weston & Katie Baxter with Me and Sarah
Weston and I served at the same time and we randomly ran into each other in the House of Terror (headquarters to the Nazis and then later to the communists). They may or may not have been the cause of our transportation fine. We met back up with them for dinner later that night after we took a tour of Parliament.
Békéscsaba
Us with the Belkó Family (left to right: Edina, Brigi, Tibike, Balázska, Tibor)
Edina was the first person that I ever baptized. She is an incredibly strong member with rock-solid faith that she had long before we found her. Her daughter Brigi got baptized right before I came home from Hungary and I got to attend. Her husband Tibor has been gaining interest in the Church ever since we started teaching her, but has been slow in his investigation. (He joked while we were there that he would get baptized after five years - Edina got baptized the summer of 2007.) He's been going to church with his whole family since January.
Sarah, Mária, and Me
Mária was one of the first investigators in Békéscsaba when we opened it in December of 2006. If you can't tell from the picture, she is kind of a cat lady, and she also has most of the walls in the room we're standing in covered in plates, floor to ceiling. I taught her the whole time I served in Békéscsaba (almost five months) and it wasn't until a couple months after I left that she got baptized. She's kind of a stubborn old lady, and she goes to church when she wants (like the day we visited her, she said she wasn't going because it was "too hot.")
Me, Bea, Noémi and Sarah
Bea and her daughters Noémi and Anita were taught and baptized by the other elders while I was serving in Békéscsaba. We interacted with them a lot with all of our branch activities (family nights, branch parties, etc.) and she loved cooking for all four of us. Anita has been off and on about going to church ever since her baptism. Unfortunately, she didn't come to church the day we were there. Bea did make lunch for us and all the missionaries though.
Tatabánya
The Tatabánya Branch
We got to know the members of the branch who went with us up to Freiberg a lot better than the rest of them. I met a few of them when I went back last summer (2010) but there were still quite a few new faces since then. Last I heard, there were 29 members, of which 27 are active. When we met with the mission president our first day there, he informed us that Tatabánya was a week or two away from becoming an official branch within the stake, becoming independent from the mission. As President Baughman put it, although Lali was called as the Branch President, Feri will always be the "Godfather of Tatabánya."
Us with the members we were escorts for at the temple - Lala Vankó on the left and Edina Heiser with her daughter Zsofi on the right.
My Seventh Day Adventists Friends - Vera Néni and Laci Bácsi
Our first morning in Tatabánya when we opened it, my companion and I went for a run. While we were on the run, I said a prayer in my heart, asking Heavenly Father to let me know if there was anywhere we should come back to to track later in the day after we had searched for real estate for a branch house. As we ran down Jokai Mór street, I felt the impression that we should come back and track there. When I felt that impression, we were by house #4 (the house numbering on a street in Hungary is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. down one side of the street and 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. down the other). That night we came back and rang the bell at #4. No answer. So, we rang and #2 and then started down the odd side of the street. When we got to #17, this older couple came out. We told them who we were and the responding by saying that they are Seventh Day Adventists and they invited us to their worship service that Saturday. I asked them where they held it, and they said right there in the front room of their house. We decided to go, and they invited us to stay for the potluck lunch in their yard that followed (there were only about ten people at church). We ended up going to their church a handful of times while we were there and became good friends with a mutual respect for each other's beliefs.
When Sarah and I visited them, Vera Néni went and found a couple photo albums (she really likes to take pictures) of me and my companion when we served there. It was fun to see those pictures and reminisce on the good times I had while serving there in Tatabánya. As it turns out, Feri and Róz live at #16 on the same street (essentially across the street). Who knows what would have happened if we would have headed the other direction that first night tracting?
Our last dinner at their house and then the four of us at four AM before we left for the airport.
The four of us at the airport (yes, even Anna came when we left at 4AM, she just didn't want us to take her picture).
The Válóczi Family at the Freiberg Temple - Róz, Feri and Anna
Feri and Róz Válóczi were the reason for this trip. (Yeah, I guess it was for our honeymoon, too.) Whenever I think about my mission, they are the first people to come to mind. I'm not sure who has had a greater influence on the other in our relationship - me on them or them on me. Their faith and courage is such an example to me as well as their love.
It's hard to pick a favorite memory with them from our trip, because the humorous side of me wants to say the time that we asked Feri about "baby water" or when they taught Sarah to say "Bryan fingolt" ("Bryan farted" - which is the only Hungarian she has kept, by the way) or when we got the huge ice cream cone the first night there or when Feri and I would say to Sarah "A Feri Bácsinak nem lehet nemet mondani." ("You can't tell old man Feri no" - usually in relation to getting her to eat more food, but then it started getting used for everything.)
Then the spiritual side of me wants to say seeing them get sealed in the Temple, or just watching them kneel and pray at the steps of the Temple when we got there, or sitting in their room the night we got back from Prague as Róz told us about her incredible experiences at the Temple throughout the week or when Anna told us she was starting to gain interest in the Church.
The memories just flood in when I think about them, whether they are from when I served there as a missionary, when I went back last summer or from our honeymoon. In short, what I want to say is that I love them and I'm grateful to count them not only as my friends, but as my Hungarian family.
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