Darth Vader and Company!

Hello Everyone!
     Wow. This week. This week has been pretty dang good. Kecskemet is a pretty big town. The biggest I have ever served in. IT HAS A WARD. It is super weird to have a fully functioning ward here. It is even better than some wards in the states. Crazy town. When I came we didn't have a lot of investigators, maybe like five or six, but in our first week together Gaicalone Elder and I found five new people to teach. Booyah! We are a super good pair :) It is super weird coming into a companionship and NOT having to get to know my companion, but it was nice, because we got to just dive into our work.
      Okay. So when we got the call that both Elder B. and I would be leaving, we were super upset. We had taken a place that had almost 0 work and we had made our own work. We had such amazing investigators and I had really fallen in love with Kaposvar and the people. It was terrible. Beyond that we had RIDICULOUS amounts of work. Our investigators were also really linked to us. One of our investigators was about to be baptized and we thought if we left that we would totally loose her. I truly doubted. However, I knew that President Smith was my leader and I needed to sustain and support him, even though I really hated it, I accepted the call. Well, the second day in Kecskemet I got a call from Elder S. in Kaposvar.(that had replaced me)  He asked me to do him a favor. He had me look up a lady in our area book, where he had served before. It turns out to none other than our investigator that I was so worried about. Elder S. had taught her before she moved to Kaposvar, and knew more about her than Elder B. and I ever did. It was right then that I realized that my President truly was inspired. Because the Lord knew that the person our investigator needed to meet with was Elder S. It wouldn't have worked any other way. It was a truly humbling experience and I realized that I need to support and sustain my leaders and have faith that they are truly inspired from the Lord. It was a really cool thing. It was a beautiful experience.
      I love the people that I have met here so much. They are my best of friends and I have never felt quite so close to people as I have to these people that I get to teach and love. The Lord really likes to bless me :)
      This transfer has started off so well! We are seeing many miracles already! We sat down our first night and made goals and decided we wanted to work to our full potential and just do as much as we can and be as obedient as we can. It is super exciting. I love it so much. We have already started to see cool things. For instance:

• Tabling two American exchange students who might be interested in learning about the Gospel :)
• Streeting the other night and running into Darth Vader and Company. OMG I GOT PICTURES WITH THEM AND IT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVER I AM SENDING PICTURES.
• We had and amazing program with a guy. We talked to him about baptism and invited him to be baptized and after a lot of talking and a lot of question, he said yes, when the time is right :)
• Having a random guy show up to church and ask if he can meet with us to talk about the true church.
• Having a lady walk up to us and ask if we could teach her family English and she gladly accepted us talking about our religion.

      It is super cool. This week I also found out/realized something. So I always thought that the Gift of Tongues meant that you would be able to speak your language. That you would be able to learn and use the language perfectly. Maybe that is how it works with some people, but for me I learned that it works that if I study and I try my hardest, then in the moments that matter, I will be able to say something and the person will understand it, and feel it. That is what is IMPORTANT. Besides that, Giacalone and I are pretty dang good at Hungarian and it is super fun to just be co-seniors and struggle our way through missionary life:)
     I love everything. I am so happy to be a missionary right now. The Lord is behind this work and super cool things are happening. I love you all so much and I hope you all have the best week in the world.
      Sok szeretettel,
             Neely Elder.

Me and Darth Vader. I pulled out my light saber and we fought.
#nerds#greateastmomentofmylife.

Elder G. in his MTC robe. #memories.

A delicious Mexican Restaurant. Like Cafe Rio.
Hallelujah!

Our new Sign for English Class.

Elder Brown and I on our last day :(

Elder Mullen and I on his last day of his mission :(

Transfers=Kecskemet

Hello everyone,
      OH YEAH. So transfers. Oh boy. Are you ready for this? Elder Brown is leaving Kaposvar and going to Szolnok. I am leaving Kaposvar and going Kecskemet WITH ELDER GIACALONE. Yup. You heard me right. We are going co-senior together! We are super excited. It will be SO MUCH FUN. However it is super sad to be leaving Kaposvar. The worst is that neither of us is staying. Which means that a new set of Elders will take our place and it will be very difficult for them to keep track of and retain our investigators. I am super sad about that, but I am willing to accept the call. It will be interesting to see what lies ahead.
     Yeah! The Bagozzis are super cool. (They are a senior couple from St. George, serving their second mission in Hungary.) I met them when Elder B. and I were up in Budapest. They are super nice. They are seriously the coolest and they do remember calling me before I got to Hungary! The first time they asked, I didn't remember, (that was a life time ago) but then I did and it was good.
      So yeah. Today has been and will be really long and crazy. We are emailing now, the Colledges are taking us out to dinner at five, we need to meet with some of our investigators to say good bye and warn them about the white washing(where they transfer both of us out) and we have English class at six and then PACKING. Oh that will be torture. And we have to leave notes for the other Elders about all of our investigators. JAJGTAS. It will be a long and hard day.
      So sadly I don't have a lot of time. I had a super long and good email planned for you, but sadly I will have to cut it short.
      We had Zone training this week. It was really good. We had it on Valentines day. hahaha. The cool thing was that we went to lunch and this was the first time that I was officially realized and respected missionary. I wasn't Mullen's Greenie anymore, I wasn't that random junior that no one knows about, I was a missionary and that was pretty cool to see.
      This week we had SPORTS NAP. GREATEST. THING. EVER. So, as you know I am not very sportsy. Like. At. All. So when we planned a Sports Day to have with our investigators and to find some new investigators(it was super successful btw. We had six new people to talk with!) I was not excited, because, you know....I can't sport. Then it came and 1. I got to run around, which is not an often happening occasion for a missionary. 2. I learned how to and quite successfully played soccer. It was super fun and I had such a good time and it was just the greatest thing ever! I loved it!
      Church was crazy. We had a high councilor come and his family came and two other families came. We had 33 at church and 12 of those were children. CRAZYNESS. Everything was just absolute chaos. But we loved every minute of it!
       So we have had a couple of failures this week with our investigators, but this week we also had some miracles.Our family that we are teaching, had us over for lunch on Sunday and it felt like we were home. They are awesome. Anyway. They all of a sudden asked us why we are here, why we would ever want to leave our families for two years and come to Hungary. We told them. We taught the Plan of Salvation. The cool thing is that there were two conversations going on at once. We were not listening to each other, but half way through, we realized we were teaching and talking about the exact same thing and all of a sudden it became one conversation, one lesson and the whole family was listening. It. Was. Beautiful. One of the most beautiful moments on my mission. Directly after that we went to another guy's house. He listened to us teach about the Restoration and he accepted everything and even agreed to be baptized! It was a miraculous day. All of that in one day. Our last day. We left Kaposvar with a really good day :) We decided that maybe we had to fail in those other circumstances and be tried to see if we would still be willing to work and to try. Since we passed, maybe the Lord saw that we were ready and so were the people and it all just fell into place. I love that. He cares about us all so much. It is just a beautiful thing.
      I hope you all have a fantastic week and I hope that you all feel all the Love that the Lord has for you. Thank you for all of your love and support!
       sok szeretettel,
          Neely Elder

Nagy Water tower.

Because we walk so much=worn out shoes.

Re-creating Meteor Gyros.

Elder Brown

Language Mishaps!

Hello Everyone,
      Mission life is good right now. We are getting pretty well settled in the new building, but it is hard for some of the members to find it. Don't worry, we are getting some pictures today, so those should be coming soon. BTW, I probably didn't make it to clear, we are still in our same apartment, just our meeting house changed. So we are still in the same place. That is cool :) I like our apartment now. It is really nice. The weather is SO NICE NOW. Like, we had snow a couple of days ago, but now almost all of it is gone. HALLELUJAH. It has apparently been a really mild winter (thank goodness).
      This week, we were getting ready and someone rang our csengo (bell) and I thought it was the other Elders, so I let them in and said, "Gyertek fiuk" through the little voice box. Turns out, it was not the other Elders. Super funny. Some random guy was trying to get into the building for the letters or whatever and I just said to him "come on in boys!" LOLOLOLOL.
      This week I had quite a few language mishaps hahahahaha. The above is one of them, but this week I also called this lady and I was going to say I would call her back, but I said, "vissza foglak fogni" which translates to "I am going to hold back" lolololol. Then, I was trying to street a man by asking him for a moment, and I instead asked him, "Kerhetek egy palacsintara?"= "Can I ask for a pancake?" LOLOLOL.
      This week I also needed to get a hair cut. We went to my usual hair lady and she wasn't there.  We went back because Elder B. was sick, but then we remembered we wanted to go look up a past investigator. So we turned back and sure enough we ran into my hair lady lol. So there are little nice miracles like that as a missionary :)
      Cool lesson this week: We meet with this way awesome family. They are so nice. This week they showed us a video of a pig butchering, which is really popular to do here in Hungary. Super gross. Almost threw up. Super Nasty. So much blood. Then later this week they fed us and we ended up sharing a really cool message about families and it was awesome. Then later this week while on splits with Elder S., we also taught another family. At the end we shared why we were here on a mission, ad our testimonies of the Book of Mormon. Way powerful Spirit. That is my favorite thing to do here on a mission. Bearing my testimony about the Book of Mormon, because I know it is true. It is such a cool thing.
       Sunday, we still had to do some work and we decided that we would go and look up people that said they wanted us to come back and teach them. So we went to all of them (eight in total) and every single one denied us. Every single one that is ridiculous. So then we decided to just turn around and go back. On the way, it started to rain. Pretty dang hard. Then we walked by a man in a wheelchair. We asked if we could help him. He said yes ad we wheeled him to his homeless shelter that he lived in. It was over a kilometer, but it felt nice to serve him. As we were walking back, both Elder B. and I thought that maybe the reason no one answered and no one was interested was because Heavenly Father needed us to help one of his children. If he had gone home by himself, it would have taken him probably 3 or 4 hours to get home. Heavenly Father knew he needed help, so he had his servants come to the rescue through a route of failure.
     So this week I learned that sometimes Heavenly Father has a plan for all the weird things that happen to you. When everyone is rejecting you and when you end up at random boardgames parties, He has a plan. There is a reason. So I invite you all to look for the reasons behind things. Everything has a purpose. God is not a God of random meaninglessness. Everyting that happens, happens for a purpose.
      I love you all so much and I hope you all have the best of all the weeks in the world :) I love you all so MUCH!
       sok szeretettel,
           Neely Elder

Elder S. our new sign to give church tours.

English class, and my new mini piano. 

Elder B. put on two different shoes for the day. LOL

It rained SO HARD yesterday. Thank goodness today
is a beautiful day.

Baptism!!

The Baptism

A funny chair!

All ready for the Baptism.

Elder's Neely, Gould, M. Sterri, and Brown.

Splits with Jones Elder "Happy Jones"

The 50 cm pizza!

Baptism time! Not a good picture, but a GREAT moment!

SNOW!!!

Hello from the Hungaria Lands!
      This week was a little rough, but all is well :) I am doing sooooo good! I got the pictures from Sasha, thank you! I also got my birthday present! Thank you so much! It is absolutely perfect! I am planning on making waffles this week and I will be using my apron all the time! I was actually thinking this last week that I really should get an apron, so I don't get so much stuff on me! Brilliant!! :) Thank you so much! I can't believe Elder Farnsworth...well...now Chris! is home! That is so crazy. It seems not very long ago that he went out. Crazy.
      Okay, so I have some pretty good stories to tell you this week:
     
       1. SNOW. IT FINALLY CAME AND IT CAME WITHOUT MERCY. On Thursday we woke up to a blizzard. Not a joke. I mean, to everyone that lives in Hungary it was pretty normal, but in ONE DAY it snowed probably as much as St.Georg has seen in the last 30 years. RIDICULOUS. So the snow isn't bad when it is just on the ground, but when it is in the process of falling, it sucks. That Thursday, it did not stop falling and it was just terrible. That day definitely sucked. Included in that day was when one of the trees that we were walking under dumped all of its snow on us. Not very fun.
        2. Due to the snow, there is now ice on the ground. Last night, I slipped and fell on the ice. JAJGATAS.(this translates to WAIL!) According to Elder Brown, it was pretty graceful. The funny part was the fact that I had my hands in my pockets and in my pockets I store my pass-along cards so when I went down, it began to rain my Book of Mormon pass-along cards LOL.
        3. On a better note, this week we have done a LOT of tracting. One of those times, we went to a house and no one answered. So we went on to the next house and no one came out, but out of the previous house came a decrepit Neni. I proceeded to talk to her for about 30 minutes (the Neni's really, really, like to talk) and while she was talking, I look behind her and behind her gate is her dog, which was trying TO GNAW THROUGH THE GATE. The dog was crazy. I am pretty sure this dog has been a problem before, because she thought we were the "Kutya Rendorseg" Which is like the dog police LOL.
       4. This weekend we had a Palacsinta Parti (pancake party) that was pretty crazy. #badplanning But, while making pancakes I got to hang out with a kid named Peti. He is super cool. We played tic-tac-toe and hangman :) It was fun.
       5. Because of the Snow, we made a snowman :)
       6. This Sunday, we were tracting and a door was opened. The guy told us to just continue on and in like three minutes he would come down and talk to us. Well, he did come down, but it was in the middle of us tracting someone else! So he just passed us, but he came down the staircase carrying a tripod! He was dressed just as I would. It was super funny, because he was basically me, just Hungarian. So we just finished the building we were in and started to leave, then he runs up to us and asks if we can help him push his car out of the icy driveway. Of course we do (with the help of two other strangers). So now, he owes us and we will be coming back to talk with him in a couple of days :)
      7. This week I had a couple of moments where I just was blown away by the ridiculousness of my life right now. Here are some of my favorites from this week: 1. Carrying a microwave through the blizzard on Thursday to help out a member. 2. The Cops coming to shut down our Palacsinta Parti because our neighbors thought we were "too loud" (spoiler alert: we weren't). When the cops came they saw that we were leaving and that most of us were 60+ years old. That was awkward for the cops. 3. A German couple that lives in our branch boundaries gave a talk that was translated from German into English then into Hungarian. WOW. So many languages.
      So yeah. That was my week :) It was pretty good. We have had a lot of fun and a lot of snow :)  I hope you all have a good week and I hope you can find the wonderful things in your lives!
      I want you all to know that this Gospel is true. True is a word we throw around a lot. I think that true means that when we test it, it does not fail. That is exactly what I have experienced. In happy moments, in my sad moments, in the moments when I am on top of the world, and in the moments when I feel like I cannot go further, this Gospel, Jesus Christ, prayer, reading the scriptures, they really do help. It is not just a thing people do. It is not just a mystical thing. This is real. That is what truth is. Truth is real and this Gospel is real.
Jesus Christ is real. The love that He has for each of us and the love that our Heavenly Father has for us is real. It is real and powerful and everlasting and endless. I know we can always turn to Him. Always. I love you all. I love you all so much and I pray for you every night.
      Sok szeretettel,
           Neely Elder

The snow finally came.

This is the main Church here in
Kaposvar. BEAUTIFUL!

Snow.

COLD SNOW!

LOL!

SNOW! This is the snowman that we made.

I had to wear some weird clothes to stay warm for Sunday
night's dinner with the other Elders.

Snowing.

GOOD week!!

Hey guys!
      What is up? Mizu? So this week has been great! Like absolutely, ridiculously good. So good, I am going to use a list again :)
   
      1. So don't remember if I told you this story before, but a couple of days ago, we tracted into a family of deaf people! (Exciting to us, because our family served a three year mission in a deaf branch when Neely Elder was younger.)  A lady answered and I started with my usual, "Jo napot kivanok! En meg a baratom vegzunk egy kozvelemeny kutatas. Feltehetnenk egy par kerdest onnek?" And then the woman just did not understand and then made gestures to show us that she was actually deaf. Then she called her husband in to see if he could understand. He was deaf too. He thought we were cops. We quickly gestured that we were not cops. Then they called in their son...who was also deaf. We at least gave them a Jesus pass-along card. JAJ
      2. The other day, we went shopping at Tesco (kind of like Walmart, but not as good, but still pretty good) and we got supplies for our Sunday diner. Well the bag broke, HOWEVER we had eggs in the bag and they did not break! #tendermercy
      3. We were streeting the other day and then we heard a guy yelling. We look across the street and this drunk (seriously, he was super hammered) guy was yelling at this man and the man just decked him right in the face! The drunk guy fell over and then just started yelling all sorts of profanities back at him. Yeah. Eventful. DON'T DRINK KIDS. ALCOHOL IS BAD FOR YOU.
      4. This past Saturday there was an American football tournament in Kaposvar. Elder Brow was dying to see it, so we stopped by to see how they did. They did really well surprisingly, but the cool part was at the beginning, they played the Hungarian National Anthem. It was so, so beautiful. Everyone was silent. In Hungary, they are not rowdy like we are. When the National Anthem was playing and when it finished, it was just absolutely SILENT. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
      5. Later in the week we went tracting and we got let in by an older woman. She let us in and we saw her 80 something old father who was basically on his death bed. I have these weird kind of out of body experiences sometimes when I realize that I am doing something very special. Where I kind of take a step back from myself and realize that this is a very beautiful thing that I get to experience. As this woman just let us in on all of her problems and let us know about how she was doing and as we left her by praying for them specifically by name...it was a very beautiful moment. Sometimes, I think the Lord gives me moments like that to remind me that there is a reason I am here and I can not loose sight of it. I cannot loose sight of it and I cannot forget that it is only through Him that I can accomplish it.
     This week has been good. Elder Brown and I were told that we were planned to go other places, but at the last minute they prayed about it and they felt that we should stay. This week, from multiple  experiences besides just these ones, we found out why. It is a beautiful thing that we have revelation, that we have leadership, that we have the knowledge that God speaks today! That He has once again revealed His will to His children.
      I love all of you so much and I hope you have the best of weeks ever!
         Sok szeretettel,
            Neely Elder

This translates: Answer 42 

Man Toilet LOLOLOL!

The football game

A HUGE limo.

Elder Brown with one of the football players from the Zala Team.

Oh yeah, I hemmed some pants! LOL

Elder Neely's Independence Day!

Hi!!
     Thank you for all the birthday wishes everybody! It means a lot and it made/makes my birthday that much better :) My birthday was really good actually. However, I will answer some questions first and then talk about my week.
     I did get my package! Well...wait...the Christmas one? It is is different than that, then I haven't gotten it, but I did get my Christmas one and it was fantastic. I also got Aunt Becky's package. It was fantastic and that also made my birthday great. More on that later. Oh and I can NEVER get sick of Reese's. They don't exist here. So yeah. I am all for them!
     TRANSFERS: Okay so a couple of crazy things happened in this transfer. We really get into transferology here. So: 1. Elder Brown and I are staying together! It was a pleasant surprise for both of us. We thought for sure one of us would be leaving. I am super happy, because I just love Elder Brown. Such a stellar guy. 2. Elder Giacalone is leaving and going to Kecskemet. He will be serving around Mullen Elder! Not with him, just around him. In Giacalone's place, we are getting Elder Sterri. He was Brown Elder's companion in the MTC. So obviously, we have a stacked district now. 3. This transfer a lot of really random people trained. Usually, the trainers of the greenies are the oldest group of missionaries that have not trained yet. Half of the trainers in the group were like two group younger and the older ones that seemed like they would train didn't. THIS IS WHY TRANSFERS ARE JUST SO DANG EXCITING!
       Now, to answer more of your questions. I have heard so much about this Frozen movie! It must be good. Also, I am so glad you saw Warm Bodies! It is so good.
       I have seen the pictures that you sent me last time! Pictures on the computer or in real life are both good for me! I like either or :)
      Now for this week. This week has been rather normal, but I have some pretty cool stories from Sunday, but it really starts on Friday. On Friday, Elder Brown and I went tracting and we knocked into this nice lady that seemed interested in English Class. Since we didn't have any English Class fliers, we just gave her a pass-along card with a picture of Jesus on the front so that she could have our number. Well above our numbers it also said that we held Church. So guess who showed up to church on Sunday? None other than that woman. She said that she kept looking at the card and felt like she needed to come to church. She didn't even care about English Class. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE COOL MIRACLE MOMENTS. This is the Lord's work. It was awesome.
     After church, we got a phone call that said that one of the Church member's daughter had went missing. We booked out of our apartment and scoured the city for her. Luckily, they found her, and all is well, so that was awesome.
     Later, we were making dinner and Elder Brown fell over while checking the Rakott Krumpli. It was so funny, we died laughing.
     Then it was my birthday! We had a pancake breakfast with the Colledges, then as we were leaving our apartment and saying a prayer, Elder Brown said; "We are grateful to celebrate Elder Neely's Independence day from the womb." HAHAHAHAHA it was so funny! He is such a champ.
     So for my birthday (but really, because Elder Brown had an appointment in Budapest) I got to go to Budapest :) which means I got to pick up mail and packages. WOOHOO!! It was great. It turned out to be a really stellar birthday. Probably one of my favorites :)
     So yeah. That was my day :) It was super great. We had a great week and now I get to stay in Kaposvar with Brown Elder. Things are looking good :) I love you all!! Thank you all for all your prayers and support of every kind!
    Sok szeretettel,
      Neely Elder
P.S. Sorry, no pictures this week. This computer is much too ghetto.