Hi, I'm Elder Burnett. Welcome to my weekly update!

I probably say this every week, but I'm going to say it again: This week was INSANE! First of all, we had to pack all of Elder Gilson's and my stuff up and move out of Szombathely. Luckily, last p-day, we were able to take all of my stuff to Sopron so that we wouldn't really have to whitewash out. Good thing we did, because my good friend, Elder Gilson, had 7 bags we had to haul all the way to Budapest! Also, I was up until midnight cleaning the apartment to try and get it ready for the sisters who would be moving in the next day and we had to wake up at 4 a.m. to catch a bus that would take us to the train station, where we would take a train to BP. Our train was also over an hour late, so that was lovely. It was a long adventure hahahaha.

I got to see a lot of my mission friends at transfers and after socializing for a bit, I went to a meeting for the trainers to get trained on how to train. Lets just say, I'm learning a lot as well! After that, we had the "sorting hat meeting" (as the missionaries call it) where the new missionaries come in, watch a brief video about Hungary and the mission, and then get assigned to a trainer! My companion is Elder Hudson from Canada. He's super cool and we're having so much fun together. I'm impressed with him, he already has the metric system down! I've been here for almost a year and I don't even get it! (that was a joke, he's from Canada... also I do get the metric system...mostly...).

We met up with the other elders who will be serving in Sopron, took care of some business in the office, and then we were off! Traveling to Sopron was crazy because we had so many bags. You should have seen the 4 of us sitting in our little train cabin! We so many bags that Elder Millett and I had to sit with our legs up on the bags the whole time (I think I have a picture).

Anyways, we finally ended up in our new apartment, which happens to be the smallest in the mission! I'll take pictures next week. Luckily, it was super clean and the sisters left us a lot of food!

Sopron is a great city. The Hungarians call it the city of loyalty because when Austria and Hungary split, Sopron was given the choice of which country to join. Obviously, they ended up choosing Hungary! Tons of people here speak German, so the little German I remember from high school has actually been put to use on several occasions. For example, someone asked us if they needed to pay to park somewhere and I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Ich weiss nicht!" (I don't know!) hahaha.

From what I've seen so far, Sopron is a much bigger city, as far as population goes, than Veszprém, but it's not as populated as Pest. I would say its a combination of those two cities. There are huge Roman ruins all around, which we will definitely be exploring shortly. Our branch house is in a building that is shared with a bank and a hotel, and there is a senior missionary couple who live on the top floor. It's pretty different from anything I've ever experienced before. There were 19 people in church yesterday and 3 of them were investigators (yay!).

We've been making friends every single day, mostly with drunk homeless people and the neighborhood nénis. So many people know us because they knew the sisters, and most of them are super friendly. There are several different groups of people who stop us to talk every time we see them, and we see them often. It's really nice actually.

Not everyone is nice though. We got yelled at by a woman while we were tracting because we were disturbing people on the Sabbath. I just patiently waited for her to finish yelling, smiled, and said, "I'm sorry we bothered you. Do you know anybody who would be interested in hearing our message?" Gotta get those referrals, right?

I'd like to finish with a miracle we saw this week. We had just finished a long day of tracting, and we were in our building, going into the hallway that leads to our door. When we pushed on the hallway door, we found out that it was locked! Unfortunately, the key to that door happens to be broken... We were locked out! So, I looked at Elder Hudson and said, "We're going to pray and wait for a miracle!" We said a quick prayer right there in the stairwell, and sure enough, the second I finished our prayer, someone was on their way up the stairs. He just "happened" to be our neighbor, and happily let us into the hallway. The Lord definitely planned that so that we could be given an opportunity to see a miracle based on our faith.

What a wonderful opportunity it is to serve the Lord! It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but I've also never felt more purpose in my life. I've never hit my pillow so tired, but I've also never hit the pillow more grateful. I've never felt so far from home, but I've also never felt closer to my heavenly home! I'm happy to be here doing what I know is right.

Sok szeretettel,

Burnett Elder

Hungarian word of the week: Vasmacska literally means "iron cat" but it's also another word for "anchor".