Christmas at the Mission home / Learning to speak Hungarian…

Wow, so yesterday we went to the mission home for Christmas dinner and stuff, and it was really good. Sister Preston played the video of my solo that I guess you sent them the link to. Or maybe my ward mission leader forwarded it. 

It must have been the ward mission leader.  It wasn't me. - Amy

Oh well, I don't have a lot of time to email today, but I think there were a lot of things I was going to tell you… :/

I forgot what they were.

Oh, we are teaching like twenty people who are Hungarian. I am learning a lot of Hungarian now. My ward mission leader probably told you all about it already. He thought it was really funny. XD

We're also teaching a Romanian family. Right now Elder H is using google translate to learn the baptismal interview questions in Hungarian. It's pretty exciting. We may start baptizing them this month. 

We went caroling at an old person's home on Sunday and I played the piano. That was nice.

I think there was still more I was going to tell you, but I don't remember what it was. Oh well, maybe I will write you a letter if I remember.

Bye!

Elder Ferguson

I found the following pictures on his mission's facebook page.  (These ones are ones that have Ryan in it.)  I downloaded them and am posting them on here too.  Check out his smile!  He looks so happy.  If you want to see more of them you'll have to go to my facebook page.  These are the ones with Ryan in them. - Amy

Some real progress!

Ok, well this week was good. You know that you need to send a package to the mission office, not the mission home or my flat right? Cause that would be really bad.

I don't remember if I told you, but a week or two ago, Elder Teixiera came to our mission and we had a multi-zone conference with him. It was really good. He gave us a lot of good tips, and we've started to apply them. Yesterday we followed some advice to keep looking for people to teach in the same area as we have already found other people, so we started tracting a street we had an investigator on, and we found two families to teach, and both of them had small children, which our ward is definitely in need of. It was really exciting, especially because both families let us come in and teach them when we knocked on their doors. We have multiple appointments set up with both of them throughout the week now, and it should be really good. We have 17 lessons planned with investigators next week.

On Saturday, we also had a lesson with a lot of our Hungarian investigators. Four of the six there agreed to be baptized on December twenty-eighth. And the other two said that they would pray about it. So stuff is pretty exciting here. Yeah.

On Monday we are all going to go to the mission home to have a training and a Christmas Dinner with President and Sister Preston. So I will probably email on Tuesday next week. 

Bye!
Elder Ferguson

Ashton Zone - Zone Conference

Not transfered

Talk about short, but sweet!  Oh well, maybe we'll get more later.  -Amy

From Elder Ferguson:

I didn't get transferred if my ward mission leader hasn't told you already. I'm staying in Middleton with Elder H and we're going to be here for Christmas. So that's pretty much it. I don't have a lot of time left today, but I will maybe write you a letter if I have time. We went to the temple today because we weren't moved.

Elder  Ferguson

At least we get some good email from his ward mission leader.  They had a Thanksgiving dinner for the missionaries.  Here are some pictures he sent.

We got a letter from Elder Ferguson's companion.  It was so fun to get!  He sounds like a wonderful elder.  -Amy

Church next week - possible 15-16 people coming!

Next week is transfers, so you need to send all of your letters to the mission office if you send any because I might move, and I'll be emailing on Wednesday or Thursday next week. 

I don't remember if I said about this, but the investigator we met last week that let us in right away when we knocked on her door dropped us on Tuesday. And then we came to her house again anyways on Thursday and she answered the door and let us in right away again. It was kinda funny. Her dad was a Catholic when he was a boy and he doesn't like religion very much anymore, and for a good reason. They did some bad things I guess. But his daughter decided it was still ok to talk to us, although she doesn't seem too committed yet. We'll see.

We had eight Hungarian investigators come to church yesterday. They all paid £2.50 each to take the bus up, and they stayed for two hours. It was really good, and a Hungarian member taught them the gospel principles class in Hungarian. It was pretty amazing. Next week we will hopefully have about sixteen people come to church with us and they will hopefully be baptized in January or February.  That's pretty much it for this week. Bye!

Elder Ferguson

Brother N, his ward mission leader, (one of my favorite people!)  sent me this picture, plus a couple others that are just great!  I had to share.  The others are very similar.  He looks pretty happy!  - Amy (Elder Ferguson's mom)

More pictures & a note from his Ward Mission Leader

From his ward Mission Leader:

Here are some pics from our recent ward activity (Fri)

Before you look at them let me assure you that I take no responsibility for the haircut. I can only conclude that by reason of some mental aberration your son thought he was preparing for an English summer not winter. The good news is that we have many witnesses prepared to testify when the case goes to court as he must surely sue.

The old guy is our Ward Mission Leader.... me.. (80 next Wed!!!). I will see him on Wed as I meet with them weekly but I don't imagine it will look any better. I think I will ask my wife to knit him a balaclava. Imagine that.

The last pic reminds me of Oliver asking for more but that was the remains of his refreshers in the one moment I got him to stop playing. Unfortunately I did not manage to get hold of a trumpet..............but......hope springs eternal.

Weather here has been wet lately but not cold. And we don't get typhoons. It's the rain that makes a pleasant land green.

Hope you are not missing him as much as I am missing my grandson......2 months out now. Keep an eye on his blog. I saw a pic of him with a guitar so that looks good.

Just heard that our Relief Society have called an emergency meeting. They are drawing lots on who is going to adopt your boy.

I did warn you. 

Brother N

A Red Door / Misses his trumpet/ Doesn't want Christmas Presents???!!!! Yeah… Whatever

Could you convert all of the songs you sent me already? The Romance of the Violin album? They're all MP4s and they wont play on our player in the flat. I can't convert them here because all we have is pcs here.

We don't teach in Chinese. Elder H got that name tag when he had a Chinese speaking companion. I don't want anything for Christmas. Don't send anything because it will cost a lot and it will be hard to get it to me. I may be moving near the end of this month and you have to send the package to the right address, which I forgot.

 We're actually not supposed to share names anymore on blogs or anything because I guess names are 'sensitive' information now. Even first names. 

Right now we're teaching quite a few people. On Saturday, we went to try by someone and they weren't home, and then we went to try by a former investigator, but I forgot where he lived since we'd never actually been inside his house before, so we just decided to knock a red door in the area because that was all I remembered about it. The first door we knocked was not him, but the girl who answered the door invited us in and started asking us questions right away. We taught her, her mother, and her boyfriend right away and we're going back on Wednesday, so that's nice.

(I sent the ward Mission leader a link to Woods Cross High School's last Jazz concert, which was awesome.  He loved it!  He told me he might try and find a trumpet for him to play at their ward activity.  I told him:  I'm glad you liked it.  I don't know how much he could do without his back up band or sheet music, and being a bit rusty, but you can try. 

 I have a feeling he'd love to try to play the trumpet for you, but I'm not sure. - Amy

Our ward mission leader did get the video, and he didn't find me a trumpet, but don't tell him I'm rusty. I will take any chance I can get to play any instrument. It doesn't matter if I haven't played one for five months or that I don't know how to play it. I just want to do it again. 

There are some missionaries here who had parents order them ukeleles on Amazon so they have them now, which I guess is ok because President gave them permission to record a video with them and post it on Youtube. But I don't really want a ukelele anyways. 

I'm out of stuff to say. Bye!

Elder Ferguson

Very short…

Brother N (The ward mission leader) told me about the email. I'm playing piano like that again for the ward activity on Friday. That will be fun. My companion says it's ok to put his picture on the blog. I don't really have anything to tell you about this week. It was pretty good. I don't remember if I said last week, but we're teaching three young families now, and it's going really good. We will hopefully have baptized about four people by the end of the year. I might move in the beginning of December though. 

Bye!  

Elder Ferguson

 Elder H. (my new companion)