LDS Charities

You might wonder what fast offerings and donations to the LDS Humanitarian Fund go for. A member of our branch, Andi, one of our original members and the original relief society president, whose son is on a mission, has an advancing case of muscular dystrophy and needed a new wheelchair. The one provided by the Hungarian government was too small.

Here her husband Istvan, just released as our elder's quorum president, is showing her off in her new larger wheel chair provided by LDS charities. The church just sent to Hungary several hundred wheelchairs to distribute to needy people. Sister Baughman, the mission president's wife, saved out five for members and we were lucky to get this one.

When sister Bordas heard she was getting a new chair, she was so excited that she came to church for the first time in over a year last Sunday--a major effort since we don't have an elevator and a team of four men had to carry her up two flights of stairs to the third floor where our chapel is (about 50 steps).

Friendly feeds

You know that Thompsons believe in Southern Hospitality, and that means having fun feeding people. Here we are hosting the new mission office couple, the Bagozzis. They spoke in our branch on Sunday. Since this is supposed to be an action shot, Elder Bagozzi is showing how to eat cream of garlic soup out of a bread bowl.

The Révész family (he's my counselor and she's the relief society president) were over for family home evening. We started out with our Cuban favorites, black beans and rice, fried bananas, picadillo and Cuban sandwiches. Of course, to get them in the right mood, they had to show that they could shake their hips just right to Cuban salsa music and show some body action. We told them that sets the stage so Heavenly Father will know that the blessing on the food will be in Spanish rather than Hungarian. Mom and Dad aren't doing too bad with the body action here. Eleven year old son Kiki was so embarrassed that he hid behind his sister for the picture. Big sister and little sister at least tried. You say I have my work cut out for me to liven up the teenagers a bit this coming year?

Learning English through action songs.

One of our branch members is training to be a kindergarten English teacher. She invited us to come teach English action songs in two of the classes she observes.

Here are the kids all arriving at the school at 7:45 not far from where we live.

We taught this cute bunch of kindergartners "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes." The next class was two years older. They already knew most of the songs we planned to teach but they didn't know yet "Are you sleeping?" We showed them how to do it as a round, though a couple of the kids looked like they might fall asleep doing the "sleeping" action.

The school was so fun. It reminded us of when our kids were in school in Pécs Hungary in 1990. The kindergarten room had cute little sinks with their tooth brushes. The second graders had a snack of milk and bread when we got there. And Chrissy, this will bring back memories, when we finished, it was time for recess to they all stripped down to their underwear in class to put on their "get dirty" clothes to play outside.

We had so much fun--the teachers are just as kind and wonderful as they were 20 years ago. Sorry we didn't get a picture of the second class, but we were having so much fun we didn't get around to it.

Spelling problems?

Shouldn't that be spelled M O R O N I ?

FHE fun!

Isn't mom getting good at making fancy table settings? This is for one of our weekly family nights with members of the branch where we remind them how much fun you can have on Monday night with your family. It's also a good time for us to practice our Hungarian. This week we had the Joó family over. He's my clerk and she's my primary president.


Sister Joó is a fantastic cook who likes to learn fun foreign recipes. This week we had a family favorite that we learned in Mexico--Volcanoes--the build it yourself meal that is so fun for kids. This mountain of refried beans for dirt, hamburger for rocks, lettuce for grass, shredded cheese for sticks and salsa for fire, didn't get very tall on the homemade tortilla world and Julia did forget to put the sour cream for snow on top but the egg is ready to run down the mountainside like hot lava.


Here we are playing a fun word game where each team has to spell Hungarian words laid out like a crossword puzzle before the sand runs out on the egg timer. It's kind of like Scrabble except each team has to spell out as many words as it can when it gets a turn. Sister Joó and her daughter won by one point.

On a clear day you can see ...?

Switzerland?

Elder Viborny, tell your Swiss companion Elder Müller it's a false alarm. Those are the Austrian Alps just outside of Sopron.


Good job at catching him as he steps across the border to Austria.