New Mission policy...

Hey all-- Aaron here, Andrew's Dad.

A quick heads up on a couple things-- Andrew heads out to Riga next Monday morning, and FINALLY gets to his mission proper on Tuesday afternoon.  I had a quick email chat with him yesterday during his last P-day, and he was swamped with last minute travel preparations, so he didn't get a general letter out.  That being said, he wanted me to pass on that he's excited to get started, he feels pretty confident about where his Latvian skills care at (considering its been a short two months) and he's hoping for an awesome trainer that get him right to work.

Here's the issue that cropped up this week-- we (Agi & I) along with every other parent of missionaries serving in the Baltic States mission, received an updated notice on the online privacy laws of the Baltic States.  They are rigorous.  Its illegal to post info, photos, etc of any person online without their explicit permission, so in the interest of being extremely conservative in protecting the church legally in these countries, we've been asked to refrain from posting ANY mission related info to public sites like blogs and Facebook, unless they are private and we strictly control who has access.  SO.  No more posts from us (or links to this blog) to Facebook.  By Tuesday I need to have this blog fully private, as an invite-only deal.  For those of you close family and friends, we'll still be sending his letters out privately, and posting them to this blog, which won't be public anymore if I can figure out the settings this weekend...

thanks for understanding, and if you want to be on the list to get Andrew's weekly updates, just shoot me an email (aaron.budapest@gmail.com) and I'll add you to the private list.

Thanks!

Aaron

only 11 days left....

Hey all!  Aaron & Agi here.  Here is Andrew's latest missive from the MTC.  We are amazed at how quickly time is flying.  He leaves for Riga on the 22nd, so for those of you wanting to send him a letter to the MTC, please do so in the next week!

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Hey Everyone,

This week was a pretty good week. It feels weird that I only have a week and a half left in the MTC. One of my favorite parts of this week was the Independence Day celebrations. It was a pretty normal day for most of it. We did sing the National Anthem in the cafeteria, but that was literally right after my companions and I left. The Sunday after, we got a note in the bulletin to "not participate in any unauthorized traditions in the cafeteria". I guess they got sick of the constant birthday songs. We had a devotional in the evening, which was 60% musical specials and 40% actual devotional. Elder Gentry participated in one of them, which was a country folk music. He looked so happy finally getting to play the guitar again. After the devotional, we watched 17 Miracles, and then watched fireworks from the Stadium of fire. 17 Miracles was an awesome movie, and I've never seen it before. It really hit home, just how big a struggle it was for the pioneers to get to Utah. 

I was also assigned as a district leader for the rest of our time here. It's weird being in a leadership position, it forces me to be more outgoing and open to the district. I have to do interviews, conduct the district meetings, be an example, and be a glorified mailman. It's pretty decent. One of our teachers had to quit this week, because he was just overloaded with collegework. Bro. Bergeson is studying engineering, which is a hard science degree and really tough. So I don't blame him. I really liked him though, he was always really blunt and straightforward when it comes to constructive criticism. That really helped me learn to fix some language errors I was making. My other two teachers are amazing, and they'll get to teach us by themselves for the rest of our time. 

Anyways I love it here, but I can't wait to be at Riga in two weeks. I hope I get an awesome trainer and get right to work. I feel like my testimony has gotten a lot deeper since I got here. As with teaching, I did not know how to teach the gospel back then as I do now. I'm super grateful for that. 

I love you all and I can't wait to see all of you after two years.

Elder Palmer

One month left at the MTC!

Hey All,

Aaron here.  I was on the road sitting in the Sarajevo airport on Thursday when I got Andrew's latest letter-- he sent it for everyone on the blog/facebook sites, so here it is!  Time is flying-- He flies to Riga in exactly one month, July 22.  We also FINALLY got his fist pictures (thanks to Kari and Matt for getting them uploaded to us) so we've put a couple up here as well!

ALSO he ran into a U.S. friend from Hungary, Nash Miller, who got his call to Russia Novosibirsk and arrived to the MTC this past Wednesday.  Andrew actually had traffic duty that day directing cars as families dropped off reporting missionaries.  He had the escort duties on that detail last week.  Would have been fun if he'd met Nash on the way in, but instead ran into him later that evening-- all those central/eastern Europe / Russia missionaries are all bunking and studying in roughly the same areas..  SO we are still waiting for that photo-- two american guys from the same seminary class from Budapest both going to eastern europe at the MTC at the same time :-)

The first letters he sent via post are finally trickling in as well to our Hungarian home address.

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Dear family and friends,

This week at the MTC was pretty good. The highlight was on Wednesday, when we got to direct traffic during hosting. I was assigned at the end of the car parking line, which means that I was the first one to park cars in their spots. We had a lot of fun at it, and those of us with walkie talkies also had tons of fun. They made up funny codenames and tried to talk like the military on the network. It was fun for them, until they realized that the cops were also hooked into the same frequency... that was also funny to see. Yesterday, we did another lesson with an investigator, and all we talked about was 1 Nephi 5-7. We basically set the stage for an lesson on chapter 8, Lehi's dream. We also had a devotional given by Elder Ballard on Tuesday. Elder Ballard raised a good point, that 90% of all baptized Latter Day Saints are still alive today. That kinda blows my mind. 

I love my district and my zone. It feels like we are part of a family... and I guess that's because we practically spend 16 hours a day with each other. We also have 3 awesome teachers who have taught us and me so much Latvian. I've learned in 4 weeks, what it took me 5 months to learn in the Swiss Integration School.

Love you all and miss you all, can't wait to see you in 2 years

Elder Palmer

June 5 - Letter from Andrew...

Greetings all from sunny Prague!  Aaron here, posting Elder Palmer's fresh-off-the-presses P-day email from the MTC.  A real chatterbox he is not :-)

Here he is, on the far left, with his district:

We love him and are excited to hear from him-- we count the days to Thursday...

Without further adieu...

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Hey Dad,

You weren't kidding when you told me how intense the MTC will be. I kinda wish I listened to you a little more about preparing for that kind of schedule. Latvian is both easy and hard to learn. I can see some Germanic elements in it, but it is still SO different that I have to watch myself when learning it. The Hungarian Missionaries are on the same floor as us. Basically, our classes are pretty close to each other. I think I'm a little better known among the Sisters, because they were the first ones to talk to me, and they're a little friendlier. 

As for my district, my district is just my class. So the Latvians are all one district, the Lithuanians are another district, and so on. The Huns are not in our branch though, just the same floor. My two companions are both zone leaders, which means they do interviews with all the district leaders, and they have other responsibilities that I never bothered to learn. Everyone in our district came from stateside, except for me. One of my companions did A LOT of traveling abroad, but was never an expat. He's a pretty good guy, but I feel for him. As far as I know, he's the only liberal in our district. We don't discuss politics much... didn't end well the 1 or 2 times we did, but we're pretty civil. 

I did get your packages. Thanks for them! I haven't finished the chips & cheese though. I brought one of the giant chocolate bags to class, and now I think I got a good reputation among my district. It's really good here, and we had an apostle come to give a devotional. It was Elder Ballard. You should watch "The Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar with Mom. It was a good film to see.

I love you and I miss you, Dad. Out here, the only thing I can rely on is what I brought with me, and the things you and Mom taught me. I'm grateful for that.

Sincerely,

Elder Palmer

Andrew's first dispatch from the MTC...

Greetings all-- Aaron here.  Andrew is 8 days in, and today was his first P-day.  I got his letter about an hour ago, and I'm posting it here for everyone...  For those of you that wrote Andrew this week, he says he'll be responding individually over the course of the next week, his precious time permitting :-)

Hey Dad,

Things are going pretty well at the MTC, I am part of a threesom with 2 other companions. They are Elder Mangus, and Elder Misseldine. Misseldine is from Arizona, from Joe Arpaio's district no less! And Elder Mangus is from Zionsville, Indiana. The days are pretty long and hard, but the weeks are short. My two companions are both zone leaders, so I get split quite often. There's 8 of us going to Latvia, 5 elders, 3 sisters. I'm also now known among the Hungary-bound missionaries, so that's pretty cool. It can be a relief sometimes to let them practice their Hungarian on me, cause Latvian is kinda kicking my butt. It's got some Germanic elements to it, like conjugating nouns in accusative, dative, and genitive forms, instead of just pronouns like English. It also has some exceptions to the rules, which really sucks. I wish it was like German, nice, orderly, and the rules are absolute. 

Our district gets along very well, I don't have photos yet, but I'll send them when I have the chance. It's hard to find a computer where you can upload pics. It's nice to have really well scheduled days, but I have literally zero time in the week to review what I already learned. I'm getting a lot more than 20 words a day. The language really is frustrating at that kind of pace. We've covered in 9 days here, what we covered in 3 months at the Swiss Integ. school. 

I've already had a couple funny stories happen here. The Finns accidentally had an investigator read Moroni 9:8-9 as a way to learn how to feel the spirit (read it out loud to understand). The investigator we were teaching for the last week just revealed himself as one of our teachers, so we have 3 now. In fact, "Valdi" has been teaching here the longest of the 3. He came back from his mission in Latvia 3-4 years ago. He sounded fluent when we tried to teach him in Latvian. 

Also, we had a great first impression with out branch president. There was something like 20 of us Elders showing up to a meeting without our suit jackets. He told all 20 of us to go back to our dorms and get our suit coats on. One of my companions said "really?" in a lighthearted way to him.... from right in front of him. We were in front of the group. So yeah, he's one of the zone leaders now, and I do not envy that assignment.

I miss all of you, dad, mom, Aidan, Ali, Ashton... But I am having a great time here.

Love you all,

Elder Palmer

PS. I'll write answers to all the individual letters I got over this upcoming week. Tell me when you move to the new house, and tell me how great it is.

And he's off! 1 week down, 103 to go :-)

Aaron here-- Andrew's dad...  Finally back home in Hungary-- was awesome dropping Andrew off at the MTC a week ago today.  We turned into "those parents" immediately-- sending him two packages in the first 4 days, prior to our flight home Monday.

Normally the missionaries write home the first night (we assumed via email) and since we hadn't heard anything by Friday night, I called the MTC and asked about the policy-- really played it up by indicating we were an international family from Hungary and wanted to know that all was OK with the new Elder Palmer, etc.. (apparently arriving International Elders are supposed to make a quick 5 minute call the first day to their family) so they got Andrew on Saturday to call us.  Typical Andrew-- already taken to the MTC life, and his call was hilariously serious-- basically "Why the heck am I calling you guys?  My P-day isn't until Thursday, don't you know how busy I am?"  Awesome.  I asked if he'd gotten our mail or package, and his response was "you've written to me already?  Its only been 4 days..."  Apparently hadn't even checked his mail yet :-)

So.  We are glad Andrew is off to a roaring start, with 17 Elders and sisters in is group, and 8 of them are speaking Latvian.  He's in a 3-some with two other Elders, and hopefully we'll get details tomorrow on his first P-day.

And if he's not too busy, we might just get an email :-)

Aaron

Here's a couple photos from his drop off last Wednesday, including a few from our "last family meal" at the Kieffers Tuesday night.  All we were missing was Dad, who but for an unfortunate accident in Iowa the previous week, would have been there with us as well!

Well it is now official.  Elder Andrew James Palmer was officially set apart tonight as a full-time missionary.  Thanks to our awesome Stake President (7 year and counting) Gabor Klinger.