Sziasztok Drágaim!
What's upppp?!?
Dang, I feel like I haven't sent an actual email in forever! The
holidays were so busy, crazy good busy! Man, I feel like I have a lot of
catching up to do. I won't be able to write about everything but I will
write about as much as I can.
We had a transfer the first
day of January. Both of our Elders who were serving with us left! It
was pretty sad! We became really tight as a district and it was really
really hard to say bye to both of them, but we know that where they are
now is where they need to be. Anways we got two new elders. One of them
is Elder Ehardt. I served with our dear Elder Ehardt in the MTC and he
is probably one of the funniest people I know. His companion Elder
Chambers came to the country just two months before we did, so in other
words we are a relatively young district. In fact, 70% of the
missionaries here in the mission came last year, which there are about
one hundred missionaries in Hungary Budapest mission, so seventy of them
are pretty young. For this reason there are a lot of people who are
taking "co-senior" or "senior" positions very early, but they are all
capable of doing it. As far as a district, it's been pretty good. We
only have two weeks until the next transfer, and I'm about ninety
percent sure that I'll leave...unfortunantly. My companion and I have
done transfer-ology (when we try to figure out where and who everyone
will be with next transer) and we don't know exactly, but we have
figured out that a couple people from my MTC group (sisters) will have
to train. Oh gosh, I feel like i'm still a greenie here in Hungary. The
thought of training, kind of scares me, but we'll see what will come out
of it.
We have had some dang good lessons the last couple
weeks! We meet with one of our investigators, who has been meeting with
a LONG time. I think I talked about him in last email. He is the same
one who first met with the missionaries by getting an Angol Ora flyer
from the missionaries on the street. Yeahh...that guy. We'll call him
NT. Anyway, he is a real cool dude, NT has been meeting with the
missionaries for about three years. You know... sometimes people meet
with the missionaries because they're interested in learning English
from them. Sometimes they meet because they are interested in the
church, and somtimes they meet because they made real good friends with
the missionaries. This is kind of the case with this investigator, as I
kind of said in last weeks email, sometimes we forget our purpose as
missionaries. People are just so cool and rendes (classy) here and you
just can't help but just make friends with them and treat them like your
friends back home. Well NT is like one of those cool guys who you just
want to be friends with. Anyways a couple weeks ago we sat him down and
we told him that we really love meeting with him, but he wasn't keeping
his commitments and just didn't seem interested in what we had to say
about our church, but more for the friendship. Of course we were nice,
and told him that we would love to continue to help him with English or
with any other questions he had regarding our church or anything, but
that we thought it would be better to not meet as often. At the time I
couldn't really tell how he handled it, I had just a feeling that he was
a little set back by it, because the missionaries had always, for three
years, gladly met with him. We didn't schedule with him again after
that program. Now keep in mind this was before Christmas. A few days
before Christmas the Elders and us went Christmas Caroling to a few
members and investigators houses. NT called us the night we were
caroling and said that he wanted to meet. That was a big surpise to my
companion and I. We told him we were caroling and he was a little
disappointed that we couldn't meet. Then we had a thought we should
drop by NT's house while we were out. We walked to his apartment and
rang his door bell. It was a complete surprise for him, He let us in and
we talked to him for a while. While giving the spritual thought, Elder
Whiting asked NT how his life has been different since he's met with the
missionaries, he admitted that his life has changed for the better and
that he feels like he is a better person than he was three years ago.
That really stuck with me and I really wanted to hear him out. We
arranged to meet with him later that week. The day came when we arranged
to meet with him and we had a really good program with him. We talked
about a lot of things. He really loves the church and all it's
teachings, but he has a few things that are keeping him from being
baptized. One of the things is that his father is not very fond in him
joining the church, his father has made it clear to him that he will
disown (is that the right word...? It's super hard to speak English) him
if he joins our church. I understand how hard that would be to NT, he
really loves his father and the relationship between a father and son is
super important. My companion and I shared a few stories of people we
know, that have had the same worry before joining the church, and we
shared stories with NT and how it wasn't easy for the people in our
lives to join the church, against their families wish or desire, but
they did and everything after that fell into place. One of my favorite
scriptures that says it better than I could ever is 3 Nephi
13:33, " But
seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you." Really though, people fear about if
they pick to follow God that their life will fall apart, but this
scripture says (to me) that if we obey and follow God everything else in
our life will fall into place according to God's will. We shared this
scripture with NT and bore testimony that this scripture really brings
us comfort in our lives when we have to choose what the world wants or
what God wants for us. It was just a really solid lesson and at the end
NT said he felt really good when we talked seriously about things that
he was worried about. We told him that it was the Holy Ghost and he
said, "Yeah, I felt the Holy Ghost and it's a feeling I want to feel
more." We encouraged him to pray about our message and to ask God
whether it is true, because realy, we can sit here in Hungary for
eighteen months, or the rest of our lives and tell people about God and
how much he loves them and such, but until they act on their faith and
really ask God for an answer they will just be leaning on our
testimonies. There's nothing more important than getting your own
testimony and knowing for yourself , through personal experiencees, that
this is Jesus Christ's restored church on the earth. So we told him to
go home and pray to know if this is true. WE MEET WITH HIM TONIGHT AND I
AM SO EXCITED TO HEAR WHAT HE HAS TO SAY! Sorry, but as a missionary
when one of your investigators makes just even the tiniest step towards
God it just makes your life and confirms why you're here. That's how I
feel right now. I just love NT so much and I know that he will be so
happy with this gospel in his life, he's just naturally a happy person
as it is, and I can't wait for the day that he will be baptized!
Our
other investigator, I think I talked about him in last week's email to.
SA is what we'll call him. He is a baptist that we meet with and he's
just a great guy. Up until the lesson with him last week, we haven't
ever been able to teach him a solid lesson because of time and other
subjects being brought up so my companion and I said that we would teach
him a solid lesson, which we had planned a really good lesson, but we
ended up answering his questions about our church. It was really good,
and although sometiems things got a little intense, he wanted
the
answers and we gave them to him. It was really good. That's something I
really love is when people have questions about our church. We
unfortunantly ran out of time, as he had other questions he wanted to
ask us, but we didn't have enough time to answer them all so we will be
meeting with him tonight too, and we are excited to talk to him about
his other questions.
I think I said this already, but
we meet with SI, our pünkosdi (pentacostal) investigator and we went to
his church a few weeks ago and it was a really good experience. I will
probably be transferred in a few weeks so I wanted to go back and say hi
all of our pentacostal friends again. Gosh, they are just a super nice
group of people. This time we took the two new elders and one of the
coolest members here in Székesfehérvár. It was such a good time. They
all greeted us like we were best friends and we even got puszi (kisses
on the cheeks-equivalent of a hug in America) by a few of the older
people. You know, you don't know these people, but they're so nice. I
just want to emphasize the importance of member missionary work again!!
It's super important. Bringing our investigators to church, or rather,
getting them to come is really hard, and when they do come we want them
to have nothing but a good positive experience. I would just encourage
all of you, if you see a new face in church, whether it be one of the
missionaries investigators or just a visitor, say hi to them!! Go up,
introduce yourself and just be a friend, because a lot of those people
have only a few people (probably just the missonaries) that they
actually know, so just having a friend can make a world of difference
with their experience.
Oh goodness, I don't think
I've talked about our cute little Ági. She is a little néni (old woman)
who we teach weekly. The Elders tracted into her last transfer, but with
her schedule and such, we decided that we would meet with her, but oh
man....can you say delicious food?!! Every time we go over there, she
just makes SUPER good food and we walk out of there SO stuffed. We can
barely walk, but she is just super cute. She made us rokott krumpli this
time and then made this really good diós and alma dessert. It was super
good! We had a good lesson with her. She lives in a ten story
building, but there are two bedrooms in her house, and well interesting
arrangement, she rents the other bedroom that she doesn't use to this
family, or rather, this father and his son. His girlfriend comes over a
lot, and she's been having problems with them the last couple weeks so
we talked to her about they can maybe resolve their conflict and instead
of just being mad and avoiding their situation they could instead sit
down and talk about things and maybe resolve the conflict.I mean let's
be real, just being mad but never trying to fix the situation gets you
nowhere, so hopefully that get's all fixed.
HAHA! Oh
Gosh, I almost forgot, so we went and did look up's the other day (when
we go and look up less active members). We had heard a lot about this
certain Néni, so we decided to look her up. It only took us an hour to
actually find her house, but we were SO glad we did. Okay, listen, so we
walk up to the csengő (door bell--outside of the ten story) and ring
her. She answers and I explain to her that we are the missionaries and
all she said was "jöjjetek be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Not going to lie, I was a
little worried that she'd be a little crazy, we get to her door and
just as we are about to knock she opens the door and she's this cute
little short néni. Oh my goodness, she says "gyertek! (come in)" We sit
down and the first thing she says to us is that "my boots were NOT
good!" Then she goes into this long story about how she bought boots
from one of the stores in the mall, but they weren't comfortable so she
tried to take them back, but they wouldn't take them back. It was
probably the most detailed, long story I have ever heard in my life and
not to mention here is this seventy-five year old woman making all these
hand motions and pretty much acting out the whole story out. Oh gosh,
it was just so dang funny! This lady is pretty much active, but the
weather is hard on her body and that's why she's not been coming to
church, but in the summer she was an active member. We talked to her a
few times about someone coming to bring her to church. Hopefully she
can, but not going to lie, we were about to give up giving up trying to
find her building because where we thought it was, it wasn't then when
we thought we were in the area that it was at, we weren't. We searched a
long time for it, but we finally found it, and i'm glad we did and
didn't give up because in some way, I think she needed our visit, but we
too needed a good conversation with her. We had a good talk with her!
We felt the spirit really strongly and we both went out of the program
feeling good. God puts people in our life, who has big impacts in our
lives, he knows why, even though we don't always know.
Man,
I wish I could just put all my thoughts in your brain right now. The
mission is truly an amazing experience... I wouldn't trade it for
ANYTHING in the world. As missionaries we get asked a lot by members,
investigators, people on the street: "Is it hard to leave your home and
family for such a long time?" I often tell them that it is hard, but
it's worth it. Seeing people change because they have a relationship
with their Father in Heaven is the best experience in the world. No
doubt!! Yeah, I'm missing my family, friends, and school, but I am
gaining so much by just being out here serving the Lord. I love him and
his Gospel and will always stand as a witness to his magnificent power
and love. I know that his email was a lot about my investigators and
such, but I love them so much and they're so dearly important to me, I
can't even explain how much the Hungarians mean to me, they will be
forever in my heart and my home away from home. I actually got a call
from a lady, who was investigating the church when I was in Sopron, the
other day and it made my day. They are just all so precious to me and I
love them.
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