Fun fact: I had a great week this week, and
found out that my companions and I were an answer to multiple different
prayers this week. Details coming soon...
Fun fact, that's
not so fun: I only have one hour to email every detail of my
life/feelings so I'm sorry if my emails start to become super lame or
short, but I'll try to do my best to encompass all my thoughts and
feelings in this little email.
Let me tell you how this was manifested to me....
Missionary
work is hard. You get letters from missionaries and as you read them
you think that their life is perfect. They have no hard times, they only
talk to nice people, everyone accepts everything they say, the
investigators they are teaching are golden, the members work with them
perfectly. You rarely hear of any complaints in missionaries' letters
home, let's be honest.
Well, I'm here to tell you that a
missionaries life is not sunshine and butterflys all the time. In fact,
you experience a lot more gloomy days, rain storms, and roses with sharp
thorns (both literally and figuratively) than people would think.
Missionaries are told to write all the happy stuff home, and not be
negative in their emails to family and friends back at home. Which is
understandable, but I also believe that you need to be real with people.
Take me for an example, I try to write positive things in my emails and
about how my investigators' progression is going, but I won't lie and
I'll say that this life is hard.
This was especially true
a few weeks ago, I was having a hard time. I didn't know what I was
doing out here and at times I questioned whether or not I should be out
here. You get these feelings quite often as missionaries. You might be
doing all you can to preach the gospel, but people aren't accepting
anything you say, or they seem interested until you go back, ring their
doorbell and they end up hiding behind their window curtain so that
they're "not home." Things like this happen and sometimes it's hard to
stay happy and cheerful about being a missionary.Well, this indeed
happened a few weeks ago, and I didn't know why.
I can
say that I am grateful for my mission because one of the many things
that I've learned from it is "behind every storm comes a rainbow." Weeks
can be hard, but I know that if you endure and do what's right, God
will give you that beautiful rainbow that you deserve.
After
my "storm" a few weeks ago, I saw my rainbow this week. I was waiting
for it and wasn't sure if it would come but it came.
Basically
what happened is that we met with two of our investigators. I talked
about them, well at least one of them in my last email. Husam. The guy
from Iraq. Do you remember him. Okay, well listen to this. Wednesday was
his birthday and he was supposed to go to Australia to go vacation with
his family. Well something came up and his family wasn't able to travel
to Australia when they had planned to, so they had to post-pone his
celebration, which meant that Husam had stay in Hungary for the time
being, meaning that he would be away from his family during his
birthday. We couldn't let this happen so we decided to throw a little
Bowling Birthday Bash for him. Before we gathered all of our friends to
go bowling we met with him and watched 'The Restoration' film with him.
We watched it in his native language (Arabic). Didn't understand any of
it, but it sounded pretty....weird. Anyways, after the movie--before we
could even say anything, Husam pipes up and says, "I love that story.
Everything that was in that movie was true. If you want to know the
truth, you need to ask God and he will give it to you. I love Jospeh
Smith." Who says that? We didn't even ask him anything but he just said
that by himself. Oh, how we love Husam. Then! This is the best part.
Here is one half of my rainbow. There was a silence after we were
talking about Joseph Smith and Husam all of a sudden says, "Can I tell
you guys something really quickly." "Of course Husam, anything." Then he
said this: "I have a lot of friends at the university and I really like
them, but they're always asking me to go to the bars, clubs, or discos
with them and I'm not into that stuff. I don't drink. I really like my
friends but I was praying to God to send me friends who wouldn't ask me
to do those things but to bring me closer to him (God), because I
believe that there are two types of friends. Those who bring me closer
to God and those who take me away from God. After I prayed I met you
guys on the street and I knew that God sent me you guys to be my friends
who would bring me closer to God. That's all I want to say." AHHHHHH'!!
I just get goosebumps writing about that. I can't even tell you how
happy we were when we heard that. We were practically on cloud nine (Is
cloud ten a thing?) I can't even tell you how great the feeling is when
you find out you have been an ANSWER to someone's REAL SINCERE prayer to
God. God exists and he looks after all of his children.
The
other investigator who I don't think I've talked about yet. His name is
Ugo, also from Nigeria. Long story short, for Young Single Adults a few
weeks ago we went to the big stadium park to play capture the flag with
our investigators and the YSA people. It was sooo fun!! We were divided
into our teams and sent to opposite sides of the park just to come back
and run a lot trying to protect our flag. Anyways, Sister Dohm and I
were running towards our opponents side of the field and you have to
keep in mind we were playing with like six of our friends from Nigeria.
Okay so we saw a black guy walking on the fountain blocks (maybe you
remember a picture of me on those?) Basically we thought that it was one
of our friends guarding the flag, so we were trying to walk on both
sides of him to ambush him, but as I got closer I realized that we did
not know this guy, but we just assumed that he was one of our friends
because of well... yeah. Anyways so we ended up running past him,
yelling to each other in English. We ended up getting our flag in the
end and as we were walking back to our side, we saw Sister Sellers
talking to this guy that we originally thought was one of our Nigerian
friends. Okay, this long story isn't very short, but that guy turns out
to be Ugo! AND! That night Ugo had some responsibilities at his church
that he attends, faithfully every sunday, but he felt prompted to go to
the park that night. In his words, "I had no clue why I was there or
what I was doing because I was literally alone with no one, but I just
decided to park my bike and walk on the fountain blocks until I knew why
I was there. Then the Asian (Hey, that's me!!) and her friend ran past
me speaking English, and I just had to know what you guys were doing and
what kind of organization you were with." God exists. He had no reason
to be in the park at that time, but he was! He met Sister Sellers and
set up with us the next day. Our first program with him was right before
the bowling party for Husam (which he ended up coming to and meeting
Samuel, which is one of our other Nigerian friends--they actually go to
the same church, but have never talked until they both met each other at
one of our events. Mormons--bringing friends together, but really
though!), so we actually had to rush, but we set up with him for the
next day. That program was amazing. We introduced the Book of Mormon to
him through the pictures in the beginning and he loved it. We invited
him to the baptism on Saturday and he was like "Yeah, I'll come. I've
always wanted to be baptized, how do I become baptized?" Oh, boy we have
a lot to tell you bout baptism. But oh my goodness. We <3 Ugo and
all of our other friends!
God sends you miracles.
Speakin
of miracles. Hamid got baptized on Saturday. Ahhh! Pictures are up on
Facebook if any of you want to see them! That was awesome. Hamid is
pretty much the sweetest guy alive. It was such a special day for him
and for us. He was already glowing before he entered the water, but
after he got out of the water he was shining. It was so great! Baptisms
are special events.
This week we also had the
opportunity to go up to Miskolc for zone training. Such a hot, long
train ride up there, but it was worth it. President Szabadkai was up
there with his wife and it was nice to talk with them.
That
was the highlights of my week that I can write in an hour. I'm sure
there were more, but hey, that's what a journal is for so I can just
read them to you in a few months. What the flip? I have to be a regular
human being in two months. Not about that!
It will be
nice to be with family and friends again, but either way, family will be
across the ocean no matter where I am. I love these Hungarian people
and will always keep them close to my heart.
God loves you.
Whitaker Nővér
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