This is Sister Brown (Senior Couple Sister) and I with our matching blouses.


The story, in a nutshell:

She went to Tesco and got a blouse but it was on the wrong hanger, come to find out it was a size four...the size I wore, so she gave it to me and went back to Tesco and got the right size for her. The day that she gave it to me was on Saturday and she told me not to wear mine on Sunday because that's the day she was going to wear her's. So we went home and I decided to change into mine, because it actually went really good with the skirt that I was wearing that day. So we had English class that night and guess who shows up in the same blouse that night... Sister Brown and I. It was soo funny and soo unintentional!

Sorry, this one is pretty short--but there hasn't been a ton of interesting things this week.

Since I've been here in Sopron, my weeks have been amazing, but I will be completely honest, this week hasn't been the greatest. We had a lot of people cancel on us and not a ton of success for finding efforts, but I have faith in the Lord that things will get better and that we will bless the lives of the people of Sopron as dilligently try to do the work. I've learned the importance of fellowshipping with newly baptized members and how important it is to be persistant in strenghtening them, even though they are baptized, because Satan works on them still. They need strong friendships in the Gospel so when Satan tries to tempt them or brings temptations into their life that they have their feet planted in the gospel sod.

I hope everything is going well for all of you. God be with you 'til we speak again.

Whitaker Nővér

                                  A baptism I participated in right after I arrived

                   Brother in blue shirt is branch president

                      my companion with investigators

                              Elders also serving in Sopron

Szia! Hogy Vagytok!? (Hello, how are you all?) 

This last week in Sopron has been great, as usual! Every week I meet new people and experience new things that make my love for Hungary even greater than the prior week. 

This week Sexton Növér and I had a few opportunities to serve people in Sopron and I would like to speak about my experiences while doing so and what I learned from them.

Our first service opportunity happened Wednesday afternoon. There is an orphanage, here in Sopron, that one of our investigators goes and volunteers at, weekly. The senior couple here, Elder and Sister Brown, are the kindest people you will ever meet and Sister Brown has a love for children that just melts your heart, well of course when Sister Brown has an opportunity to go interact with children she does not hesitate but instead pounces on the opportunity. So on Wednesday, the Browns, Sexton Növér, our investigator and I went to the orphanage to play with the children. Now as you of you know. I was in an orphanage for the first eleven months of my life and though I don't remember what it was like, I can just assume that the life for children in some orphanages is not good. This orphanage though, was the exact opposite. The children were so friendly and so incredibly happy that we came to visit them and play games with them. The smiles on their faces were just a whole bunch of Kodak moments. Sadly, I forgot my camera, but I can still picture in my mind how glad they were to see us. 

Okay, so quite honestly, I've never been a huge fan of babies or children. That doesn't mean I don't love them or care for them, it's just I wasn't like zealous about the opportunity to hang out with them, like Sister Brown, but as I sat with the kids and talked to them (in my broken Hungarian) I started to feel a connection between us. Even though some of them were significantly younger than me, I felt as though we had just created a friendship that could last forever. As I served these children I devolved a love for them and a desire for their happiness. Now, that was another thing that surprised me. It's got to be a hard thing to live I an orphanage, especially when you're older and realize why you are there and why you stay there, but I didn't see one unhappy kid, in that orphanage and they were just so incredibly loving towards one another. They acted as if they are one bug family living in a big home together. They even call the workers there anyukam (my mother). The workers are so sweet and loving to those children and you can see it on their faces!

From the orphanage, I learned the principle of love. Those kids were some compassionate towards each other and willing to help in any way possible. That was just astounding to me, especially given their circumstances. Also, when you serve people, even though you aren't necessarily friends or acquaintances, you will develop of love for them that you didn't even know was possible to obtain.

Our second service opportunity happened on Friday. There is a family that lives a couple of blocks away from the Browns. They are not members or investigators, at the moment, but they are just a neighboring  couple of the Browns. A tragic fire started in their house earlier in the week and it burned everything upstairs and left very few things untouched downstairs. We decided to go over there Friday afternoon and help them pack up things that were still okay. 

I had never served anyone who has lost so much, ever in my life so that was a very humbling experience for me. As we walked in and you just saw black everywhere, my heart ached for this couple and their son. While nobody was hurt, you could tell that they were just physically and mentally drained from this experience. It made me so happy that we could go over there and help them out. 

Sometimes I feel like life is hard and I question why I go through tough times, but my touch times don't even come close to their tough times. Then I feel very selfish when I realize that I have all of my clothes and books and all the necessities back in my apartment and that they are not  all burnt to ashes. The Lord is good to me and my family, but gives us trials and tribulations not to stop our progress but to help us experience things that make our progress more meaningful and helpful, later on in life. I know what this family is going through right now is hard and they don't know why it had to happen, but The Lord has so much in store for them, if they just are patient and wait for The Lord to deliver them blessings, in his timing.

I thank The Lord every day for what the opportunities he has give me to serve the people in Sopron at this time. This is truly a wonderful area and I can't think of anywhere else I would want to be than in Hungary, right now.  Again, the Branch here is great and filled with wonderful people as is the whole town of Sopron. 

I hope everything is well with you all and God be with you 'till we speak again!

Whitaker Növér

                                                    Beautiful

                                          Cool arch

                                          The Danube

                                         Part of the Berlin Wall

                                         Budapest Train Station

                                         Budapest

                                         Castle Hill Budapest

                                          Beautiful building

                                       Budapest and Sister Sellers

                                          Train station Budapest

                                         View from hotel room first night in Budapest

Szia from Sopron!

Guess what everybody?

I GOT MY FIRST BAPTISMAL DATE, THIS MORNING!! Can you tell how excited I am about this!? This happened this morning at around ten and I'm still on cloud nine about it.

Sexton Nővér and I went into the lesson today with the hopes to help this indvidual understand the importance of being baptized. She had been baptized when she was a baby, and thought that, that would suffice. As I studied in personal study,  I thought about many things that I learned in the MTC and I thought that it would be good to talk to her about the importance of exercising her own faith.

The problem that I faced was not to come across as acting superior to her. I prayed really hard and studied the scriptues all morning so that I could hopefully find the right scripture to help me teach this complex but very important concept.

So we put on our brave faces and went in and taught the lesson. Sexton Nővér actually decided to sit back and listen as I attempted to lead the lesson. I read some scriptures that are very dear to my heart about exercising "even a particle of faith..." We had a great talk and after I was finished Sexton Nővér said that we have a baptism in two weeks, and extended an invitation to her and asked her if she would like to come and see it. Not only did she say yes, but she said that she wanted to be baptized. If I hadn't had been holding on to my chair I might of gone through the roof (which is saying a lot, because we were on the fifth floor of a ten-story building). I was so happy and am still so happy!

Afterwards, Sexton Nővér and I talked about the lesson and she told me that I said all these great things, the crazy part about that is that I don't remember saying everything. That is just a huge testament to me that we, as missionaries, are truly the Lord's mouthpiece here on this earth. We are not the teachers, but the spirit is and it can bear witness to people through a power that is mightier (is that a word? probably not.) than anything or anyone on this earth.

Just witnessing that change of heart in someone that I just met a few weeks ago, was the greatest experience of my life.

While I haven't been with the people of Sopron for an extended amount of time, I already feel the love for them, and I get the great opportunity, as a missionary, to feel just a tiny bit of the love that God has for all of his children and let me tell you, it's a lot, because I felt like I could just hug and squeeze my investigator this morning forever! I felt so much love in my heart for her and was so proud of her decision to be baptized.

Just one other quick little story, last week I got to witness my first baptism in Hungary. The Elders in Sopron, baptized a woman that they had been teaching for a while. She is the sweetest lady ever.

Just being able to be at her baptism Saturday night was such a spiritual experience. The baptism that I witnessed on Saturday was way different from any other baptism I've been to. Not because it was in a hotel hot tub (but I've got to admit, I've never witnessed a baptism outside of a church building). But as a missionary, you understand two additional sides of a baptism. You understand the many hours of finding and planning that goes in as a missionary and they're sincere desire for their investigators to accept their message, and you also understand the many many sacrafices and commitments that the investigator makes in order to enter the waters of baptism. It really makes you look at their baptism in a different way. I felt the spirit so strongly during this particular baptism and the beaming smile that this women had on her face after she came up from out of the water was so heart-warming.

I know that this woman will receive so many blessings, in this life and many eternities to come, because of her decison to be baptized.

This past week has been awesome. We've had quite a few programs and everybody has been just so nice and welcoming. I have yet to go tracting, but I hope that it happens sometime this week. We will probably experience different reactions, but I don't care. I am willing to have a million doors slammed in my face, just so they can see who the missionaries are and what they look like, and while they won't necessarily accept the gospel now, I have faith that they will some other time.

In an email my dad wrote me a couple weeks ago he said something that really stuck out to me. He said that I need to remember that I stand on the shoulders of missionaries that have been before me, and that some missionaries might have gone home without a single baptism, but through they're hard work and efforts I may baptize someone who they found and taught, who decided not to get baptized at that time. That humbled me a lot and I thought that this isn't my work, but the work that I'm doing now and the work that I will do, is because of dedicated missionaries who served before me and that when I leave, there will be missionaries who stand on my shoulders who will baptize the people that I find and teach. That was just super relevent to me and I thought I'd share.

The field is white and all ready to harvest, and I am so thankful that I get to be a part of it. I encourage all members to be missionaries. You don't have to have the nametag to be missionaries, but you can do so by just being a good example and taking advantages to teach people the gospel, which brings you so much happiness. I know that if you do so, that the Lord will bless you.

I will say szervusz (bye) for now.

Whitaker Nővér