Hungary ~Aug 8, 2016

 

 

On Tuesday we had the opportunity to have the kispest Sister Training Leaders here in Békéscsaba to help us with the work and suggest some new ideas on how we can be more efficient in our work!

On Wednesday we had interviews in Szeged and it was great to see President and Sister Szabadkai, both of them are always just so happy, and that joy always seems to rub off on us and our determination to work hard! Interviews were really good, and as Sister Dorny and I have put together the suggestions that President Szabadkai gave both of us we have come up with a very good plan on how we can help each of our investigators personally to progress faster and more steadily! We are going to extend 2 baptismal dates to "L" this week during our teaching appointment and have him pray about which one is right for him!  I am really excited to see how that lessons will go as the spirit directs us to be able to better help him! With our investigator "E" we are going to go ahead and teach her more about the importance of baptism and then ask her to pray about either getting married sooner, or moving out, so that she doesn't push back those blessings that await her with baptism! I think that this next week is going to be great!

On top of that, on Thursday we went back to try and set up with a man  we tracted into a few weeks ago who was too busy at the time to listen to our message. We had already tried to contact him a few times after that, but his neighbors informed us that he was out of town. But on Thursday he was home! I asked him if we could schedule a time to come back and have a lesson with him and he replied "Well, uh, actually... that sounds good!" For a slight second there we were both thinking he was definitely going to say he wasn't interested, but try to do it kindly, but nope, he said that we can meet him on Tuesday! Even better than that, we thought that he was a young single man who probably lived with his parents, but we found out that he is actually married and has 2 little girls! They are a whole family! Sister Dorny and I just lit up when we found out! We are super excited for our teaching appointment with them this week!

FRIDAY WAS MY ONE YEAR MARK AS A MISSIONARY!!!! I seriously cannot even believe that is real! We splurged on the sugar and made oreo milkshakes with our district to celebrate! They were delicious! Still not as good as good 'ole American ones though! That evening our landlord, "G", invited us over for dinner, so we brought a member and prepared a little spiritual message to share about eternal families. As we tried to share our message our landlord kind of brushed it off saying that he didn't believe in God, but he did commit to read The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and we told him we would follow up! On an even brighter note, he had invited his nephew "G" to the dinner also, and as we shared our message, "G" was actually really interested! He has always believed in God, but hasn't had a very personal relationship with God, but he said he would like to! He said that he would like to meet with us and learn more about our beliefs! 

Saturday night we had a music night concert, and sister Dorny was able to play the piano, her violin, and sing! We had a really good turn out and even a few members brought their non member family members and relatives! The music was great, and really invited the spirit, it was a wonderful experience! After the concert I sat down with "L" and we had a nice long conversation of his beliefs and where exactly he is standing this days. He said that he believes the church is true, but doesn't know if God exists. He knows that it is kind of ironic, but he just cant accept that somebody could actually ever 100% KNOW that God exists and that the gospel is true! I shared this conversation with Sister Dorny as we were getting back to our apartment that evening, and it turned into a huge long discussion that finally developed into addressing the correlation between faith and hope and how both of them tie into the Gospel, or doctrine, of Jesus Christ. We summed everything up into the illustration that now occupies our fridge! We got so sucked up into trying to fully understand it that we lost track of time a little bit!  We may have accidentally broken bedtime rules and stayed up until 1AM trying to figure it out...Oops!! But basically the majority of our findings tie back into two scriptures. 

Alma 22:16

16 If thou desirest this thing, if thou wilt bow down before God, yea, 

if thou wilt repent of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and 

call on his name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou

receive the hope which thou desirest.

Moroni 7:41

41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye

shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his

resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your 

faith in him according to the promise.

So what it all ties back to is that learning more about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and trying to better understand his sacrifice and love for us, is the way that we can receive the gift of hope, and by that hope may you know with certainty! We are planning to tie this all in for our lesson with "L" and hope that it will be able to help him!

Also Saturday night as we were heading home from the music night, there was a 90 year old skinny little lady across the street trying to carry a huge box! We were on our bikes, but I told Sister Dorny that we should just stop anyways, so we went to the stop light to cross. As we waited for the light to change, we sat and watched as the lady started to struggle more and more with the box. By the time we got over there, she was fumbling around with it, and looked like she was jsut gonna fall over she was so frail. We asked if we could help, and being an independent Hungarian Néni at first she said no, that she had it under control. But then she gave in and handed the box over! We walked with her to her storage unit a couple blocks down the road and back to where we had left the box. The whole time she just kept on going on about how she just couldn't believe how kind we were! Stopping to help her totally made her night, and ours!! She thought originally that we were Hungarian (bonus language points for us!) but then I told her that we had come from America as missionaries from our church! She was so impressed with our desire to help her and our kindness that she took a Book of Mormon and even said that she would like to meet with us sometime! She was such an amazing (and did I mention classy?) lady!

So that was our week! We are looking forward to a nice and busy week again this week, filled with a lot of good teaching appointments and diligent finding! I hope that you all have a great week too! Love you lots!