#13 Kecskemét: Lows and Highs in Learning Hungarian

(Today Ted didn't have time to write a very long email... so you are getting excerpts from his daily audio journals that he uploads each week. Enjoy!)

A dog I feel in love with while tracting. My new favorite breed.

01-22-2018

We had lunch with Tartiana. She made meatloaf with whole boiled eggs in it so you get whole cross sections of the eggs with the meat and you eat it with mashed potatoes, It’s really really really good! She shared a spiritual thought, she compared the gospel to music. How we act on the principles of the gospel is like how we dance to the music; of course we have to hear the music and take it in first and that is like studying the words of Christ and learning what we are supposed to do so that we can learn the dance. The music is good on its own but if we dance that is even better. That was really profound.

We had family home evening with the oldest member of the church in Hungary, he’s 93, because he’s 93 and lives all by himself he cooks really sketchy widower food… but he made regular sausage this time so it was good. He told us all about himself. He’s the seventh of nine kids and he was born in 1925. The first 5 of the 9 kids were born before World War One, then his dad fought in the war and then he was born in 1925 and the other 4 kids were born after World War One. He grew up between the wars in fascist Hungary, and he was a young man in World War Two but I’m not sure if he fought in the war or if he just doesn’t like to talk about it; then he lived through the Soviet occupation of Hungary and the cold war, and now he’s seen the liberation and capitalist growth of his country. So he’s seen it all which is kind of cool! Yeah, he’s a cool guy!

01-23-2018

Today we looked mainly for old investigators and we made an appointment with one of them and found a few good potentials. We taught one of the ladies. We called her and she said she wasn’t interested, but a while later in a completely different part of the city, while walking to the branch house, she called out to us and said, “Hey, you’re the missionaries, we talked on the phone earlier.” It was crazy that we ran into her like that and even crazier that she stopped us. We talked a little bit and then she decided that she did want us to teach her.

We also talked to this kid who was having trouble with his bike and we helped him with his bike and talked to him about the gospel and the restoration. He didn’t seem super interested in meeting with us but we did have a good talk with him and left him with a restoration pamphlet. His name translates to Adam Wolf, which is like the coolest name ever! It was just good! It’s fun to talk to people.

Today was the last day of the 12 week program, so as of tomorrow I will have been in country 12 weeks. The 12 week program is the training program, so being done with it means I’ve been trained… I guess, but the truth is that you’re always learning new stuff on your mission so your “training” is really never complete, you’re always progressing as a missionary.

01-24-2018

In my personal study I read the coolest talk… Elder Hales’ talk, "Becoming a Disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ," in the April 2017 General Conference, a talk about becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ… this is an amazing talk. He talks about how we aren’t just trying to follow Christ we are literally trying to weave in his virtues and attributes into our characters and our lives and he explains how we do that. He teaches that as we become disciples of Christ we embody him and we become as he is. Elder Hales says, “Many people hear the word disciple and they think it only means follower, but genuine discipleship is a state of being, it suggest more than just studying and applying a list of individual attributes. Disciples live so that the characteristics of Christ are woven into the fiber of their beings as into a spiritual tapestry.” He goes back to that metaphor over and over again. It was really good. I recommend you read it.

We met with again with Regina, a new member, which was really good because two weeks ago we taught her about temples and eternal marriage but we didn’t bring with us an endowed member of the church which is hard because we don’t speak Hungarian very well and we’re young people who don’t have the as much temple experience. So we brought with us Zita, the wife of a member of the Bishopric, she is awesome; she served a mission, married, and has three kids. She connected with Regina really well. We wanted to facilitate a conversation that would help the questions that Regina had last week come up again naturally and that Zita would be able to answer those questions, and it totally worked, it was so cool! The Spirit was really strong.

01-25-2018

So apparently there is a top secret announcement we are expecting on February 3rd that will impact our mission. When I first heard about a “big announcement” I thought that it was going to be an announcement about who our new mission president will be but now I’m not so sure. The rumors about it are that whatever it is it will change a lot of things in the mission. There should be a church press release on the 3rd.

01-26-2018

I had a funny experience. I wanted to see if I could get a contact all by myself, so I started talking to this couple (who probably weren’t that interested to begin with) and toward the end of the approach the man looked over at his wife and said, “I have no idea what this boy is saying,” and he just walked away. It was humiliating… but I really am getting better at talking to people on the street. It’s interesting because usually when Hungarians listen to you trying to speak their language they are really happy about it, but some of them have the opposite reaction and are kind of mean when you don’t speak it well.

We were going to have a lesson with our miracle from last week but her family is sick and so we will have to reschedule that appointment.

Today I read a talk by Elder M. Russell Ballard titled “Return and Receive.” He says, “To return to God’s presence and receive the eternal blessings that come from making and keeping sacred covenants, there are important goals we need to set…” He talks about how with the eternal perspective we should set goals in our life, the goals are the end of the journey and the plan is how we get there. The plan of salvation is the plan for how we achieve two goals our Heavenly Father has laid out for us, they are 1) To return to His presence and 2) to receive eternal blessings. If we follow the plan of salvation then we return to live with him and receive all that he has. Using that as our compass and understanding the goal of where the plan leads us gives us a greater perspective and helps of focus on what we need to do. It’s a really really really good talk. He said, “I testify that there is no greater goal in mortality that to live eternally with our Heavenly Parents and our beloved Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is more than just our goal it is their goal. They have a perfect love for us, more powerful than we can even comprehend. They are totally and completely eternally aligned with us. We are their work, our glory is their glory. More than anything else they want us to come home, to return and receive eternal happiness in their presence.” I LOVE ELDER BALLARD’S TALKS!!

Another thought I loved from my study today was from a talk by Elder Anderson called “Overcoming the World.” He said, “Overcoming the world is not one defining moment in a lifetime, but a lifetime of moments that define an eternity… The blessings that the Lord has promised those who overcome the world are breathtaking. They will be clothed in white and named in the book of life. The Lord will confess their names before the Father and before His angels, each will be part of the first resurrection and receive eternal life and go no more out from the presence of God.” He teaches that to overcome the world we must have love for the Savior, and then he teaches specifics we can do that show our love for Him. Through Jesus Christ we can overcome the world!

01-27-2018

I read a great talk by Elder Uctdorf called, “The Greatest Among You.” He said, “God’s greatest reward goes to those people who serve God without expectation of reward.” He taught that when we serve we need to be humble and serve like Jesus Christ, and leadership is simply an opportunity to serve, if we go seeking praise then that’s all we will receive we will not receive the blessings God desire to give us. He also taught that the best calling in the church is the one you have because that’s the one the Lord has given you to learn and grow by serving people the best. He said, “Leadership in the church is not so much about directing others as it is about our willingness to be directed by God.” Again, another fantastic talk! I LOVE ELDER UCTDORF!!

01-28-2018

The coolest thing happened at Ward Conference today. The stake president gave a killer talk on the Book of Mormon. The stake president here in Hungary is an American who served his mission in Hungary, he speaks Hungarian fluently, but because he’s an American he speaks slower, but the big things is that he puts sentences together with an American brain, which is great because that’s how I put sentences together, so I literally understood everything he said, and I got his jokes. It made me realize that I’m not bad at Hungarian, it’s just that because of how Hungarian is set up there’s so many ways to put things together… so if English speaking brains put Hungarian together I can understand them but if their Hungarian brains it obviously makes sense but their brains put things together in a different order and then they talk really fast and so I don’t always understand. It was refreshing and made me really happy that I understood everything. Afterward I went up to him and said, “I understood everything you said, it was amazing!” And then he asked me how long I had been in Hungary and I said, “Three months,” and then he gave me a hug and said, “You got this, it will be OK.” It was a great boost.

I love you all and hope you are loving life. I miss you .

Love Elder Morgan.