#2 Nyíregyháza: Hungarian Cowboys with Bull Whips

This first full week in Nyíregyháza was a good one. I’d say that we are starting to feel at home hear and getting a sense for where things are in this city. We are registered in the city with the city government. On p-day we played basketball and tennis on clay courts. Elder Garrett and I won the basketball match, but not because I am any good (because I am not) but Elder Garrett is super tall and can dunk the ball. We also went to eat Thai and I had a coconut curry that was awesome! It was a good p-day.

This week we found two new investigators. The first is an older woman named Éva; she was streeted a few weeks ago by the other elders. It was a pretty frustrating lesson, she has a lot of concerns about religion in general, and she is very stubborn, but she accepted a commitment to read the restoration pamphlet, and she said we could come back this next week to talk with her about it. I hope this next lesson goes well, and that we can find a good member to bring with us, we will see. The other new investigator is this man named Attila, we talked outside his home about families and the purpose of life, and we set up for next Sunday.

This week we also had opportunities to meet with some of the sisters old investigators. We met with Daniel, he is a twenty seven year old college student, we shared a lesson about faith, and he said that he thinks that the church and the book of Mormon are probably true, he just feels like he needs to get a testimony of them, I'm really excited to work with him more. Our other big highlight of the week is that we met with a man named Zoltán. He has some interesting ideas about life and religion, let's just say that he has applied religious ideas in ways that cause him to error but they are a product of not having enough clarity, so by the end of the lesson I felt that we really helped him understand gospel concepts better but most importantly we helped him to understand the relationship between knowing the Book of Mormon is true and knowing that this church and its doctrine can help him clean up his life. It was really good.

We also met with our amazing recent convert, Tibor; he is in the branch presidency. We talked about how we can make our personal prayers more personal, and how we can “counsel with the lord in all things” He is so amazing and has a wonderful testimony. Tibor helped us study Hungarian and we learned some localism for Nyíregyháza. It's interesting to learn more about the language in general and how the language is used locally. I think I've gotten to about 90% fluency with the language, well, I can understand about 90% of what people say and I'm able to be understood about the same, I think.

There is another recent convert who was baptized at the beginning of the year, but now is totally inactive mainly because of health problems, we made contact with him and we hope to meet with him this next week. We also did some service for a member in her garden this week, she needs a lot of help and doesn’t have the best health. We took hoes and cut up all the weeds around the base of the trees and made circles of dirt around the trees so that the water could seep in better around the trees. After our work we shared a message out of Alma 32 and she shared some apples and plums from her trees and they were really really good. With the few kilograms of fruit we got we are going to try to make Hungarian fruit soup! We will be going back this week with the other elder companionship.

This week’s district meetings theme was personal revelation, and how we can better apply it to our personal challenges and challenges in the work. We focused on counseling with the lord in prayer, and what it means to pray by the spirit and looking for his will in all things. I think it went really well, but I'm not sure I gave them a good enough commitment, I think like with investigators, its important that there be a solid commitment at the end of each district meeting, I feel that is something I want to work on for next week. Something I learned in my personal study this week in preparation for district meeting, came out of Helaman chapter 10 verse 5, when the lord said to Nephi, "All things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will.” I think that it is important that when we pray for guidance or blessings or help in our lives that we ensure that we are asking for things that are not against the will of God. We can even ask for good things, but they might not be part of our Heavenly Father’s desires for us. That’s why I think that praying by the Spirit is so important, because through the Spirit we can know all things, both the will of the Lord for us, and what to pray for. -- I bought a bulk amount of awesome German sour gummy candy from Mullers and we ate it during district meeting, so that made the meeting super sweet!

I also had that awesome split with elder Surdu, I really like working with elder Surdu. We worked on giving quality commitments. We talked about the differences between missionary work in Budapest, which is what I'm now accustomed to and small town missionary work. I hope we can do good work here. We also had fun when we went white boarding with Elder Durney and Elder Gilson. It was my last splits with Elder Durney before he goes home, and I didn't really do splits with Elder Durney, but I did get to see him, which was good. -- And after our 36 hours (about) on splits we rode back on the train, a three hour ride, through agricultural land. There were a lot of sunflower fields that are about ready to bloom, they will be really pretty when they bloom. One of the downsides to the long train rides to Budapest and back, besides the fact that they are long, is that they are expensive and we are broke because of it; but it's just part of serving so far out in the country.

Today's adventure we went to Hortobágy, which is this small town, near Debrecen, and bought some whips. This area of Hungary, and especially a little south of Nyíregyháza is sheep and cow country, and Hortobágy sits in this plain, and is famous for two things, wetlands and Crains, and more relevant to me, bull whips. Yes, bull whips! One of my mission bucketlist items was to go to Hortobágy, and learn how to bull whip, and I did. It was a lot of fun.

Elders Gilson, Garret, Thomsen, Hess, and North, and I spent a couple hours with this guy who makes handmade bull whips and we just whipped and whipped and whipped. This guy named Joszef, makes hand made whips for tourists, but for missionaries (because he loves us), he makes real traditional (special) whips, and then gives us a significant discount. We in all bought like 9 whips from him. I bought myself one and I also bought one for elder Durney, he is going to be paying me back on Thursday. It's kind of like in Harry Potter where you go into that room and try out all of these wands and then one chooses you, we basically do that, and I found "my whip" it was a great day.

I'm doing good, this next week I hope we can continue to have lots of lessons, if not we will just find more lessons. We also have zone conference in Buda on Thursday and I will be doing my first district leader split with elder Thomsen this week, so I hope that goes well. Love you all, stay stellar! I love you mom, dad, and Charlie!