#8 Pest: A New Mission

This week a new Mission President landed on the blessed native soil of Hungary. At 7:20 a.m. on June 29th an airplane debarked out of an airport in Romania caring our new Mission President and his wife, Elder and Sister Hettinger. July 1st is the first official day that the Romanian and Hungarian missions combine, so there was a little interim period, but this week we got a new administration of our mission and a whole new mission!! So BIG stuff.

This week was a blur, but it's odd because honestly it was a slow week for teaching and we were dropped by one of our investigators, and have another that we will probably have to drop verily soon; but after hours and hours of streeting we found tons of potential investigators. This week we picked up a new investigator who is a Jehovah's Witness, so that's pretty exciting, I've never taught a Jehovah's Witness on my mission. BTW: Jehovah is Jesus, just putting that out there. We just have to wait and see how they progress.

We had a lesson with Alex, this Russian guy, he was born in the USSR and his parents were Russian diplomats. He is really interesting, because a lot Hungarians here talk about how much they love communism because they think times were better, but he blasts communism and the orthodox church. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon, because he was contacted first by Elder Fales and his companion last transfer and they gave him a Book of Mormon and he actually read in the Book of  Mormon and we've met on the street with him three times and now he's a new investigator, and he's pretty cool. He talks with a Russian accent. We were walking on the street Monday morning coming back from grocery shopping and out of know where we here "Hello Elders" in a thick Russian accent. He seems pretty willing to read the Book of Mormon. I look forward to seeing if he will progress.

I did have a split with Elder Durney this week. It was good we white boarded with the question "Miért engedi Isten, hogy gonoszság és szenvedés legyen a földön?" Or in English, why does God alow that there should be wickedness and suffering on the earth? It was a really good topic and we found some people who were interested and want to learn more. I really like the topic because it's a great springboard for teaching the Plan of Salvation.

We talked with a man on the street who was more willing to listen to us because we don't believe in the false traditions of the catholic church. He was surprised to learn that we don't believe the Bible is infallible, but he asked us how we know what is true and what isn't true in the Bible, or how to interpret it. We told him we have three very reliable ways that we can understand the truth and error in the Bible. First, we have a perfect book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, that we can compare the Bible to. Second, we have a living prophets who can help us to interpret the Bible, and third, we have the Gift of the Holy Ghost that can guide us to understand the truth. That blew his mind!!

We talked to a group of young people and one of them, Mark, wanted to share a scripture from the Bible with his friend, but he didn't have a bible, and we ended up sharing it with all of them and talking to them about the meaning of the scripture. It was about gaining spiritual knowledge in Romans. It was a great conversation with this young man, and he was impressed that we could speak Hungarian, but he spoke to us in English anyway. We got his phone number and gave him a Book of Mormon.

We also visited some families from the ward this week and we shared a message about the Book of Mormon. we shared this video. I think it is really important to share with others, those parts of the scriptures that touch us, it brings the Spirit. For example I read Helaman 5 this week, it was fantastic, a great story, and I felt the Spirit.

I decided when I come home I want the nick name of Mackó (Mah-ts-koh (ts is like the ts in cats) I means teddy bear, specifically poo bear, but sounds way cooler than teddy.

I love you all, shower my love at the family reunion, be happy!

Love, Elder Morgan.