#10 Debrecen: Christmas is in the Air

Winter has come and just in time for December and Christmas. We had several of the people we teach stand us up this week, end of term exams and sickness, it was pretty rough, but we also had some success finding new people to teach this week. It was great, we found six new people to teach. Two of them are a mother and daughter that were referred to us by the Branch President and we will be meeting with them tomorrow. So we are hoping some of them make progress.

We also had some awesome exchanges with the AP's (Assistants to the Mission President) in Buda. I went out with Elder McCann from Australia, who was a body builder before his mission, so he's a really big guy. That night we hung out with the mission secretaries, Elder Udy and Elder Burnett, while the AP's did an interview with the press for an article on the church. Elder Burnett and I went to a lesson together with a member and her non-member husband. I really liked Elder Burnett. He'll go home at the same time as me. Elder Burnett is the only of the office missionaries who can drive and so we drove but we got lost and ended up in a pretty sketchy area of Buda in the snow and fog, we were pretty freaked out, but we figured in out in the end. Our trip to Buda took up Monday through Wednesday, but it was productive and really good learning.

We had a good day Thursday and found several new people to teach and on Friday we had district meeting and the Oakey's made caramel corn, very yummy. We also had a wonderful lesson with our recent convert Andrea, we talked about the repentance and the need for continual change and progression. We read about how repentance helps us become more like Christ. Afterwards there was a branch activity, and we were able to contact several of the non members who came. The branch activity was a crafting night where ward members made Christmas craft gifts. We met a co-worker of the Branch President who was into crafting and a bunch of her crafting friends and we met the mother and daughter we are going to begin teaching. We made lots of great contacts.

We had exchanges with the Szolnok elders here in Debrecen, Elder Seeley and Elder Montoya met with two guys from Pakistan and shared with them the book of Mormon in English. They said it will be a little difficult for them, but after zone conference we are going to give them each a copy in Urdu. Elder Barton and I teamed up and did some great finding. We met with a new investigator named Kinga and talked about the Book of Mormon with her. She met with missionaries in the past but she genuinely seems interested to really Reading the Book of Mormon. We worked on teach when you find, find when you teach, and how we could tie our commitments in with testimony while streeting and tracting. It was probably on of the best exchanges I have ever been on. Elder Barton is a fantastic missionary.

For the Light the World initiative we planned a big finding activity in Debrecen. The Szolnok elders joined us and we set up our white board and banner in front of the Branch house and chalked the side walk, sang Christmas carols, and handed out cards and Christmas candies. It was a great way to start of the Light the World campaign.

On Sunday it was testimony meeting and the both the Oakey's and Sister Fuller (the mother of the little Hungarian girl she adopted) gave their testimonies and so I live translated for all three of them over the pulpit and I did a pretty good job, which made me feel pretty good because that's really hard to do.

It was a great week!!

All is good! love you all, thanks for the pictures of the gingerbread. I'll be there next year!

Elder Morgan.