#5 Buda: I love being a missionary, even when it's hard

This week's zone conference was really good. I felt the Spirit and it was one of the best zone conferences that I've been too. I really enjoyed all of the training and the role play with Luca, from Kispest, which was a lot of fun because I taught her in Kispest and helped prepare her for baptism. It was cool to reunited with her. The new missionaries blew me away. Then on the second day of zone conference, for the other zone, the role play was with Zoltan from Kispest who Elder Gable and I taught and baptized, so I got to see him again, and that was really cool and he was happy to see me. 

On P-day this week we went and did an escape room, they are like puzzle rooms they lock you in and you have an hour and a half to figure it out. We did a really hard one. The theme was that we were in the metro and someone had hidden a bomb in the metro and we had to figure it out before the bomb explodes. We solved it with a minute and seven seconds left, so it was fun adventure. Also this week, we went with the Érd elders (Baer and Montoya elders) to this cool aquarium in a mall. They had some gators, bugs, snakes, and lots of fish, we even got to pet some stingrays, it was good for my soul.

 

We taught English class and taught them about idioms. I learned a Hungarian idiom that I liked. It's my new favorite idiom. It basically says, "When you don't have a horse and donkey is also good." That was a good thought. Another cool development was the Bradshaw's told us we are going to start the self-reliance program with the missionaries. It's cool. We will be doing it in district meetings, which will be longer so that we can do the self-reliance program.

This week we were able to meet with two of the people we are teaching, one of which came to church, and also we found someone new to teach. His name is Kadri, he is in his early 20's and is from Albanian. He is a little rough around the edges but was really interested in our message. We taught him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and how to pray. When we gave him a copy of the book of Mormon in Albanian his eyes just lit up and he was very surprised. He said he would read it. It also turns out that his only free day each week is Sunday, so I hope he will be able to come to church with us in the future. He also speaks Hungarian really well.

We also met with Lajos and Ibolya this week, we had good lessons but I don't know if they will apply what we taught, or how much desire they have to apply it. Ibolya is an atheist who is curious about religion and faith because she sees that people of faith are happier, but she isn't progressing very well because she doesn't understand how faith works through doing not just desire or belief. We've been teaching her about prayer but she won't pray yet. We will have to see what we can do. We also gave the Chinese family we are teaching a book of Mormon and some other teaching resources, we will follow up with them in a few weeks. This week we found a handful of cool potential people to teach, mostly young 20 something men. One of them named Donny is a Unitarian. The hard thing for Unitarians is understanding the need for a "true church." They aren't comfortable with the concept of organized religion. I hope this next week we can meet with our new contacts. It was busy, and our time for proselyting was limited, but I feel like the Lord magnified our efforts.

This week I started the war chapters of the Book of Mormon. Some people I've taught on my mission have been quite turned off by them, but I think they have a lot to teach us and they are exciting. When I was a kid my dad told me about this paper he wrote for war college about the tactics in the Book of Mormon and then we had a talk about how they teach us a lot about how Satan tries to attach our fortifications. We talked about how we can follow the example of Captain Moroni in our lives and defend from the attacks of the adversary. One of his favorite scriptures is Alma 48:17 "Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men." I hope that as I study this part of the Book of Mormon I will find more ways to emulate this man of God. I love that I can be a missionary, even though I'm having kind of a rough time right now and its been a long 6 weeks here in the office, I'm still love being a missionary. It's not always easy, especially not now, but I am still glad that I chose to serve.

Sok Szeretettel, Morgan elder