#13 Buda: Keeping it Awesome: Romania, Bronchitis, Potato Soup

The Transfer is over! We got new missionaries! On Tuesday 9 new sisters and 4 new elders arrived. One of the elders was from the Marriottsville ward in the Columbia Maryland stake, Elder Running, that was kind of interesting. He told me that recently President Mitchell was released and that President Lund is now the stake president. I thought that was pretty cool, sense Brother Lund was one of my FAVORITE young men's leaders. -- On Wednesday, we took Sister Smith, Robertson, and Lewis to the airport because they were going home! Those are the sisters who were in the MTC with me and now they are going home! Now with transfer's are done everything is settling back into normal. Elder Smith is the new assistant, which is great because we love Elder Smith... and now it's just me and Elder Barton in our apartment and it's going to be a great transfer.

Most of this week was a blur, but on the whole not to bad. Update on me being sick, after three weeks of painful coughing Sister Hettinger said it was time for me to go to the doctor. I wanted to go to First Med, an English speaking med center we usually go to, but by the time I could get off to go it was closed so I went to a Hungarian hospital. That trip was pointless because they tried to extort me for cash in order to get treated and when they finally realized I didn't have the money they said they would help me, but the doctor was really mean, ripped my shirt up, listened to my chest, told me I wasn't dying and to go home. So basically he didn't treat me and we wasted our time; but today I was able to go to first med and found out I have bronchitis, but now I have medicine so hopefully it will be over soon and my lungs will stop hurting. Sunday I rested on orders from Sister Hettinger and Elder Barton made me potato soup this week, it was great. I want to be better! The doctor said the bright side is that being in the office probably saved me from pneumonia because he said if I'd been outside a lot I would have gotten worse.

This week we had several lessons planned but most of them had to be rescheduled or canceled. We had one really good lesson with our part member family. We taught the young boys Adam and Beni about the Restoration. We shared with them the restoration video and gave them a picture Book of Mormon. It is so cool teaching them. They are 10 and 8 and its so cool how much they want to learn. They have great questions. 

We also met with Lájos this week, we brought the elder quorum president with us. We addressed some concerns he had about the nature of God. We also taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ and invited him to be baptized, but sadly he wasn't ready to accept it. We bore testimony about the importance of baptism and the need for repentance and invited him to pray to know what steps God wants him to take in his life.

We met a man named Adam while we were tracting who we are going to meet with next week. Also, when having lunch with Rosie this week she was talking to two young women in their twenties, at the restaurant we go to with her each week, and we invited them to English class. They came and we set up a teaching appointment with them. So we found three new people to teach this week, which is pretty cool!!

We also went to Romania on Saturday with the assistants by car, we had to get our passports stamped so we can be certified to drive. There's a law in Hungary that you have to get a Hungarian drivers licence if you have been in Hungary continuously for longer than a year. So the easiest way for us to get certified to drive is to leave the country and come back. We drove to Romania went to a truck stop and the bathroom and turned around and crossed back into Hungary. We weren't there for more that a half hour but now I can say that I've been to Romania. It was kind of like driving from Illinois to Indiana, nothing material changes when you cross the boarder. On the way home we ate lunch in Szeged.

This week while taking the sacrament I more about the duality of the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I was thinking about how the torn bread represents the his torn flesh that brought his death and resurrection. Through Christs death, all shall be made alive, he is the savior from death. As I took the water I thought about what it means to shed blood. Through his suffering in the garden he is the Redeemer from sin. In Hungarian the prayer simply says that his blood was spilled. Shed in English has two meetings, the spilling of blood, and shedding, like how a dog sheds hair or a bird looses feathers. Im not sure if this is doctrine or not but I thought about how interesting it is that the scriptures say that that he bleed from every pore, or literally from all over shed his blood. Blood represents our mortality, we know that after we are resurrected we wont have blood. Through his suffering and death, and then resurrection and ascension, Christ literally shed his mortal blood and body and was glorified in a perfect body. Because of this we will all shed our mortal bodies and be cleaned of our sins and be made perfect through Christ Jesus. 

I love being a missionary.

Elder Morgan.