#2 Szeged: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
First full week in Szeged, complete! Was it the best week of my mission, not quite, but it was overall a solid B-.
We had a fantastic Restoration lesson with an older man named József. He expressed his concerns about the hypocrisy in the christian world and the need of a return to the "old church." As we taught about prophets and the apostasy he said, "Yes, finally someone who understands what I've been saying." He excepted what we taught him about the Restoration of Christ's church in these latter days, and tomorrow we are going back to teach him more about the Book of Mormon. The Spirit in our meetings has been really strong.
We also began teaching a woman named Andrea, who met with missionaries in the past. She has a lot of trials in her life, and we tried to help her understand the the peace that she feels around the missionaries, is the Spirit, and that if she reads the scriptures, prays, and comes to church, then she will be able to have that in her life. It was a hard lesson, but she came to church, it was a wonderful surprise!
We met with a man named Zsolt and talked about the need of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in his life to overcome some addictions that he has. He is willing to try, but I'm afraid that he doesn't really believe that it will work for him. We taught him about the importance of sincere prayer. He also came to church this week.
We taught Laci on Saturday, half in English, and then we taught him the first half of the Plan of Salvation. We used lots of examples which really helped. He also read out of the Book of Mormon, just a small part, but it was great that he read. We hope he will open up to us more as we teach. His grandma also overheard our lesson while she was doing some gardening, and said that she liked what we taught, we will begin teaching her too.
We are also making plans to contact a whole bunch of returning members in the coming months. We got a new member list and then sat down with the the elder's quorum president and the branch mission leader to discuss the members and who would be good to contact. Our list is long, but slow and steady wins the race. We also visited our recent convert, Peter, and a member of the branch presidency and brought them messages about member missionary work. I'd say we gave them some pretty bold commitments to be more active in sharing the gospel. I hope that when we follow up, they will have good experiences to share.
These all add up to the good parts of the week. For what ever reason it was really hard to find new people, we had tons of good conversations, two other lessons that we taught to people we talked to, and a let in while tracting, and "numbers wise" no one who wanted to learn more. It was really frustrating. I'm not sure why, I hope we can figure out what to do better. I guess re-adjusting to missionary life is a lot harder than I was anticipating. I hope with what time we have next week, it will be better.
Our Zone Leaders have been challenging us to be better at our personal prayers, and to find the flowers and the weeds in our gardens and make plans to make it more fruitful. Honestly, I've always struggled to learn how to have meaningful personal prayers, this week while following suggestions from preach my gospel has been both very amazing and very humbling. Through doing this challenge at least in some ways, I feel that I'm a lot more aware of some of my weaknesses.
Christ said "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."
The hard part of this is that when our weaknesses become apparent to us, Satan uses that to make us feel horrible about who we are, he tells us that we ARE our weaknesses. Christ on the other hand helps us truly see ourselves the way he sees us and as we can become. It's difficult to push out the voice of Satan and instead turn to the voice of peace, and then improve, step by step, day by day. Once again it is very humbling, but I'm amazed at how my prayers have changed in just the course of a week. Lets just say that over all its been a really full week, full of a lot of different stuff. We will see what next week brings.
Word of the week, haven't given one of these in like 8 months. So the widely considered longest word in Hungarian is Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, 44 letters meaning "for your [plural] continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated". because of how Hungarian words work you could also make similarly sized words for example: Meghatástalaníthatatlanságoskodásaitokért which would mean for your undiffuseability, but I digress. I finally memorized Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, and now I have a fun party trick.
Elder Morgan
We also began teaching a woman named Andrea, who met with missionaries in the past. She has a lot of trials in her life, and we tried to help her understand the the peace that she feels around the missionaries, is the Spirit, and that if she reads the scriptures, prays, and comes to church, then she will be able to have that in her life. It was a hard lesson, but she came to church, it was a wonderful surprise!
We met with a man named Zsolt and talked about the need of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in his life to overcome some addictions that he has. He is willing to try, but I'm afraid that he doesn't really believe that it will work for him. We taught him about the importance of sincere prayer. He also came to church this week.
We taught Laci on Saturday, half in English, and then we taught him the first half of the Plan of Salvation. We used lots of examples which really helped. He also read out of the Book of Mormon, just a small part, but it was great that he read. We hope he will open up to us more as we teach. His grandma also overheard our lesson while she was doing some gardening, and said that she liked what we taught, we will begin teaching her too.
We are also making plans to contact a whole bunch of returning members in the coming months. We got a new member list and then sat down with the the elder's quorum president and the branch mission leader to discuss the members and who would be good to contact. Our list is long, but slow and steady wins the race. We also visited our recent convert, Peter, and a member of the branch presidency and brought them messages about member missionary work. I'd say we gave them some pretty bold commitments to be more active in sharing the gospel. I hope that when we follow up, they will have good experiences to share.
These all add up to the good parts of the week. For what ever reason it was really hard to find new people, we had tons of good conversations, two other lessons that we taught to people we talked to, and a let in while tracting, and "numbers wise" no one who wanted to learn more. It was really frustrating. I'm not sure why, I hope we can figure out what to do better. I guess re-adjusting to missionary life is a lot harder than I was anticipating. I hope with what time we have next week, it will be better.
Our Zone Leaders have been challenging us to be better at our personal prayers, and to find the flowers and the weeds in our gardens and make plans to make it more fruitful. Honestly, I've always struggled to learn how to have meaningful personal prayers, this week while following suggestions from preach my gospel has been both very amazing and very humbling. Through doing this challenge at least in some ways, I feel that I'm a lot more aware of some of my weaknesses.
Christ said "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."
The hard part of this is that when our weaknesses become apparent to us, Satan uses that to make us feel horrible about who we are, he tells us that we ARE our weaknesses. Christ on the other hand helps us truly see ourselves the way he sees us and as we can become. It's difficult to push out the voice of Satan and instead turn to the voice of peace, and then improve, step by step, day by day. Once again it is very humbling, but I'm amazed at how my prayers have changed in just the course of a week. Lets just say that over all its been a really full week, full of a lot of different stuff. We will see what next week brings.
Word of the week, haven't given one of these in like 8 months. So the widely considered longest word in Hungarian is Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, 44 letters meaning "for your [plural] continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated". because of how Hungarian words work you could also make similarly sized words for example: Meghatástalaníthatatlanságoskodásaitokért which would mean for your undiffuseability, but I digress. I finally memorized Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, and now I have a fun party trick.
Elder Morgan
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