Morgan Elder in Magyarország

This week was good, we started it off at Piroska house doing service helping her with her garden. We spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Miskolc with the Zone Leaders. Elder Brown and I focused on promising blessings to investigators and working in unity. It was really good, he is a fantastic missionary. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from him. We met with one of their recent converts and talked about the blessings of coming to Church. We just need to talk about the blessings of the gospel. Back in Szeged we were able to meet with some returning members. We talked with two of them about the holy temple and what we need to do now to prepare to continue on the covenant path. We were also able to contact a meet with a returning member named Ferenc. We talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon. We are trying to help him come and attend church. We are going to meet with him every week. We also had time to meet with one of our newer investigators. It went well, we taught him ...

This week was hot, like actually, it was really hot outside. Hopeful it is just a phase. The heat made it difficult to get people to stop and talk to us outside. We didn't find anyone new in our streeting or tracting but we still had some good teaching teaching this week. We had a super cool miracle on Sunday, a self referral just came to church, and we are meeting next week after priesthood meeting. We also gave him a branch house tour, and showed him the baptismal font, and he asked us "so if someone wants to join this church, how does that work." I hope our lesson with him next week will go really well.  We also had a really great lesson with a man that was referred to us from the branch president. We did a 30/30 lesson with him. We taught him the restoration, and although he seemed skeptical, he said he would read out of the book of Mormon and we are going to meet with him again this coming Friday. We met with some other investigators, its slow going, but we ...

I'll start with the best part of the week: On Saturday, Piroska was baptized! I had the privilege of preforming the ordinance, it took three tries, but I guess that means that it was done right, third time is the charm. She said that it was the best day of her life, and i guess that was saying a lot since she is like 75 years old. It was really great, and there was a good turn out of people there to support her. Pentecost Sunday was also special for her, she received the gift to the holy ghost, like the disciples of old. It was a good week end. This week we had really good success with English class. Our first week we had 12 people come (8 more than normal), and last week we had 17, this coming week we are going to have to divide the classes. We are also getting some really good support from the members. The branch president gave us a referral, and he came to English class, and is now a new investigator. We have found 4 people through English class in the last 2 weeks. I hope...

This week was the busiest week of 2019 so far. We had 12 lessons, a few more that fell through, found five new investigators, it was crazy, but awesome. We spent a lot of time getting Piroska all set for her interview on Saturday, which was successful. She is getting baptized this Saturday at 4pm, and everyone is very excited. I hope it goes well. We were able to meet with Áron actually 2 times now. He has liked the 30/30, but especially the gospel portion. He is little eccentric and boisterous, but very kind, and was just eating up the restoration lesson. I hope its because he is prepared for our message, but I worry he might be that way because of the effects of alcohol, but we will deal with that as it comes, for now, it's going well.  We also had a lesson with József and brought a member with us, it was difficult, he told us that it was going to be his last lesson with us, but he said he would read the Book of Mormon all the way this month, and get back to us in Jul...

This week flew by. Zone Conference was fantastic. The Spirit was strong, and I loved the testimony meeting that we had on Gellért hegy. The upcoming introduction of smart phones will change a lot. I've already seen circumstances in our work this week, that could be improved by having technology. It will be exciting. We had a fantastic lesson with József this week, and talked about the plan of salvation. It was amazing. It is so cool to see people connect with the scriptures. He just kept saying, "Wow, this scripture makes so much sense! It just answers questions that the Bible can't." We are continuing to help prepare Piroska for her baptismal interview this coming Saturday. The branch has been very helpful and supportive. We had a couple lessons with returning members and a lot of successful look-ups. Hopefully we will be able to meet with more returning members in the coming weeks. It was kind of a difficult week, but Saturday was full of miracles and eve...

This week we were all over the place. Tuesday and Wednesday we went to Miskolc and back for our exchanges with the Zone Leaders, but before that we taught our investigator József about the Book of Mormon and praying for answers, it was fantastic and the spirit was strong. We asked him if he would read and pray, and he said, not only that, but "I need to study it to really understand it!" We also meet with Piroska, she is an old woman who has been meeting with missionaries for about two years and goes to church each Sunday, and talked with her about the sacrament, which lead into a talk about baptism. She is going to be baptized on the 8th of June. She is excited, and told all of her friends at church about it this week. We will be helping her prepare for her interview and baptism in the next 2-3 weeks or so. We also meet with a couple returning members, and did some look-ups. We met with Pál and talked about the importance of prayer, scripture reading and church, and...

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...

I've been in a black whole the last few weeks, so let's see if I can add some details in this blog post. Basically I got my transfer to Szeged a week early and Elder Williamson came up from Szeged to Budapest and Elder Barton and I picked him up at the train station. I started training Elder Williamson how to be secretary #1. We taught him how to do referrals and baptismal records, planning travel, etc. We also did our normal missionary work in our three person companionship for that whole week. Elder Williamson is kind of quiet but he began opening up to us and I got to know how great a person he is. Of the three trios I've been in during office transitions this one was my favorite. On Friday of that week the Russell's planned a YSA activity around family history. I taught everyone to do indexing and other fun tool in Family Search to play with your family history and make it more fun. Indexing is really cool now because it's all supported for Hungarian now an...

Well, its over, I finished the office life. Elder Williamson is all trained up, and I look forward to being in Szeged tomorrow. I've always wanted to serve in Szeged ever since my first transfer. Szeged is the 3rd largest city in Hungary. It is in the far south east of Hungary about 110 miles from Budapest, close to the Serbian boarder. It will be good to get some fresh air, and just be outside doing missionary work all day. There will be some things that I will miss about Buda, but on the whole, I'm ready for change. This week we were only able to meet with our part member family. It was hard to say good bye. We taught their boys about faith, repentance and baptism, it was a really good lesson, they were very sharp. I hope that Elder Barton and Williamson can up them on a baptismal date soon. We had time for tracting this week. It wasn't horrible, we got a few phone numbers, and this coming week we will be trying to set up and return to teach them the gospel. Othe...

Wow, this week was good, real good. I love Easter time, honestly more than I like Christmas, both are great, but I think Easter is better. We had a wonderful sacrament meeting this past Sunday. Because of people traveling for the holiday, I got to translate the first half of sacrament meeting, and all of Sunday school, we also sang hymns to an acoustic guitar accompaniment, but despite it all it was a very spiritual experience. This week our work was slower, a lot of people gone for the holiday, or dropped us after conference, but it gave us the opportunity to get outside and enjoy the beautiful spring weather while streeting and tracting. On Tuesday and Wednesday we were with the zone leaders in Dunaújváros. Elder Hudson and I found some new investigators, met with a returning member and had some time to do some impromptu furniture moving. We were going to have a lesson with someone, but she cancelled, but it turned out that there were some guys moving furniture up 5 fligh...

It dawned on me the other day that I am 20 1/2, which is super strange!... OK, with that random thought here's my week... On P-day we went to the zoo with the assistants. It was pretty nice until it rained on us. We were at the ape house when it started raining and the orangutans were gathering paper pages and putting them over their heads so they wouldn't get wet. They are super funny! Orangutans are super cool. Tuesday we had zone conference. Zone conference week is pretty crazy because we have one less day to do our office work, and so we are more busy the other days trying to catch up. That wouldn't be so crazy if the day of zone conference were like a day off, but actually it's even crazier that day because after conference we are super busy answering all the missionaries questions and helping them out with stuff. But, being busy is good... and it's fun to see everyone from all over the mission. Seeing all my friends who are assigned out in the m...

Szentség az Úrnak, Az Úr Háza "Holiness to the Lord, The house of the Lord." Wow what a blessing!! I cant believe it, they announced that there will be a holy temple built in Budapest Hungary!!! The Lord hasn't forgotten about Hungary. This announcement was the best part of this week!! I loved conference! We truly have a prophet and apostles on the earth today, if you didn't get the chance, listen to conference now! We were able to watch 4 of the sessions so far, and 3 of which were in Hungarian. I understood a lot more than I thought I would, but sometimes they were speaking way to fast and using too many big words -- I'm looking at you Elder Christofferson. It was really great. I love having a prophet. This week we met with the usual people we teach and taught them all about General Conference and living prophets and how to get answers to prayers. We had a real breakthrough with a person we've been teaching for a long time now. He has a testimony of the B...

This week we held down the fort. Proud to declare that the mission home didn't burn down when It was just Elder Barton and I. We taught two lessons about the word of wisdom this week, one to a returning member and another to one the people we are teaching. It was fun. You don't teach the Word of Wisdom everyday and our investigator committed to living it, and said that it should be easy because he doesn't smoke or drink alcohol tea or coffee. It was really cool!  We also taught Lajos about prophets and invited him to General Conference with us next weekend. So far there are two people we are teaching who are planning to watch conference with us! We hope they will receive answers to their prayers and reconsider baptism. We had a supper good meeting with the part member family that we meet with. We taught the two younger boys about the plan of salvation, and this week we are going to be talking about baptism with them. Invited them to pray to know when the baptism should ...

This is my "I Miss America" Photo. Me hugging Ronald Reagan. That's all I'm going to write about that! This week was pretty typical of the office. We went tracking, streeting and did office work. We did meet with some of our regular people but unfortunately most of them have kind of stalled. We need to get some fresh bread, ours is getting stale. We had some cool streeting though, we had twenty minutes the other day and found a new person to teach, took two phone numbers and had four good conversations, it was crazy. An older woman and her grandson let us in on Saturday when we went tracting. “Let-ins” are the best! They are like a favorite candy bar, you don’t eat it a lot, but it’s always amazing. We shared with them the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they seemed kind of interested, hopefully next weekend we can meet with them again. The last couple zoom calls for district leaders and our zone have gotten me really excited. Elder Barton and I a...

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 coughi...