February 3, 2014
Hey!
How are things over on that side of the world? It's weird, sometimes I feel like Hungary is an island or a planet of its own. When people talk about other nearby countries, how they have friends serving "a few hours away" in another country, or when people are going on vacation to Romania or Austria, it always shocks me to remember that there is life outside of Hungary and missionary work. Weird. Haha. Even weirder, I'll be part of that "outside world" in less than half a year. It feels like my time is winding down though and I feel like coming home is almost tangible. However, I still have a few transfers left to focus on. Well, only 2 transfers... ah! and 2 mini transfers, so that makes it sound a little longer. I'm excited to see where I die and who my companions will be. I still haven't gotten my release date, so I'm not sure if I'll be coming home in July or if there will be another mini transfer in June that we go home in. We'll see. I'm banking on it being July though.
Our baptism on Saturday was a success! So cool to finally stay in a place long enough to be able to teach someone their first lesson AND see them get baptized. I love seeing the Lord's hand in preparing people like him. Even greater news, he was confirmed on Sunday AND received the Aaronic Priesthood! (: We're really hoping that Hungary has enough Melchezidik (wow, I can't even spell that in English anymore, I have no idea how to after seeing in Hungarian- embarassing, sorry, haha) holders by Stake Conference in April to make a second stake here. We're only a few short, last I heard. So... high hopes! (: I don't know if you knew this, but once a country has two stakes, it qualifies for a temple.......yeah! I mean, let's not get too excited, that takes years, but progress is progress.
So last week, I told you about how most of our investigators had been falling through, either getting new jobs, moving countries or just deciding that they aren't interested anymore. I thought that we had seen the worst of it and that things (after I wrote that last email) could only go up from there. Think again. Early the next morning, Tuesday, we headed over to one of our investigator's houses to teach her again. We had been praying for her a lot that weekend during weekly planning and such to figure out what we should do with her, because we'd taught her the Restoration a few times and weren't really sure how to move forward with her. We were at her house for literally 2 minutes when I asked her how her reading of the BoM had gone during the weekend. She looked up and said something along the lines of, "I have to be honest. Religions interest me and I like learning about them, but I don't want to convert to any other religion in my life. I don't even read my own Bible regularly though, so why would I read your Bible? I'm just not interested in doing all of this or changing my life." Ask me how many times I've heard that in the last yea; Too many to count. But, hey, the Lord answered our prayers, definitely not in the way we had hoped. Anyway, that was a great start to our week. Haha! We had 4 programs planned for the day. That one lasted about 10 minutes. Another one in the afternoon dogged (a new investigator) and wouldn't answer her phone. The other two were...interesting. haha. Our most solid investigator is now a member. Pretty much we're working on finding an entire new pool of investigators right now. That's our life in a nutshell. The good news? Tracting is still my favorite part of missionary work. I know, call me crazy, everyone else here does. People are so interesting though and you never know what you're going to find on the other side of the door or what they can tell you about their life. Sometimes they're crazy intelligent, many times they're just crazy...crazy, sometimes they're drunk and fall over, sometimes they yell at you through the door, other times they just slam their door and talk to someone else in their house about us, completely unaware that you can hear every word they're seeing. Sometimes, their cat will even run down the stairs and the person will run out the door after them and fall up the stairs in the process (yes, this did indeed happen this week) and all this time you have to try really hard to stay mature and not laugh at all the craziness that happens around out. We fail at that. Frequently. But we always manage to keep it together until their doors close. Anyway, other times you find super cool people to teach. I could name more reasons I love it, but I don't think one can fully comprehend what tracting is like without having experienced, especially in Hungary, where every other person opens their door with no pants on, man or women, sometimes both at the same time. Oh, the joys of tracting. I will actually miss it when I come home.
It's also gotten super cold here! Winter finally came. We were hoping that it'd be skipped over this year, since we almost made it to February with no snow. It warmed up and started raining, so everything turned to ice and church was literally almost empty yesterday. Sad day. They didn't even have Relief Society because no one came but us and the one teacher; Kind of ridiculous. It's supposed to warm up again this week though, so hopefully everything will melt. I just hope there isn't snow until April again, like last year. We'll see. I hope more people come next Sunday, except that I have to give a talk. Yikes. Somehow I snuck through over a year of my mission without ever having to give a legitimate talk on Sunday (so not including introducing myself), but they finally caught me... My topic is the importance of commandments. Never given a talk on that one before, but I've thought and taught about it plenty on my mission. I decided I'm not even going to write it all out, just a few bullet points in English. Wish me luck. Let's hope my Hungarian is still working that day. hahaha.
Anyway, that was our week. We had some super frustrating days with some investigators and finding has been pretty rough, but I'm confident that we will find some new people soon. We already have some potentials, plus we fasted yesterday. (: As hard as each day was, by the end of it Sister Kovács and I came home and just laughed, or ranted, at all the ridiculous things we experienced. Overall, it's been a good time. Hopefully your week was better!
Love,
Sister Megan Butterfield
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| The view from a ten-story that we were tracting. |
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| Zoli, who got baptized Saturday and Tibi, the branch President, who baptized him. |
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| Zoli, who got baptized Saturday. |
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