Easter Week 2016

Well for the start of this email I will tell you about how my companion got a self-portrait this week. He seriously got painted. A member invited us over so that her daughter that is an artist could paint someone. So we went; and she sat down Elder Roberts and he had to sit there for and hour and a half without much movement. It was honestly hilarious I just sat and talked to the younger brother and he drew a picture of me. It’s awesome. She ended up doing a really good job and Elder Robi looked great. So that was the first adventure of the week.

This week I was sick for a couple days but it went away fast and was just a runny nose and a cough but I am doing good now! 

This week we went to an inactive members house that had this massive army truck that we helped him fix and start up again. I got to ride around in it and it was super cool. For sure would be my car of choice in a zombie apocalypse (which the world isn’t far from apparently) so don’t worry I am safe. The guy that has the army truck loves milk and always gives us a liter of milk while we are there and wants us to drink the whole thing in the hour we are there. He drinks 1 liter of milk just for breakfast. He’s awesome haha. We committed him to read the Book of Mormon by June 1 and he said he would do it so we hope that will help him on his way back to church. The Book of Mormon truly can build anyone’s faith in this Gospel no matter how far you have drifted.

We also visited another inactive family this week and that was a miracle. It was really cool and we usually have been meeting with inactives because the work here right now is pretty rough. The sisters have been trying to meet with these people for the past month and they have been really rude and haven’t wanted to so we just went to their house and rang the bell and out of nowhere they let us in and talked to us. They were so nice and opened up to us immediately about their life and problems and we were able to help them. It is such a miracle that God can soften hearts in just a short amount of time. 

We have had a lot of teaching where we just preach the Good word to people and hope they don’t hate us after. We have to be super blunt with people here so we pretty much just have to tell them that what they are doing is wrong and to repent. We seriously are just wrecking people with the Spirit! It is awesome! We have had some really cool programs when we just tell them that they need Jesus Christ in their lives.

We tracted in the rain and came home drenched but it was totally worth is because near the end we found a lady with a small kid that let us in right before we were about to go in. It was a small miracle but it meant a lot to me! 

It was so cool. We rang the bell and this mom came running out with this 1 and a half year old running after her. It was so cute and made me think of Abby. Anyways she ended up letting us in and we taught a short restoration and gave her a Book of Mormon. It was hard with the little one around but man was it fun. Near the end, the little kid chucked his juice box on the floor and it blew up everywhere and so I grabbed the kid while the mom cleaned it up but missionaries aren’t supposed to hold children so I was caught in the really awkward position with this kid. It probably looked like I had never held a baby before. In the end the kid went over to where the floor was still wet and slipped all over the place and was having a ton of fun. It was hilarious. 

We had a crazy experience with a lady that said she saw Jesus when we talked to her and that is the only reason she invited us to meet with her. So I don’t know weather to think that is super cool or she is just kinda crazy. She said she talks to Jesus all the time so we are a little skeptical. 

The rude comment of the week is when I asked this old guy if I could help him and all he yelled back at me was “ya! give me some money”. So that was rude but you never know what has happened in his life so it made me feel bad for him. We are trying to love the people.

Easter wasn’t awesome but I am so glad I can remember my Savoir. We didn’t meet with anyone because no one wanted to which was hard but we ate dinner with the sisters in our stair well because they can’t come in our house. So that was super funny and will be a good memory. But other than that we just tried to talk to people and they didn’t really want to talk so it was a hard Easter but still great because of what it meant!

I would like to end with a lesson we taught this week about Alma 32 and how we have to nourish the seed every day. I know that when we read the scriptures and are constantly thinking about our Savior, our love will grow for others and our testimony will grow. If we don’t do these things, it will shrivel up and die. I encourage you all to take your scripture study even more serious and for us all to keep nourishing our seed. I love you all and have an amazing week and an awesome conference. I will be listening to conference all in Hungarian and wow is it going to be an experience! I am so excited. I love you all!!

Elder Ure 

March 21, 2016- Faith for a Blessing

Well I emailed on Wednesday(last week) so not a whole lot has happened in the last couple of days but I will try to make it interesting and put some cool stories and info into this email.

This week for English class I had to teach the pro. class alone which is always the worst because they are better at English than I am. They study English in school for years and know the grammar rules and all of that better than I do. So when you try to teach them something it never works. They already know everything or they correct you because you used bad grammar. It is rough. I am no English teacher so that is hard. It can also be very fun at times when you trick them on a word and they don’t get it right. I feel like a fool tricking grown adults but it helps me not feel so dumb haha. At the end of English class we always share a spiritual thought and because the classes where split and Elder Roberts was teaching the beginners, I gave the thought by myself. I talked about the Plan of salvation and how we can live with our families forever and one of the members that speaks great English brought up the three kingdoms of glory which is very hard to explain in just 5 minutes to a bunch of people that don’t even believe in God. So this one lady starts talking about how she can not believe anything that I was saying and starts asking super deep doctrine questions about the after life and I was the only one there to answer them so I just turned to my testimony and told them I new these things were true and ended it. I felt like it was back in the old times when missionaries would stand on boxes and just preach! So that was an interesting experience!

This week we went on splits with the Zone Leaders and it was awesome. I thought it would have been the worst day ever because all we had planned was a 4 hour block of straight tracting, but it was actually probably the best day I have had on my mission yet! We just worked super hard and gave out a ton of Books of Mormon and it just felt like I was doing something so that was a really great day. Nothing special happened just everything we did seemed like a miracle and was super fun.

On Friday I got a call from my branch President that I would be giving a talk in sacrament this Sunday. Meaning yesterday. I also got the call at 9 at night so I had 1 day to prepare a ten minute talk in Hungarian.... So I got to work. I wrote my whole talk based off a Liahona talk and felt pretty good about it. So I went to look for the Hungarian version of the Liahona and found out that we didn’t have one and even worse, it is not translated into Hungarian... So with now just a night to make a talk I restarted... In the morning I finished and just had planned to go up there and just say what comes to my mind. Pretty much go of the spirit. I had some scriptures and a little part in a Liahona to read but other than that I had nothing. So as the meeting goes on and I am going to be the last speaker, with ten minutes left in the meeting the branch president gets up and.... closes the meeting. He forgot about my talk and I ended up not even giving one. I knew I had the right Sunday because after the meeting, Members came up and asked why I didn’t talk and I just said I don’t know so maybe they will re-ask me next week.

I would like to finish with a story from this week. We met with a man we know that asked us for a blessing for his back. He had heard that we could do blessings for that purpose and wanted one. So we explained how it works and how it is based off faith and asked if he had faith and he said he did so we decided to give him one. I was the one to anoint him with the oil and I have never said the prayer for that in Hungarian and it has some really big and hard words to say but I did it and it wasn’t too bad. I also wear oil around my neck on a chain and it has come in handy multiple times already on my mission so I am so grateful that I am always ready and that I am able to always have it with me. Elder Roberts gave the blessing and it was a really great blessing. He did a great job and the spirit was really strong. After, he  got up and said he had never sat for so long without pain in his back and that he has never felt like this before. He said it was very weird and seemed to be so lost in the spirit and was overwhelmed. It was such an amazing experience and I gained such a strong testimony of the priesthood. I know that God has his power on the earth today and it can be used through the Priesthood. I am so grateful that I can be worthy to hold it and that it can and will bless many peoples lives. I know that this church is true and that God is working through Priesthood holders to perform miracles. All we need is faith and then we will see the miracles.

I love you all. Have an amazing week. 

Elder Ure

Rough but Spiritual

This week has been rough, amazing, spiritual, and back to rough.

This week we worked really hard and no one wanted to be our friend. It was rough. We had so many programs set up but all the people ended up not being able to meet or don’t even want to talk to us anymore. 

This week, the lady that we found on the street and then it was a miracle that we found her again tracting, decided that she didn’t want to meet with us and pretty much have nothing to do with us. She said we could say hi to her if we see her on the street but other than that she doesn’t want anything to do with us so that was super hard because she was perfect!

Something cool that did happen while we were streeting. What has been happening recently is Elder Roberts bails on me and just tells me to go talk to people so I can learn and practice haha. His trainer did it to him so he is doing it to me. Its not a bad thing because that is how you learn the language is by just talking and if I am by myself he can’t help me. So he walks away and goes and talks to someone else and I am forced to find someone to talk to. This is the worst because I don’t speak this language yet and if some random person came up to you and wanted to talk and they don’t even speak your language? ya it doesn’t go well. Anyways I got shut down a ton but then I saw a girl sitting on a bench listening to music so I went over and started a conversation. We talked for like 20 minutes. I still don’t even know how I did it but we just talked about everything. I asked her what her favorite music was and favorite color and all of the above. Just super random stuff and when I didn’t know how to say something I pretty much did a dance to try to explain it. It’s the worst because you just feel like a fool but it was a great experience because I actually talked to someone. Sadly that was the only time this week. I got shut down all other times.

This week we got new cards to give out for Easter and they have a link to a video. The video is really short and super awesome. Everyone should go look it up! It’s on mormon.org. Anyway, we give these cards out to everyone we see pretty much and people wouldn’t even take those... So yes it was a hard week of finding people to talk to us. 

Okay enough lame stuff. Now, onto the amazing things that happened and the miracles. 

First, we planted a tree in our suits this week. It was super random but a guy in the branch asked for our help so we went and helped him. He said when we come back we can get free fruit from the tree so that will be cool one day.

So this week we went up to Budapest and met with a 70. He talked to us and it was the coolest meeting I have ever been in. He started the meeting off and he was teaching his plan that he had taught all week but then people started asking questions and it changed the whole meeting. We found out after that he put his whole lesson plan in the trash and taught something completely new off the top of his head. It was amazing and super impressive. Everyone got super personal an started asking questions about faith and how hard the mission field really is and how it is hard to see miracles and the 70’s replies were always perfect. One thing that I would like to share is how he talked about when we meet our Heavenly Father again and how we will know if we are worthy. Even when we feel like we aren’t or we feel like we have messed up to many times. The thing he taught was that when we are at the judgment bar and Jesus Christ is testifying for us to the Father he will literally put his arm around us and that is when we become perfect and are able to enter. The way we can have this happen is if we truly tried our best on this earth and did everything we could do follow him. No matter if we are only .0000000000001 % with Jesus Christ we can be made whole and 100%. It was such a cool lesson for me and I had never thought about it in that way before. I learned so much from him and it was really cool.

The next day I had to plan a lesson for one of the members of the branch. She is he coolest lady ever and I love meeting with her. She wanted me to teach the lesson so I planned to teach what I learned from the day before. I taught about doing our best and how Jesus will help us and after I was done she started to tear up and told me that what I just told her was an answer to her prayers and that she needs to try to work harder to do her best. It was super cool and I loved being able to help someone. 

We had a baptism this week!!!! Sadly it wasn’t one of ours but it was still super cool. It was one of the sisters’ investigators but Elder Roberts Baptized her and he did a great job. My Companion is a stud with the language and made it look easy. It was one of the most amazing experiences I have had yet on my mission. I was able to see someone become perfect through baptism and it was so amazing. She came out of the water and was glowing and was just so happy and as I looked at her, I just saw the amazing power of the atonement and how much Jesus Christ loves his children. It was really amazing. The next day we got to see her get the Holy Ghost in Sacrament and it was such a strong spirit and was so comforting to know what blessing and help she was receiving. I cannot wait until I will be able to act in the name of Jesus Christ and baptize someone. It was a really great experience. 

I love this gospel and I am grateful to be a missionary. I love you all and hope that all is well. 

Love Elder Ure

"Miracle Week"

This week has been a crazy and amazing and just awesome week as a missionary.

I will start off by talking about fast Sunday and how I had the best food I have had in Hungary yet. We had a program with a cute little old lady that is my new Hungarian crush because she is just adorable. When we walked in it was around 2 and we had about another hour of fasting because we started the day before but..... she had made a huge meal for us so we got lucky and got to eat early. (I hope a 23 hour fast is acceptable this month.) She fed us soup and bread and it just was the best thing I have tasted in a long time. I showed her pictures of our family and she said that my dad was a cutie and that I looked like him... So props to you dad, you have an old Hungarian lady hitting on you. I will talk more about this cute old lady later in my email.

This week I got a new record of shut downs in the fastest amount of time yet! I was streeting and I walked up to one person and they said no really fast then another and then another. I got shut down by three people in less then 1 minute. It was a new record and I was pretty proud that I just kept going because the only thing one lady said to me was “I don’t speak English” in Hungarian when I was speaking Hungarian or at least thought I was.

The cool thing about the language this week was what happened in Sacrament meeting. I was sitting there trying to pay attention because church is the hardest because they talk really fast and use weird terms but out of nowhere I hear my name said. The branch President was bearing his testimony and started talking about me! He talked about how my language ability’s are coming along really well and that the prayer I gave in the morning meeting about the sacrament was really amazing to him. It was super cool to hear someone say that about me and gave me a boost of confidence that’s for sure!

Also a really cool thing that happened this week was I had a dream and a little part of it was in Hungarian. I didn’t understand what the person said to me but it was in Hungarian so that is better than nothing. I loved it and was so pumped when I woke up.

Now on to the first miracle that happened this week. We started talking to a lady on a street a month ago that would have been an amazing investigator but just wasn’t interested so we just gave her a Book of Mormon and went on our way. Well, the other day we where tracting and were doing this building that we thought no one even lived in but finally someone answered, so people did live there. The way tracting works in Hungary is you first have to get into the building which is a tall building of apartments usually so you have to press the bell or csengo is how you say it in Hungarian and talk to someone through a microphone and see if they will let you in and then you can knock on people’s doors. Well I did the next csengo and I usually don’t use this approach because it doesn’t work and usually makes people mad but I said hello we are Mormon missionaries and today we are talking about Jesus Christ can we come in? The lady on the other end just laughed and let us in so I was super surprised and kinda blown away but when we got to her door she was waiting outside and it was the same lady we had talked to a month earlier! She said a really cool qoute about how if you don’t go to the mountain meaning us the mountain will come to you. So she let us in and we were able to talk to her about the Book of Mormon and her beliefs. She said she had read the first part of the Book and was thinking about us and then we were there! It was an amazing experience and I know that God led us to her again so that we could teach her.

Now back to the old lady story. This week I read the talk about what lack I yet. I prayed to know how I can be better and how I can become a better missionary. I received a really cool answer and it was shown to me through out the week. One of the things that I received was to not think about myself. To be more selfless, so this week I have been working on that and I had an amazing experience with this lady. The day we tracted into her I was having a hard time and was frustrated and just tired and was thinking about myself. We got let in and started talking to this woman, and she told us that her parents where killed in WW2 when she was 13 and had 11 siblings. I was hit with such a feeling of guilt and just shame that how could I think of my life as hard when other people go through so much more. I learned that I really do need to stop thinking about myself and that other people have it so much worse than me and that’s why I am here to help them. It was a really amazing answer to my prayer.

The last story I will share this week is about the family we met a long time ago that is inactive. She had a son that went to jail because of a branch president in the branch a long time ago but that is a really long story an I don’t really understand it, but the main point is she is having a hard time forgiving and that’s what I want to talk about. We shared a message with her and were able to get her to the point where she said she needs to forgive and to come back to church. She said a prayer and during the prayer started to bawl and was just crying about how hard it was to forgive and how she needs strength. What I want to talk about is how forgiveness is one of the biggest parts of this gospel. Jesus Christ forgives, we need to forgive, and we can be forgiven. It is such a hard thing to do for us to forgive someone that has hurt us or wronged us in a way that we feel like we could never forgive or they don’t deserve to be forgiven but when we do forgive, that is when we can truly be forgiven of our own sins. It is like a cycle. If we forgive, God will forgive us of our sins. I want to bear my testimony that God can help us have the strength to forgive even when it is so hard. He can give us the blessing of his love and spirit when we fully let go of past things and take a step forward and move on and not dwell on them anymore. It is an amazing feeling to forgive and you can feel the Savior’s love rush over you because he is forgiving you at the same time!

 I love you all so much and know that my Redeemer lives. Have a great week.

Love

Elder Ure

Adorable Lady who made "The best soup" yet!

Feb. 29, 2016

This week has been full of lots of fun things.

On Monday, we went to a member’s house and helped him cut wood. It was on our p-day but its okay because it was still fun. We stacked the wood for him and he cut it. haha. I wish I got to use the chain saw but I guess that’s probably a good thing.

Something that was super fun this week was when we went garbage bag tracting. We walked to this door and saw a garbage bag so we knocked on the door and they did not want to talk to us about the gospel so we just asked if we could take their trash out and they said yes. So we ended up carrying the bag around and asking people if we could take their trash out and then saying the real reason we are here is to help people and the best way we do that is by sharing what we believe in. It actually got people to talk to us so we plan to do this more often! haha. We only got one door slammed in our face!! It was awesome.

I want to share one of my favorite scriptures this week with you all. It is my favorite one from the bible and I used it a lot this week. I read this scripture on the plane flight over to Hungary and it really comforted me. It’s an amazing promise. John 14 v. 18. “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

The funniest tracting experience yet, happened this week! We knocked on a door and no one came to the door so we started walking down the stairs and made it a whole flight of stairs down when I heard the door open so I take off running up the stairs as I am trying to talk to this lady in Hungarian and I...... Trip. I ate it so hard on the stairs. So picture me crawling up the stairs to give this lady salvation. hahah Elder Roberts about died not laughing. 

I have learned to be really blunt with people here in Hungary. They say what is on their mind.  I have just learned to tell people how it is and I did that this week with one of our investigators. I said it in a nice way but I pretty much told him that baptism is the only important thing in his life right now. He has been meeting with missionaries for 7 years and had a baptismal date so we are working on that again.

This week we went to Miskolc again for interviews. It was good to talk to President Szabadkai and fun to try to talk to him in Hungarian because he is a native Hungarian. Afterwards, we got a 50 cm. Pizza- which was super yummy.

We have started meeting with two of the kids that play football here and they are super awesome and have a ton of really great questions. We have taught them the first two lessons and they seem to want to know more so that’s going great.

This week we got the rudest door slam yet. This guy opened the door listened to why we were there and the only words he said in broken English were to just go away, and then slammed the door hahah. People just don’t understand that we want to help them but I hope that guy gets another chance one day.

We also had a Hungarian Halloween here. They have a party to scare away the evil spirits of winter. It was super fun and we did lots of games and taught a ton of stuff. 

This Sunday we had what we call a death day. This is when we can only speak Hungarian and if we speak in English we get punishments. We also have to preach when we go tracting. So the first thing we say when people open the door is something like... We are missionaries and we know God has a plan for you or something like that. It was super fun. My punishment was I had to do 20 push ups if I spoke English and I spoke English 6 times the whole day. It was hard but I learned a ton!! 

I would like to finish with a story of a lesson I taught this week. It was about faith. I think I saw it first when I was little and a missionary came over to our house and showed me it. What I did was get a Tea bag and poured the tea out and made a cylindar. Then I hold it and light the top on fire. It burns down and right before it touches your hand, it shoots into the air. As I did this I taught that when we are going through hard times we are going through the fire. It is hot and we are scared that we are never going to receive help. Right at the last minute, when we think we are going to burn Jesus Christ saves us. He lifts us from our burdens and can save us if we have faith to endure our trials with patience. I love this lesson and I know it is true. If we have faith In Jesus Christ, he CAN and WILL save us. I love you all so much and hope you have a great week.

Love Elder Ure 

huge, yummy pizza!

chopping wood for  a farmer