New news...

Well this week has brought a lot of news that’s for sure. We have had a lot of new things going on and we are excited for the new way of missionary life. 

I don’t know if this was shown to the world but our schedule has changed and now we have more freedom to do what we want to do. For example, we can decided when we want to have companionship study and when we want to have lunch and things like that. It will be really cool I think and will help us to be more healthy missionaries. 

We also had a change of the way we report numbers. We now only report 4 numbers. Baptisms, confirmations, investigators in church, and new investigators. I think it will help missionaries focus on the work and not just the numbers since they don’t even matter. The only reason they are there are to help us push ourselves and for us to keep track of things but other than that I think it will help us focus more on the people. 

So last P-day we had such a good time. We went to a member’s house and we made töltött Káposzta. It is cabbage that is stuffed with meat and spices and all this yumminess and it’s so good you have no idea. I am so pumped to come home and cook it for everyone. Its really easy and super good. So that was really fun. 

This week we sadly were dropped by our miracle new investigator János. He met with us once and we had a great teaching about the Book Of Mormon and he said he was going to read it and then if he was interested he would call us... Well we waited and he never called so we gave him a quick call and he said he is not interested and doesn’t want to meet more. So that was really sad and I wish he read more from the Book Of Mormon because all he read was the intro. But everyone has free agency and that’s his choice. 

This week we went on splits twice. One was with the assistants and the other was with the tatabánya Elders. When we were with the assistants we went to a handicap home and we were able to talk to the people there and have a really good time. We even danced with them and I played ping-pong with one of them for like an hour straight. This girl was so good at ping pong it’s not even funny. It was super fun and I had a really good time. At the end they all gave us stuffed animals and said goodbye. One of them asked if she could come home with me ha-ha. I love people like that. Then when we went on splits with the other elders we were able to meet with Roland and have his baptismal Interview!! He passed and it was really great He had his interview with Elder Leavitt from Tatabánya and it went great. He passed the interview and Elder Leavitt felt that he is ready to be baptized. He said that we could go over tithing with him a little more because he didn’t completely understand that but other than that he said it was a great interview and that he is excited to be baptized. We also were able to talk to his mom about the baptism and how it will work and when it will be. I gave her the baptismal record so that she could look over the information on it and so that she could sign for Roland to be baptized and she agreed to everything. She told us that the baptism really interests her and that she is excited to come and see how it will be done. I think that is a point that we could talk about with her that might get her to open up more and to be more willing to learn about the gospel. We also planned the baptism and we are really excited. He has asked Elder Gentry to baptize and confirm him and I will be giving a talk about the spirit. I am really excited and it will be a really amazing experience. We were also able to talk to the ward about Roland in ward council and they seem to be willing to help us get him to church and to help him after his baptism. We set up a system of who will bring him to church every Sunday and we hope that will help him stay active after his baptism.  So we will be preparing for that for the next two weeks and he will be baptized on the 11th of February. It is going to be a really great way to end a transfer. 

We also saw an amazing miracle this week in our own work. We had just finished tracting and doing look ups and were about to go home for dinner but we saw these two kids walking on the street towards us and we decided to wait for them and to talk to them. One of them was 13 about to be 14 and the other was 16 about to be 17. We started talking to them and we found out that they had lived in England for 2 years and spoke pretty good English. They believed in God and are apart of the Orthodox religion and said that they are not able to practice their religion here in Hungary because they are originally from Romania. We started to tell them about our religion and they were really interested and one of them out of nowhere asked if he could change his religion to ours if he liked the things we believe in. I was like uhhhh what... yes of course haha I was flipping out because I have never heard anyone say something like that to me and of course we told him yes and got his phone number and will hopefully be meeting with them and their family this week. It was a really cool experience and I learned a lot. It goes to show that the future of the church is in the youth. 

Also this week we decided to make some calls to inactive and old investigators and we were able to find some people that will hopefully be able to meet this week. I called this one inactive woman and we ended up sitting on the phone talking for 45 minutes because she just told me all about why she wasn’t coming to church and we had a really good conversation. I started to joke with her and get her to loosen up and we ended having a really good talk about church. When I first called she was not down to meet but by the end of the conversation I was able to set up a time with her and we planned to meet... then I go look on the map and she ends up not even living in our area and she didn’t want to meet with the sisters... so we are going to try and figure something out so that we can meet but it was still cool and she was really nice. 

This week we had two farewells at church. One was a kid going on his mission to England and he will be leaving tomorrow and we are super excited for him. He is a stud and will be a really good missionary. The other is the young men’s president and he is moving to Germany to be the leader of the translation office over Europe. They are both amazing people and I will be sad to see them go. This weeks’ church was really amazing and I was so grateful I could be there because everyone talked about the plan of salvation and how amazing it is that God has been so kind to give us such a mapped out plan of how we can return to live with him and our families. At the end of the meeting everyone was crying and it was really sad but it was really cool. The spirit was there and it was my favorite sacrament meeting I have been in during my mission. I think one reason is that earlier on I didn’t understand anything and I wasn’t able to learn from the speakers but now that I understand I was able to feel the spirit stronger and be able to learn. It was really amazing and I am so grateful that I was there.

I know my savior lives and he and his father sent me to the earth to grow and to return to them. As long as I trust in them and do what is right I will return home. Luke 1:37  I think says that anything is possible with God. I love you all have a great week,

Love, Ure Elder

SMALL ACTS CAN BRING JOY

This week has been nuts!! We have done so much stuff and had so much crazy stuff happen. I will start by talking about the best p-day ever. Last week we went ice-skating and I had the time of my life. There was music playing and it was in the middle of the city and it was beautiful and I just died. It was such a fun p-day. I loved it.

After that on Tuesday we went to Budapest and had zone training. It went really well and we talked about the atonement. We talked about how we need to apply the atonement into our own lives so that we can be able to teach it to others to have it change their lives. I think it went really well and I liked it a lot. I was able to talk about how when I was a kid I looked at missionaries as if they were angels and whenever they would walk in I would just be amazed about how cool they were and how spiritual and stuff like that and I told the missionaries to be missionaries that little kids look up to. It was super awesome!!

After zone training we went straight to Sopron for splits. We got there really late and I became really good friends with the floor again. We are now on a first names basis. It was good though. The next morning the Elder that I was serving with was really sick so we weren’t able to get a lot done because he is actually the branch President in Sopron and we had to do some stuff for that and we both just did not feel good. So we went tracting and made brownies to take to people the next day but it was still a great split but it was just hard because he didn’t feel good. 

After splits we went home and had a teaching with an inactive member that can’t come to church because her mom is bed ridden and she can not leave her alone and doesn’t have the money to put her in a care home or something like that. So we went over there with a member that used to be a JW and it got intense real fast. haha you could tell he had a history of preaching the good word because that’s what he did. It was epic I had to calm it down and try to not have anyone’s eyebrows light on fire. It still went super well though and she actually was able to come to sacrament this Sunday so maybe that is what she needed. 

This week the funniest thing that has ever happened to me during an English class happened. We were talking about role models and who we look up to and there is this really cute old guy in there and his friend and they are super good guys. They have been friends for years. So he talked about his friend but he made it so it was a surprise. He didn’t say the name right at the beginning but he was saying all of these super nice things about him and it was just really great and he comes to the end and says in the thickest Hungarian accent, "Frank is my Homie".... Elder Gentry and I lost it and he tried to correct it because he thought he said it wrong so he then said... he is my home slice... I was in tears laughing. No one understood why we were laughing so hard but once we stopped laughing and explained that that is slang and that’s why it was so funny because it was all serious and sweet and then he says that. I felt bad to ruin the moment but I could not help but die laughing. He told us that a missionary taught them that a long time ago. It was so funny. 

This week we had a really cool miracle happen. We were tracting and it was right before we had planned to go home for dinner and Elder Gentry said we should do one last building, it was a building that I had already done from a couple months ago but I thought why not peoples’ minds can change and some people might have not been home when I tracted it the first time. So we started to cséngő (ring the doorbell) and immediately people started to yell at us and for us to go away. We kept going and it happened again that someone walked out of the building and told us that three people had already came down the stairs and told the person to not let us in the building. We kept going and I had a prompting to start from the other direction on the list of names, and as I was cséngőing someone walked up to the building and let us in. We only had three people left to talk to but we decided that we would go in and talk to them face to face. The first person was not interested and on the second door a man opened that I remembered talking to and he even came to our English class once. He let us in and we were able to talk to him and we ended up sharing the message of the restoration and set up to teach him again tonight. It was a true miracle because I don’t think he would have let us in if we had not talked to him face to face. If I had not followed the prompting I received to start at the bottom of the list I would have cséngő-d him and I don’t think we would have met with him, you never know; but I am so grateful for the spirit and that God is truly guiding our work here in Győr. 

We have some big news!! Our investigator Roland is going to be baptized in two weeks!! We think he is ready and we have started to plan the baptism!! We are super pumped because for the longest time I didn’t think he was ready but this week we asked him to bear his testimony and it was really powerful and I felt the spirit and we both knew that he was ready so we are really excited for that. Keep him in your prayers so he will stay ready! He will be baptized on the 11th.

I want to finish with another story from giving service in the old folks home this week. We were talking to my favorite little old lady and she was having such a good time talking to us, and I know how to fold a rose out of a napkin so I made her one and when I gave it to her the biggest and cutest smile of no teeth came to her face that I about melted and almost cried not even kidding. It brought so much joy to her that she couldn’t even explain it in words. It was so cool and I just was blown away that out of such a small act, someone’s day was changed. We all can do this. Small acts can bring joy into the lives of those around us. We just need to be the ones acting and thinking of others. I love serving a mission and being able to bring joy to others. That’s why I am a missionary.

Szeretlek

Ure Elder

busiest week of my mission

This week has for sure been one of the busiest weeks of my mission. The reason for this is that we had a Missionary Leadership meeting in Budapest and then splits in a whole different city and then when we got back to our own city we had to meet with all our investigators so we ran from teaching to teaching... I don’t think I have had a legit dinner hour in days... But don’t worry mom I am still eating a lot of food, and I am not dying. I am healthy, I do push ups :)

Well sadly I just realized that I forgot my paper that had everything that happened this week on it at home and I can never think of everything on the spot but I will do my best. So this week was full of us giving blessings, getting yelled at during tracting and then miracles. 

I will start with talking about splits because it was really fun and I made a memory that I will never forget. It was snowing almost the whole time we were there and it was the best day ever. What made it even more scary, but great at the same time is the fact that we were riding bikes and the ground was pure ice, I survived so don’t worry, yes probably not smart but it was still so great. We only rode bikes because we had a teaching that was far away and we had to get there in time and we were willing to sacrifice haha. The down side is I slipped a couple times and one time when I caught myself I ripped a hole in my pants. It is fixable so I am not mad and I still think it was worth it because I was able to ride down the streets of Hungary on a freezing day while it was snowing and just say to myself... I am a missionary. This is awesome!!!! haha.

Before that during the week we had a really cool miracle happen. We were tracting one day and thought to look up an old investigator and what ended up happening was his wife was home and she said for us to come up but we couldn’t stay because he wasn’t there but right when we started to talk to her he ran up to us and finished his run, so we all went in together and we were able to eat dinner with them and have a really cool talk. It was really awesome to be able to talk to him again and he told us that he was still planning on reading the Book of Mormon but he just can’t find the time right now and we were able to bear testimony that it will help him in everything he does not just to learn more about God. It was really cool and a great miracle.

Now onto the funny stuff when people get mad at us. I think I will just share one today but the others were also very funny and sad. So we started tracting one day and we didn’t start on a good note because the first woman we talked to flipped out on us for being there and was really mad that we even tried to talk to her and wouldn’t leave us alone and told us to leave but we we weren’t even by her door; we were outside, so she went inside and we moved on and came to this man, we gave our approach and he stayed silent through it all and then said, boys I am not interested, and so I asked well do you know..... And during what I was saying her turns around and picks up the phone behind him and says are you going to leave?? And I was like “what the?” yeah, we will leave so we left and I was just stunned that someone could be that fast to call the cops on us, so we got to his neighbor and he comes out again and flips out on us because it was his cousin that lived next to him and he was a younger kid and he didn’t want us to brain wash him. He wouldn’t even let us knock on the door but we were like well maybe he will be interested, like we believe everyone should get a chance to choose if they want to hear our message or not because it can truly bring salvation, and he was like what do I need to be saved from...? I’ll have you know he was a catholic and knew about sin and all this and this was after him getting very heated and so I replied... Your sins... he really didn’t like that so I just walked away and we moved on. It was pretty crazy and really sad but Hey that’s what I am here to do, we didn’t even raise our voice once!  We just preached the good word. It kind of felt good though to get some adrenaline going... not gunna lie!

Then on Sunday it was the day of blessings. In church we were asked to give two women blessings and it was really cool. They were both blessings of comfort and peace and it was just a cool experience like it always is. Then later that day we were able to meet with this inactive family and one of their little girls was really sick so we were able to give her a blessing also. She was a really cute twin and her mom asked us to give her a blessing so that she could not be sick and so that the rest of the family would not get sick. Then rewinding a little bit this week. We also gave a blessing to a member that has a big test coming up and he asked us to give him one so that he can be able to learn better and be able to concentrate. It was a week full of Priesthood and it was really cool. It is such a blessing that the priesthood has been restored and that we can truly use it in our lives. 

This week has seriously been spent full of just running everywhere and just meeting with everyone that we can. It has been a really great week. This week I have learned that if you have faith and you don’t think that it’s not going to work, but you instead think for the slightest possibility of hope. Then it will work because you will then do everything you can to make that happen and make it so it works out. I love this work and I am thankful to be a missionary.

Love Elder Ure

Cold and Great

This week has been so great but also so cold ha-ha. It actually snowed this week though and I won't lie to you, I think I might have shed a tear. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I haven’t seen a site like that in over a year (almost two pretty much) and it was the best day ever... after that we just suffered. It was so cold and we are riding bikes still so we just die but it’s fine because we have good coats and the spirit. Am I right? 

I will start off with a really funny but also a little awkward situation. This week a really cool girl let us in. I don’t even know how old she was probably like 25. So we have a really good talk with her and taught her the restoration. She said she works everyday and couldn’t tell us when we could come back but we got her number and planned for this next week. So on the way out I realized that all her doors had English sayings on them from Christmas and stuff. So I asked if she understood them and she was like... uh no but they are cute. So I was like okay ha-ha I can translate them for you if you want. So I started and they were like, do you want to build a snowman, and have a merry Christmas and a happy new year, and then the last one was all I want for Christmas is you. So without thinking about it I just translated it and it came out and I was like uhhh... and she got all red and was like oh really??? And I was just “well we got to go, I hope you have a good day and we will call you later”. ha-ha!  So lesson learned is think before you translate. It was really funny but awkward at the same time. I didn’t know how to recover; I have become an awkward missionary.

We also got the cops called on us again this week so we had a very pleasant talk with them and they asked for all our info and we gave it to them and then once again they were okay cool thank you have a good day. So we just went on tracting. Ha-ha people here must be scared of us. We do dress in all black and have huge coats and we are not really small people so it’s understandable but still funny.

This week we also had a really cool opportunity to be able to go to an old folks home and talk to people there. I was able to talk to a really old guy for a long time and had a really good talk with him about his life and how hard it has been because he was sick for his whole life even when he was a child and now he is like 92... it was crazy! It was hard to sometimes understand him but I loved it. I then talked to an old lady and she also talked my ear off in the best way possible. She went off about her old lady problems and how her grandson doesn’t say enough when he comes and visits. It was really cute and I loved serving there. We are going back tomorrow!

I walked out of serving with such a smile on my face and I was just so happy. I truly believe that service is the key to happiness. I love serving and I think if we all try to reach out and just serve a little even if that is just talking to someone that is lonely the world would be a much better place. 

Sorry I don’t have a lot of time this week. I love you all I hope you have a great week and I hope all is going well.

Love Elder Ure

2017...where did the time go

This week has kind of made me freak out because it is now the year when I come home and I have now been a missionary in 2015 and 2016... that’s really weird for me to think about haha. Time is flying. 

Last P-day we kind of sacrificed our whole day to go and give service to a member who needed a huge boiler moved into his basement. I need to stop telling people that I used to play football, then they just use you to pick up heavy stuff haha, it’s even worse when your companion is a signed BYU football player haha. It was great though we had a good time and were able to share a thought with them and it made p-day a super good day. 

This week I had one of the funniest and memorable things happen to us. We were tracting and when we tract one person is talking to the people on the phone outside the building and the other is streeting and talking to people on the street. So Elder Gentry stops this old lady and we start talking to her. She turns out to be a Jw and is actually really nice. So it wasn’t too bad, but she distracted us because out of no where two cops walk up behind us and are like... boys what’s going on here... so I was like well we represent our church and tonight we are talking to people about our religion. THE COPS KNEW WE WERE MORMONS. Best day ever. Anyway, they asked to see that we had the right to be going house to house and talking to people on the street and so we showed them our little paper that we have to have with us and the cop didn’t even read it because he saw that the date on it was in English so he gives it back and says this doesn’t work and then goes off using really law oriented words and I was like okay I didn’t understand that fully so I called our mission President which was what we are supposed to do and he talked to them. So we got in a conversation with the other cop and she was actually really nice. She was really curious about what we do and where we came from and why we even did it. We had a great conversation with her and when the other cop came back we showed him the paper that we have again and then he finally read it and said... oh yeah this is perfect, thanks have a great night and left. So funny such a waste of time! I forgot to tell you the best part too. During all this the lady that called the cops on us comes out of the building and starts freaking out on us and is saying all this stuff about how no one wants to talk to us and how it’s not even worth it and why we are bothering others and the cop just shut her down and was like... these are two really good kids and you need to go back inside mama. So great. So I can officially say that I had the cops called on me. whoohoo.

This week was full of miracles. We were able to meet with a couple people that have not been able to meet in a very long time and we were able to have amazing teachings with them. In one of the teachings we were teaching about the plan of salvation and it was very powerful. The plan of salvation is very special to me and is one of the biggest reasons why I am serving a mission because I want others to be able to live with their families forever. During the teaching our investigator said to us that she just feels so happy when we meet and she cannot explain the feeling that is in her heart. We were able to testify that that feeling in her heart was the Holy Ghost testifying that what we taught was true. It was a really amazing teaching. We are planning on meeting with her this week and extending a baptismal date.

On new years we decided to look up an old investigator that we have not met with in 4 months because every time we went over she was not home and never answered when we rang. This time she answered the phone! She let us in and we were able to have a quick conversation with her and we were able to talk about how the last year had been for her. She told us that it was one of the hardest years in her life and when she thought back on the year she remembered us and thought about how good she felt when she talked to us. We didn’t stay long because she had guests coming over to her house but we are planning on going back and teaching her this week! It was an amazing blessing.

Also, this week we went on splits and I was able to work with Elder willes. He is this hilarious kid from Cali and he is a total Cali bro. He plays lacrosse and surfs and so we had a super good time together. He even can recite 1/3 of the pirates of the Caribbean movie out of his head so I pretty much watched that this week. It was so cool. 

After that we had a super cool thing happen when we went to a members house and when we walked in she had invited a friend and we are now going to be meeting with him and helping him to quit smoking. How cool is that? The lord really does just do the work for us if we are worthy. So we had a lot of cool miracles happen this week. 

New years here is for real insane. People just blow up stuff on the streets and drink a lot. So we made sure to be inside. We were walking down the street and these kids far off in the distance light something and throw it and we see it like 50 yards away and we are like what is going on... and them boom... huge explosion. Like the loudest firecracker I have ever heard! It was nuts haha. So that’s about how my new years was. Being inside and then waking up the next day and seeing all the frozen throw up on the ground... people like to drink here. Sorry if that was tmi. It was freezing on Sunday though. -13!! So everything was frozen including us. 

Well I want to finish with a quick thought about what we read today for companion study. We read from Joseph Smith history and it was really interesting. He went through so many trials even when he was a little boy. I feel like I need to be more grateful that I am not 14 and how I am having it easy compared to him. With this New Year I am wanting to work on being ‘fast to love’ and ‘slow to hate’ or get mad. I think we can learn a lot from Joseph Smith. I love you all have an amazing week!

Love Elder Ure