Rained Down Blessings

Well this week was full of some really cool experiences. I learned a lot and I realized that God really is watching out for us and has a plan for us.

This week started out rough.... All day we got rejected and just roasted by everyone so I turned to my Companion and was like you know what’s the best? When we get rejected super hard and you know that a miracle is going to happen in the near future... Not kidding 5 minutes later we were walking on the street and stopped this lady. She was from South America and spoke better English than Hungarian so we just talked in English. She invited us to sit down on the bench and we answered a bunch of her questions and told her that we would love to bring her a Book Of Mormon so she gave us her address and that was it.... Miracles. All it takes is a little rejection and I am all about that life. 

This week it also rained like crazy... Like streets flooded and rained like crazy. So we swam around for a little bit and I was totally drenched but I love the rain. I was like running through the rain with a pure smile on my face as happy as can be. So it was great. 

We also went on splits this week and had a really good time. I was on splits twice so I didn’t really see my companion very much but it was great ha-ha. On one of the splits we tracted into this lady and she was super nice, she gave us water because it is now blazing hot and then some chocolate. So that made my day. There is hope for humanity, or we are just really good looking and people feel like they can give us chocolate. haha

We also met with this one guy that was having a really hard time progressing and this dude isn’t my investigator so I just kinda went off on him in a nice and spiritual way. I told him that the gospel only brings happiness. All it promises is blessings and eternal life, and one day we can live in a perfect state, if we follow Gods commandments, and if all of this is not true then we die and it’s over, but it is true. So why not decided to follow the commandments because what is the consequence? There is none. I told him that if he decided to do this he will know its true, and if he isn’t sure he will be later. So it was a really good lesson and I know that all the Gospel does is bless us and even if it all weren’t true, I would still be the happiest person ever.

After that in our own work we met with our investigator márti, she is a part of a faith that practices joga, and that is their form of prayer. It’s kinda like Buddhism but a little different, so we talked with her about how we can find God and how we can gain a relationship with him and know who he is. It went really well. The spirit was there and we were able to teach about how God is our loving heavenly father and that he answers our prayers. It was really cool. 

This week we went off on baptismal dates and now have 6 just in our companionship... This is insane because when I served in Győr we didn’t have 6 in the whole zone so we are being blessed like no ones business. The new people that we put on baptismal date are really cool. It is a family of three and I will talk about them a little later. 

Bogi is the woman that we are going to be baptizing on June 17th. She is really amazing and so prepared to give her life for the gospel. In our teaching when we taught tithing we asked her if she we would follow this commandment and she said, If the lord commands it then I will do it. So she is pretty much perfect and is doing really great.

Then we get to Attila and Dora!!! THIS is the week!! This Saturday at 2 they are going to be baptized and they both asked me to baptize them... I am so excited and you have no idea how ready they are. We walked into there house and Dora says... well I did it. I want to be a legit Mormon and the only way I can feel like that is if I read the whole Book of Mormon before my baptism and I did it. I finished it... I about passed out. I was so happy and proud of her. She is so great. Attila doesn’t like reading Books but reads a ton on his phone so they are both doing amazing and are ready!! It’s going to be so exciting. 

I want to finish with the family that we gave the baptismal date to. We have met with them a couple of times and they have said that if they feel like this is true than they will be baptized. Well during the teaching the mom said that they feel different while we are there, and after we leave, she said that last time we left her 14 year old boy came up to her and said we are way more happy and feel good when they are here... I was blown away. I have always heard stories about people saying this about missionaries but now I have my own story to tell. They said those exact words and I am so grateful that I can be a missionary and bring the joy of the gospel into the peoples lives here in Hungary. I love this work and I still have a lot to do.

I hope you all have a great week.

Love Elder Ure

Americans had us for dinner

LOVED THS WEEK...

This week has been crazy. 

I want to start off with the best part of the week; well actually this week has just been unreal so I am going to just start with Attila and Dora and all the stuff that happened with them this week. First of all they gave up coffee and tea and had their interview and they are ready to be baptized!!! The baptism will be in two weeks on June 3rd. I am so pumped for them and they are doing really amazing. We taught the 10 commandments and Dora always says OMG so she gave me permission to call her out and make her break her habit. She also told me that I had a huge back which I don’t know if it was a diss or not, they said there is a Hungarian saying that pretty much says someone has a back the size of the bed in a pick up truck. haha so my six months to get jacked has been working I guess haha. Also we got permission to take them to a baptism in Kispest so they could see one before they have their own and they liked it a lot they are still kind of freaking out about it but they are feeling a little better after seeing one. Then the funniest part was when a new investigator walked up to Dora and said, “Elder Ure gave a great talk in church” ( I will talk about this later) and Dora said, “ya he did, I love him so much he is the best” and the investigator was like really?? You are dating? Congratulations!! He seems like a great guy haha. When Dora told me this we were crying. I guess we look like we are dating and I am not even able to give her a hand shake longer then 5 seconds haha. So that was a really funny part of my week. 

Also this week we had a super cool English class. We translated the song you will be in my heart from Tarzan and everyone loved it. We would play the English version translate it and then play the Hungarian and the people could see the difference it was cool.

I went on splits this week with two elders and both of the splits were super great. During on of them we met with a family that we are teaching and at the end of the teaching asked them if they found out if this message was true if they would be baptized and they said yes!! So there are so many miracles happening here it’s so cool!! 

So now back to my talk. I got a one day notice to give a talk in sacrament meeting. And for anyone that has been a missionary you don’t have time to sit down and plan a talk so I did it pretty much the night before and then gave the talk the next morning. I think it went really well. I talked about missionary work and the Book of Mormon. During my talk I guess I said something that wasn’t really a gospel word, or a word that you would say over the pulpit and the guy translating (into English) turned to me and was like what? Are you sure you are wanting to say that? And I was like uh ya haha It was a slang word that I learned that means slyly or like a sneaky way of doing something because I was talking about how members can start conversations with their friends in a non scary way. But I got roasted for saying it so that was embarrassing but I got the ward laughing so I guess that was good. The talk went well and people said they enjoyed it so I was happy. 

This week while tracing we finally found cherry trees that you can just pick them off and eat them while tracting and it was the best day of my life. 

So I want to finish with two of the coolest things that happened this week. The first is our new investigator that we got from English class. We met with her twice this week and she is so prepared for the Gospel. We taught the restoration and then the plan of salvation and she was already asking about baptism so we gave her a baptismal date for June 17th and she accepted that!! So we now have a whole ton of people that might be getting baptized in the near future. So miracles are real and God really is preparing people for the gospel. 

I want to finish with something that Dora told me while Attila was getting interviewed. She told me that they were talking the other day and they were talking about how we are so similar. That we like the same things, like her favorite candy is heath.... Like we were meant to be best friends. So she goes on to tell me that her and her grandma were really close and she taught her everything and pretty much raised her and her grandma passed away 1997 April. They talked about it and she told me that she thinks her grandma and I met and that God took one of her loved ones away but sent another one. She started to cry and told me that her grandma taught her about God and now I am here to give her the rest. I told her that I totally believe that her grandma is in heaven and before I came down she came and found me and said, there is a little girl that you will meet, I taught her all I knew and now I have accepted the full truth. You need to go down there and find her and teach her the rest. I know that God has a plan for all of us and he leads our lives in ways that we would never even be able to imagine. Miracles do happen and I do know that I am here for a reason. I loved this week! 

I love you all. 

Ure Elder 

my trainer came back to visit and my first greenie/trainee

visit from a General Authority

This week has been so full of so many spiritual experiences and amazing things that I have learned that I honestly cant write them down. Some stuff I have learned through the spirit and none of it is something that I can write. Most of them are just feelings and answers to prayers. It’s been a really amazing week. 

This week’s email is mainly going to be about the conference that we had this week. I was lucky to be able to meet Elder Kearon of the 70 and to get to be in 2 conferences with him. One was for the leaders of our mission and the other was for our zone. It was one of the most amazing weeks of my mission and I will never forget the things that I learned. 

The first thing that I wanted to share was something that is so true in our church. Church members thrive off of opposition. If we look back in church history we can see that it has been rough for a while and there will always be opposition. The reason why Elder Kearon shared this with us was because as missionaries we need to learn to thrive off of rejection and the hard things we are going through on a mission. To be honest I feel like I learned this lesson a while ago from playing football and doing sprints at the end of practice. If you go hard and put everything you have into the sprint and just about kill yourself you will be so much better next practice and even faster. Same goes for missionary work. We get rejected and mean stuff said to us and we get just a whole lot of opposition as a missionary and I honestly love it. Whenever someone is rude to us or is trying to be mean or say stuff to us it just gets me pumped and my companion has to calm me down all the time so I don’t just flip out on people ha-ha. After getting rejected the next door is even better and makes me want to work even harder so it’s a good lesson to learn. 

The next thing I learned was that we need to be the architect of our own success. If you want to be successful then go out and be successful and put your mind to it and if it’s not working then you need to do more or do something differently. I loved this because it’s really true. Everyone has 24 hours in a day it just depends on what you do with those hours to get work done!!

I also heard this super cool quote. "You bring your own weather to the picnic" I love this. You have to make the decision every day whether or not you will be happy or sad. Which leads into another thing I learned that it’s a choice not chance that determines your destiny. So find what you want, and go out and get it. I’m getting pumped up just writing this stuff. Do I sound like a public speaker yet? 

Now to get more spiritual I want to talk about prayer and something that has really  helped me to make prayer a much more meaningful thing in my life. We need to pray like we are drowning. Like it is the last ditch effort before we are going to go under the water. Because it is!! If we are not begging for the help of our Heavenly Father we will never grow or be able to have the strength to over come the trials of life. So how do we do this? It’s simple. Pray like you can’t do anything else, like it all depends on God and then wake up and work through the day like it all depends on you and then repeat. God will bless us if we put it all on him and then work as hard as we can.

I will come back to the conference but I wanted to give and update on our investigators. They are all doing great and we are having so much success. We had such a great week and they are all doing so well. We did not have the baptism interview for Attila and Dora yet because they have not yet stopped drinking coffee and tea but we bought them tea that is allowed and they love it so it’s not going to be a problem. We are super excited!! We had an amazing teaching with them and we talked about fasting and they fasted with us this Sunday and they said they loved it. We were super proud of them and then the next day Dora read 100 pages in the Book of Mormon... talk about the power of fasting. So it’s all going really well and this will for sure be a week that anyone should ask me to explain when I get home because I am leaving out a lot but this week was really amazing.

 To finish I want to finish with the message that hit me the most from the conference. It was that we need to become the message. I have realized that that right there is the point and goal of a missionary. If you can be the message all you need to do is open your mouth and people will accept the gospel. So for the last couple months of my mission that is what I will be working on. Is being the message. Being happy. Being kind. Serving and helping because that’s what I am here to do and preaching the Gospel, and I will open my mouth if I have to. I believe that we can share the gospel with all those that are around us just by who we are. So.. Be the message! I love you all. Have a great week.

Légy az üzenet.

Ure Elder 

"IT'S POPPING HERE IN PEST"

I am starting to get to the point where weeks blend together and I don’t really know what’s going on anymore. I wake up and then all of a sudden I am waking up again. Its weird. It’s like mission-ception.

This week was super awesome!! We had lots of miracles and lots of good stuff happen but... all of that was just normal missionary miracles. I count it a miracle when someone talks to me for longer than 5 seconds so we had lots of miracles. 

This week was really rainy but luckily we had lots of stuff to do to be inside so we just taught people the gospel and then got wet in the rain. What could be better? 

We taught Attila and Dora the word of wisdom and they accepted it without a problem. They are real miracles. I seriously ask myself if it is too good to be true every time I meet with them. They are so cool. Their baptismal interview was this week and they asked me to baptize them so I am really excited!!

Adding onto that, one of the sisters’ investigators is getting baptized and he also asked me to baptize him so that will be super cool also. The amount of miracles we are seeing here in Hungary is crazy. In our zone right now we have 12 baptismal dates. Like that is unheard of.  Like I have never seen that over my mission. So it’s popping over here in Pest. 

I guess I will add this story right now also because this is also about baptism. We put another one of our investigators on Baptismal date this week!! He is going to be baptized on June 10th!! We had a really good teaching with him and taught the restoration and went step by step because he believes that the Book Of Mormon is true so we told him that if that is true then Joseph smith was a true prophet that translated it through Gods power and if that is true then God himself appeared to him, and then if that happened then this is obviously Gods church and then asked him to be baptized and he said yes!!! So that’s super good news and we are going to work really hard with him to get him ready!! It’s going to be really great.

Also this week we had a church photographer here that took pictures of us teaching English class...So I guess I am going to be famous. Jk I have no idea where the pictures are going and I even asked her and she doesn’t know yet but it was still cool. 

I tell you this story for you to get a glimpse at the site of crazy Hungarian dogs... there was this dog and all it did was bark as we rang the doorbell of this house... like it was loud and would not stop. So the dude opened his window and couldn’t hear anything other than when I screamed we are missionaries so he shut the window... So I started to walk away and like I said it was rainy so there was this huge mud puddle and this dog starts running along the fence as I walk and jumps right in the puddle and it gets mud all over me... I was upset haha.  So Hungarian dogs are sometimes cute... or from Satan. It’s the luck of the draw.

We went on splits this week with the other elders in our district and one night we were out tracting and it was late. Like 8.45 and when you tract that late in Hungary you might as well write your own will. So we got yelled at and we finished the building and had five minutes before we went home and no one was on the street to talk to... probably because it was pouring rain but hey the Mormon missionaries were... so I was like “well, it’s just rain so lets go look for someone.” So we walked around getting drenched because I didn’t have a coat or anything so I was wet. It was warm rain though. The best type of rain. So we walked around and found no one and we still had sometime so I turned to the elder I was with and was like hey look, there is a light on in that building you think we can guess which bell is their’s to ring? So we walked over there and it was pouring rain and we might get yelled at but this is what I call obedience and showing faith. So we stayed out and didn’t go in early. We rang this guys door... he ended up being Chinese and didn’t even speak English or Hungarian which was funny and weird but then we went home and that was it... So the point of this story is that sometimes you have to show your faith to God and show that you love and trust him, even if what you are doing might feel pointless.

I want to finish with something that I learned from the stake conference that we had this Sunday. I was listening to a talk and he talked about how we need to pray with full intent, and then search and do all we can to find the answers that we are looking for. Not just read the scriptures and think that it’s going to jump out and smack us in the face. Instead we need to search, then pray some more and then do it all again and I know that If we do this God will give us the answers we are looking for in his time. Have faith and it all works out. That’s what I have learned this week. 

I love you all. Like always. That never changes.

Elder Ure

SO MANY MIRACLES!

Well this week has been amazing. So many cool things happened and I seriously saw God leading us in all that we did. 

I will start with saying that Attila and Dora accepted May 27 as their baptismal date!!! We are so excited for them and they are going to be ready for that we feel. We are going to be teaching them all the lessons in the next couple weeks and we are super excited to see them progress. We taught the law of the tithe this week and we were worried that this topic would be a little hard for them but we taught it and Elder Leavitt bore strong testimony and we committed them to live according to it and they didn’t give us a direct answer and then Attila leaned over to me and was like... You and I are going to be the people giving the most money... ha-ha it was so funny so they accepted it and are doing really really well. It is seriously a miracle. I love them!! They also came to all three hours of church for the first time- so seriously… So many miracles!

We had our zone training this week and it went really well. We gave a training on how we can realize the spirits’ promptings better in our life and how to follow those with courage. It was a great training and I learned that we need to be honest when we pray to God. He already knows our actual feelings so we might as well tell him what we are actually feeling so he can help us and guide us. 

After the zone conference I went on splits with Elder Gentry and that was super awesome but I will come back to that in a little. 

We had some pretty funny things happen tracting this week to be honest. One of the quotes that someone told us was that anyone that is beautiful is not smart and someone that is smart is not beautiful, so I turned to the guy and was like, “wait... we are beautiful and we speak Hungarian,” and he was like no that’s not how it works... haha it was really funny. 

On another day, we had a lot of people rejecting us and trying to kick us out of buildings and yelling at us so as we were tracking this guy pulls up in his car and gets out and asks if he can help with anything, and I was like no we are just trying to talk to everyone and then out of nowhere he pulled out his phone and started videoing us and said he was a cop that wasn’t working and was making a video to use against us in court!!! I was like what ... we are literally doing nothing and he told us if we don’t leave he is going to call the cops and use this video as proof. All we were doing was ringing doors. So we waited there and sure enough the cops came and checked all our stuff and then let us go because we weren’t doing anything wrong, but it was still super funny because the under-cover cop was like freaking out and being like wait, like take them away, like he wanted to put us in jail and then the real cop just let us go. It was pretty funny and for sure a good memory that I will have. 

I would like to finish with an amazing story that happened this week with Elder Genrty and I when we were on splits. This is one of the most amazing experiences that I have had that teaches me that obedience really does matter and if we are obedient even in times when no one would know if we broke the rule, and we still are obedient to the rules, then God will bless us and help us to do miracles. Elder Gentry and I went out to a small village to help a woman that Elder Leavitt and I found a couple days before while tracting. We asked if we could help and it was the first time that a Hungarian has ever accepted my help. When we got there the women told us that we were going to get in her car and drive three kilometers to a place were there is a lot of fire wood and we were going to load that into a trailer and take it back to her house and then unload it. We explained to the women that we are sorry but we can’t go in her car alone because we have a rule that we cannot be alone with a woman in a car. So we went to her neighbor and asked if he could come with us and he didn’t have time so we told her we would love to walk over there and meet her there. She told us it would be a 20-minute walk and we didn’t have time to stay there for that long so I stood there for a second and was just like... we can run?? And Elder Gentry turned to me and was like wait, what... and then she turned to me and was like are you serious? And I said yes. We are here to help. We will run over there. So she told us where it was and we took off. Yes, I am dead serious we ran the whole 3 kilometers. It wasn’t even that far but we ran it. We got to this place where the wood was and loaded the wood and then luckily took a bus back to her house. When we got to her house we unloaded the wood and then started talking to the woman. I didn’t really know how to apply the gospel but so easily it just came up. She told us that she didn’t really believe in God but believes in energy and we ended up having an amazing conversation and we taught about what we believe in and who God is to us and how he can help us. At the end I offered a pray and prayed that we would be able to endure our trials and when I finished I looked up and the woman was crying. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she has a lot of trials in her life and she needed our help. Right before we tracted into her the first day, she had been thinking and almost praying that someone would somehow help her and two minutes later we showed up. I bore testimony that our message can help her and we set up another time to go back. It was one of the most amazing experiences I have had on my mission and I am so grateful for it.

 I know if we are obedient God will do miracles through us. I know it’s hard sometimes but if we have faith and believe in God, we in the end will be rewarded. I love this work and I am so grateful for the chance to serve.

I know that God loves us and if we show that love to others we will be blessed. Service is the key to happiness. I love you all.

Elder Ure