I Love This Work

This week has been amazing. So much amazing stuff has happened and I will try to fit it all in. So last week we went on a hike for p day and it was unreal. I loved it and it was so nice to get out into the mountains again. Or like hills I guess. I loved it.

This week we have been apartment shopping because we live in an apartment that is owned by a missionary and he is coming home so we are going to have to move out. It will be fine because we found one in the middle of the city that is super nice and it’s going to be a really good apartment to move into. 

This week we had a really cool thing happen. We went to a teaching and talked to the member we brought and she was telling us about a missionary experience she had. She said that she was able to give a book to a lady and she thought it was really cool... we stopped and just freaked out because we stopped that exact person on the street that same day and she told us she got a book and was going to call us... so that was a straight miracle and ended up being so cool. I was so happy. God is looking out for us and we have awesome members!! 

This week I was sitting on a bench and this young girl came and sat next to me and she looked really familiar. So I started talking to her and she said, I know who you are, I met with you a year and a half ago... I was like wait what? And then we kept talking and I realized that when I was a new missionary I came on splits here to Miskolc and tracted into her and her family and the missionaries started teaching them... and I found her again!!! We got her number and are going to meet sometime soon hopefully. It was super cool and I was just blown away. 

We had a lot of cool stuff happen this week with our investigators and they are all progressing super well and the work is on fire!  But I want to tell about one story. 

This story is about the Priesthood. This week we met with the Glonczi family and one of the girls was really sick. These are the girls that are going to be baptized in two weeks. We are super pumped about it. So one of the girls wasn’t able to listen a lot because she was in the bathroom having stomach problems, IF I am being straight up honest she was in the room with us and during the teaching and tried to get up and run to the bathroom but didn’t make it and threw up right in front of me. Only a little got on me but I wasn’t even mad. I just felt so bad for her because I could tell she was really sick. So at the end of the lesson they asked if we would give her a blessing. So we knelt by her bed and placed our hands upon her head and gave her a blessing. I was the one that talked and once again it was such a cool experience. The next day was her interview so it was important that she was feeling better.  The next morning we said we would come by and see how she was doing and see if she could come to the interview. So the next morning we wake up and as we walked to their house the next morning we saw her in the front playing and she ran up to us and said “hello” and we were stunned that she was feeling better already. I was almost confused and just taken back and was like wait how is this even possible you were like dying yesterday, (not actually) but she was really sick, and now she was totally fine and was running around and was totally healed. My testimony was forever changed about the Priesthood. No one really commented on it, but I knew and God knew that I knew. He worked through me and it was amazing. I know it was because of the Priesthood. It’s real. It’s God power. I love this work and I am so grateful to be a missionary. I love you all and I hope you are all doing amazing. 

Love Elder Ure

PREPARE AND DO ALL I CAN DO

This week was great. I forgot my journal to remember what happened throughout the week but I Think I will be able to remember most stuff. This week was awesome.

At the beginning of the week, I went on splits with Elder Saito; he is from Brazil and so the whole time we just spoke Hungarian because I guess it is easier for him so I said, I was all right I’m down. So for a solid day I got to just speak Hungarian. It was awesome. We worked hard and ended up finding two new investigators. Both were during tracting and one of them told us to come back a couple hours later so we left and kept tracting. We got let in to this old guys house and that was really interesting, he said he had met with us before but was a little weird about it but we set up to meet again so it was cool. So we then went back to the other lady and they let us in and we got to teach two families because they both live in the same house. We haven’t met with the whole family yet but we are slowly getting them all to join the teachings. We have taught them twice now and the reason they knew us was because last transfer Elder Robinson got challenged to race them because they were out on the street playing soccer. It was really cool and now we have them as awesome investigators.

After splits we had a lot of good teaching with our investigators and later that week I was able to see Elder Howard again!! He came back to Hungary with his family and it was super good to see him. We were able to talk for a little bit and he brought us Reeses and real peanut butter. It was great. Super good to see him and get to talk to him a little.

The next day we woke up and got a ride from the senior couples to Debrecen, which is a really pretty city. We were going on splits there and also having interviews with president Szabadkai. So on the way there we got to just sit in the back and play cards. It was fun haha. We got there and our interviews were later so we started our split with the Elders and got to work and then came back to the interviews. When I went into my interview the senior couple gave me chocolate zucchini bread to give to president because his wife doesn’t let him eat sweets very often, they are on a diet ha-ha but I snuck it into him and pulled it out and he laughed and told me that I have to eat some of it too. So we sat there eating this bread just talking. It was great. He is such ha good mission President and I really love him a lot. 

After that, I was able to meet with one of the other Elders investigators but I will talk about this at the end. On the way home from splits on the train I was reading the last chapter in the Book of Mormon. So I can now I say I have read the whole Book of Mormon in Hungarian, which is pretty cool. But I looked up and the girl across from me was reading a book about Christ and it was in English and I was like “hey do you speak English?” and she was like yes, and so we got talking but right then they said the train was pulling into Miskolc in a little so we only had a little time to talk but I told her who we were and why we are here and ended up getting her number it was unreal. Super cool, and then we had to jump off the train because there would not have been another stop for days if we missed getting off at Miskolc. 

This week we had a million investigators in church, which was really cool, and I actually translated two of the meetings. It was cool but still super hard.  I like translating; it pushes me... it’s the worst when the Senior couple is teaching and they use these huge church words that I don’t even know in English but it was good.

Another cool thing that happened this week was when we watched ‘Finding faith in Christ’ with our investigators Janos and Monika. It was a really good teaching and I think it was perfect for them to be ready to be put on baptismal date so we will see!! Super cool stuff coming up! 

I want to finish with my testimony of Gods promises to us. God Promises me that if I prepare and do ALL that I can to do, to do his will, he will give me what I need when I need it. So this week when we taught the investigator that I mentioned, we really didn’t know what to teach this girl because she had read the Book of Mormon already but said she really hadn’t found her own testimony yet. So we planned to teach the restoration and to just talk about that with her. Well, we got in there and started teaching and the words just came to us in the perfect way. I felt like the spirit was really strong and it helped her to see that a testimony only comes after the trial of our faith. It was a really cool teaching. 

I love you all so much have a great week!! 

Ure Elder

TIMES' FLYING

Well now that I have been here for a little I am able to now tell you more about the city of Miskolc and about our work! 

So first of all here in Miskolc we have a senior couple and it’s the best thing in the world. They help us out a ton and make us fat because they give us homemade zucchini bread and it’s amazing. They also had us over for a 4th of July party, which was really fun; we played games and had hotdogs and potato salad. It was so good. They are humanitarian missionaries and they help little towns have food and stuff like that. I want to be a senior couple like them later in life because what they do is super cool. 

Anyways, Miskolc is pretty much made up of a whole bunch of ten stories and it’s just a whole ton of concrete. Which is not a bad thing, the best part is right next to it there is like almost mountains and it’s really pretty so we are going to be going on hikes for P-day and stuff like that. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. 

Our investigators are super awesome. The most important ones to know about are Liza and Virgina; they are two little girls that are a part of a recent convert family. One is 8 and the other is 9 and they are both on bap date for August 5th. It was so cute; we were walking down the road and saw them and they ran up to us and turned to their mom and was like what is the one with yellow hairs name? They always call us Mormons, not even elders or anything just Mormons, so she tells her that his name was Elder Robinson and she’s like... “hey so maybe could you be the one to baptize us???” And he was yes of course and it was just the cutest thing I have ever seen. I loved it! They are great, what makes it even better is they have this tiny little white dog that’s kind of like a husky. Its so cute and I sometimes get distracted while teaching because it comes up and starts eating my shoes and then I cuddle with it... gotta get some thing! Am I right? Might as well be a cute little dog and not my comp, but he would probably be cool with that too. Haha I love elder Robinson. We get along super well and are working really hard, we are also getting jacked. We workout super hard in the morning and are only eating carrots and chicken hahah. It’s awesome. 

Our other investigators names are Norbert, Janos and Monika, and some other people but the main ones are these. 

Norbert is a tattoo artist and is a super cool guy, he taught me the word for booger the other day if anyone would like to know the Hungarian word for booger it is: or at least what they use as slang, it’s cicakaka. haha It means ‘cat poop’ haha. 

Okay now that I got the 4 year old out of me and hopefully made someone’s day by teaching them how to say booger, this week has been crazy. Miskolc is the bomb because it just rains for days here and its not super hot so it’s super nice. I am loving life. This week we were looking up an old potential investigator and the sky was getting dark and kind of sketchy looking but we were like eh we will be fine. Nope we weren’t. Started to pour... like we were so wet. Then it started to hail and we were able to hid under a little shelter of our investigators store and to our luck he was actually home and we were able to talk t o him so that was nice but it was a crazy storm, cars pulled off the road because it was so nuts. 

This transfer we have made a goal that every time we get on a bus we have to talk to someone so we have been doing that and it has been really awesome, some really good rejection but also some good success, I forced myself to talk to this lady on the bus and it turned out that she knew who we were and we had a good talk, she wasn’t interested and didn’t want to meet but it was cool to show my willingness to God that I want to find those that are prepared. 

Also this week we had a super funny thing happen. We were teaching an investigator and the Dad walked in with a water bottle and held it up to Elder Robinson and told him to smell it... but he didn’t know that word in the way that this guy used it and so he put his head back like he was going to water fall the drink into his mouth, but I was like no dude he wants you to smell it and so we laughed about it because it ended up being the Hungarian famous alcohol and it could have been bad! ha-ha super funny.  

I want to finish by saying that God is really guiding this work. We have been able to find so many people that are ready for the gospel. In the last 5 days we have been able to find 20 plus people that were willing to give us there number or let us come back and its just super awesome so I am really excited for what’s coming up this transfer. I hope you are all doing well. Times’ flying. Have a great week!!! 

Ure Elder

TRANSFER WEEK, JULY 3, 2017

Well I made it to my new city. It’s great. It’s huge and has a ton of buildings to tract. So we are going to get to work, which is going to be super awesome. My new companion is awesome. He is from Layton and his name is Elder Robinson. We like the same things and both want to work hard so it’s going to be a great transfer.

At the begging of this week, it was rough because I had to say goodbye to Attila and Dora. I hated that. It was really hard and I already miss them but it was time for me to move on and to find new people in new places. I love them!

I finally got to ride on a train again for the first time in a really long time. I love riding on trains and the ride is about 2 and half hours long so it’s great. 

When we got to Miskolc I put my stuff down, went shopping and then we went to a teaching. We have a lot of investigators, which is really awesome, and we are teaching a couple of families. The first family is a family of recent converts and their little girls. The girls are 8 and 9 years old and they are just the cutest little things in the world. We started to teach them and this week planned their baptism, we will be teaching them because one of them will be a convert baptism and so we are going to be having another baptism this transfer, and it’s just the first week!!! “Doin Work!!” So it’s going to be super awesome. 

The people are really open here and I think we will be able to be really successful. Our apartment is great but I am back to sleeping on a couch pretty much. One of the nights we tried to move the furniture around in our apartment and it ended up working but then we had to move a huge couch out of our bedroom... So we tried to move it just us and we didn’t realize how heavy it was until we were already committed to moving so... we worked on it for a good 45 minutes and couldn’t get it to fit into any rooms and it was time to go to bed so we just left it in out in the hallway and ended up moving it another night. We got it all figured out but it was a good bonding activity ha-ha. It was funny and now I have a little more comfortable bed that’s awesome. 

Church was great. I was asked to introduce myself and so I gave my testimony and talked about myself. What I didn’t know was that one of the members from my first city moved to Miskolc. Way back then I couldn’t really speak Hungarian and now I can, so we were able to talk and it was really weird. It was awesome because he always roasted me for not being able to speak and now I can, and he was like “wow, you speak well” and I was hey thanks ha-ha so it was funny and kinda cool to talk to him again. 

Other than that nothing crazy happened this week. I am really excited for this transfer and I am excited to get used to my city better. 

I hope you all have a great week and everyone is doing well. I love you all!!

Ure Elder

TRANSFER WEEK (announcement)

Well sadly... I am getting transferred and leaving Pest... but I knew it was going to happen I am just sad to leave. I will be serving in Miskolc!! Its kind of near my first city and is pretty much the ghetto of Hungary. So that will be exciting. My companion is named Elder Robinson. He seems like a cool dude; I meet him tomorrow. I am super pumped and I will be staying zone leader. Which means that for more than half my mission I will have been a zone leader and that this will be my last city! 

This week has been nuts.... (Mom don’t read this email it will be better for your heart haha.)

Na I’m just kidding I am fine we just had some pretty crazy experiences. So this week I went on splits with an elder and we were tracting and this dude opens up the door wearing only a Speedo and just starts yelling at us for us to leave. It was great. I love stuff like this because it gives me a little excitement, I said, we aren’t doing anything wrong but we will leave, so we go to the next door and a couple seconds later we hear this guy open the door again and this time he is holding pepper spray and starts yelling at us and saying he is going to use it if we don’t leave... haha So I was like whoa, chill out dude and so we left and I kinda regret it because It would have made the story way better if he actually used it but it was pretty crazy...

The only reason I shared that with you is not to give my mother a heart attack but to tell you what happened after…because we got kicked, (more like threatened) out of that building we went to the next and started tracting again. We found this really cool old couple that let us in and we were able to teach them a really powerful Restoration and they both became new investigators. They had really great questions and I realized that whenever something really rough happens or when someone rejects us super hard, that is always followed up with a miracle if we stay strong and work hard. So that was really cool, even if it meant that we almost got attacked. 

The next day while I was with this elder we went to an old woman’s home with members to teach her the first lesson. She is a referral because is the mother of the church member. So he brought his wife and it was us and the mother. We taught an awesome restoration and it was a really cool experience... I was talking about Joseph Smith and what he saw and I told her in his own words the first vision and the spirit filled the room like I have never had it happen before. It was like you could feel it in the air. So I kept talking and once I finished I bore really strong testimony that these things are true and that I know Joseph Smith saw God the Father. It was really cool and the spirit was there and I know everyone felt it. The wife of the member even was crying by the end, so that was one of the coolest Restoration teachings I have ever had. 

I am really sad to leave behind all of the amazing investigators that we have found. I said goodbye to them yesterday and had a really cool teaching with Márti about how her life has changed in the last month while she has met with us and these are some of the things that she has said. She has more joy in her life, Miracles happen with her and her children everyday. And that she is not alone. I want to finish with this and say that these are the blessings of the gospel! We all can have these things; we all can feel joy and happiness because of the gospel. I am so grateful for the time I have had to serve here in Pest but I am about to do it again in Miskolc. T-minus 4 months to go hard!!! I love you all have a great week!!! 

Elder Ure 

FEELING PURE HAPPINESS

Well this week has been amazing but I don't have time to write a ton so I am going to hit on the important things that happened this week.

Elder Leavitt and I celebrated on our roof with some orange juice on the 15th for more than one reason. It was his year mark! It was a great day. 

The baptism was amazing. The feelings and the spirit that was there were truly beautiful. I was able to give my talk about baptism and then Baptize Bogi. It was a feeling of true happiness, one that is really indescribable. I just got out of the water and had a smile on my face that just stayed there for the rest of the day. I think there are few times in life when someone can feel pure happiness and this was one of them. It was really cool and was such a great day. We had a lot of people come out and support the baptism and it actually ended up being a really great service and we had little sweets after. So it was great. 

This week we met with Attila and Dora and Attila told me something that was really amazing and touching. He went to a teaching with the sisters to an investigator that is having a hard time believing in God and Attila told him his story. He said that for a year and a half he was working on a project that just wasn't working out. He told me that it was huge and really important, he went on to tell this man that yes it is hard to believe in God when you can't see him but after my baptism. This project worked out and everything slid into place just like that... He told the man that this was fact. That God loves us and watches out for us. It was amazing to hear someone that you taught the gospel teach it to someone else through his own experience. Such an amazing experience. 

Sorry this email is so short but I love you all so much. The gospel changes lives and I know prayers are answered. I have seen it in my own life and I know its true. I Love the gospel. I know its true. 

Ure Elder

'I AM MORMON"

I will start my email of this week with a quote from Dora,

"I AM MORMON" 

We were meeting with them and she blurted that out mid teaching. I loved it! haha. She is a member of Jesus Christ’s’ church and loves it. She even got a calling this week to be a ward missionary so she is super happy and will be coming with us teaching from now on. She is super happy about it.

While I am talking about Attila and Dora I might as well add that this Sunday I was talking to one of our sisters and I wasn’t there when Dora said this but she said that when she got the Spirit it was like she was full of energy like plugging your phone in to charge. I think that is very interesting because I have seen that when I don’t have the Spirit with me I am much more sad and not in a good mood and the Spirit really does just charge us up and makes us happy. So we can all follow Dora and strive to have the Spirit with us, because it’s just better that way. 

So going back a little bit into my week, I went on splits to a city called Érd. It has a lot of dirt roads and not a ton of people but it’s a great place so we walked... and walked... and walked. For days… haha. We were looking for a lady that they tracted into and couldn’t find her, so I ended that day with blisters on my feet but it was worth it because in the end we found her and told her we would be coming back that weekend. It was a super cool split and we saw lots of miracles.

When I got back we went straight to the baptism of the sister’s investigator and it went super well. It was such an honor to be able to baptize him and help him make the steps to God. I was so happy for him and the feelings of baptizing someone are really unwritable. It was really cool and the meeting was really great. Everything went well and I was so happy I could be there. 

The next day we had one of the craziest experiences of my mission… I was flipping out! haha. We went to meet with this member that is Mongolian and only speaks Hungarian and no English but her Hungarian is not super good and it’s really hard to understand her. So we go over there and walk in and for the next 45 minutes we said nothing because she just went off talking. It was unreal. She just told us her life story which was really cool, it’s just we couldn’t really understand a lot of it but she lives with her husband and he is a real Hungarian. He was able to talk to us and he is actually learning about the church right now! He was saying that he needs to learn more and wants to go to church and other stuff and then he will be baptized. We didn’t even bring up baptism, so we were freaking out and we were so confused and then it got even more crazy because we said we had to leave and she said, “okay come with me you give blessing”. That’s pretty much how she said it in Hungarian. So we said, “wait, what? to whom?” And so we get in the elevator and I am trying to ask her what is going on but she is talking a million miles an hour and I am not understanding anything and so we get to this door and she knocks on it and this really old woman comes out, that was visibly sick, and so she starts going off saying,  “they will bless you, you believe in God right?” “They will heal you, get blessing”. And I said, “whoa, whoa, whoa, wait” because this lady was like I don’t understand what she is saying so I explained who we are and what we do and how we can give blessings and how it works and stuff and said, “ it’s according to faith” and she said she would like one so we went in and I said, “Elder Leavitt, have you done this before?” and he was like yeah. And I said, okay you’re doing it.  so he starts giving the blessing and mid-blessing the member starts talking and saying be healed and all this stuff and Elder Leavitt just paused, let her do her thing and then kept going and I was like super confused and when we finished she stood up and she was like crying and stuff and it was really cool. Like it was crazy but now we are going to go back out there and try to meet with her so it worked out but the whole experience was crazy!! Missionary work is nuts!!

After that we had a couple cool little miracles.

One of them was when we were meeting with Bogi. She is going to be baptized this Saturday and the weather was looking really bad and we couldn’t find a member to come teach with us so we couldn’t meet inside so we all said a prayer together... 10 minutes later blue skies. It was pretty crazy and like before that it looked like thunder storms and stuff, so God really does answer our prayers. 

The other one was this guy that we were talking to and he said he didn’t believe in God but we just bore testimony to him super hard and after a little conversation, he said that we could visit him in his house... So don’t give up when you are sharing the gospel and someone says no at first. Bear a good testimony from the heart and that’s all that matters. If they accept it or not that’s their choice!

I want to finish by talking about Attila. This Sunday I was able to give him the Priesthood. He got the Aaronic Priesthood and it was really cool. I don’t really know what I want to write because this was such an amazing and special experience but the thought that I did want to leave was that it is an amazing feeling knowing that a couple months ago a man didn’t even know God’s power was on the earth and now, he, that same man can use God’s power to bless others. It is amazing and I can’t even wrap my head around that. God’s work is moving forward. The Lord is watching over us all and has a plan for all of us. 

I love the gospel. Have a great week!