I got assigned to be district leader and zone leader

September 27, 2017

Udy Elder outside the Provo temple

Sziatok,

On Sunday I got assigned to be district leader for our district. Now bestowed upon me is the sacred and holy responsibility of opening the lock to the mailbox every day. On top of that me and my companion, Morgan Elder, got assigned to be zone leaders (there are about 30 missionaries in our zone). So now I will be operating under double duty. Since we are zone leaders, we carry around a cool brick-like flip phone. It's like one of those phones that if you drop it, it breaks into four different pieces. Then you put it back together and it is good as new.

Our district

This week all the American Sign Language missionaries from our zone left us. And one of my new responsibilities as zone leader is to check and make sure that their rooms are clean when they leave the MTC. It's like I'm their RA or something. Speaking of RAs, I saw my BYU RA from last week at the Provo temple which was cool. All of the ASL missionaries left on Tuesday morning except for Elder Mcgrath, so he slept in our room and we were in a trio on Tuesday. He's from Alpine, Utah and played basketball at Lone Peak. He is going on his mission to Independence, Missouri. It was a fun experience to have him in our companionship.

Elders Morgan, McGrath, and Udy

Every Friday, we do this thing called TRC, where volunteer Hungarian speakers come into the MTC, and we have a couple of 20 minute spiritual discussions with them. Usually it is just returned missionaries that come in, but this time the MTC managed to get two native Hungarians to come in. It was cool because it was the first native Hungarian I have talked to. One of the native Hungarians we talked to was named Sylvia. Even though I couldn't understand everything she said, she understood everything we said. That gave me greater confidence that one day I will be able to speak this language. 

Hungarian Flag

Also this week, I got a mission long sleeve T-shirt that says 'Hungary, Budapest Mission" and it has a map of Hungary in the middle. My companion ordered the same one but the one that came said "I heart my Missionary." It was funny because instead of just sending it to his mom to wear or something he just crossed out "ary" with a sharpie marker and now he gets a lot of funny looks when he wears it.

I still have yet to give a talk on Sunday. But each week I have prepared a different talk. After sacrament meetings on Sundays each district splits off and has Sunday School. Since there are only 3 companionships in our district, we have to teach about every third Sunday. Then after Sunday School the elders in our branch split up into two different priesthood classes, and companionships teach that too. I have already taught it once. But now I am zone leader, I get to assign companionships to teach priesthood class. Also on Sunday we have choir practice, Sunday devotional, and we get to watch a church movie/talk of our choice.

  - Udy Elder

Since we have a room to ourselves I made my own personal "tie closet"

Some friends from BYU--Sister Snow is going to Spokane WA and Elder Gurksnis is going to Sao Paulo Brazil