I learned what it means for an Apostle to stand as a special witness of Jesus Christ

October 30, 2018

Sziasztok,

This past week Elder Cook from the Quorum of the 12 apostles came and visited Hungary, also Elder Sabin from the European area presidency came. On Tuesday morning they met with us missionaries in the stake center building in Pest. It was really, really cool. Everyone got to shake Elder Cook’s hand.

Hungarian missionaries ready to listen to Elder Quentin L. Cook--
Elder Udy 2nd row center

And then he spoke to us during the missionary meeting about Elder Ballard's talk during General Conference. The Vision of the Redemption of the Dead--Elder Ballard  Also he revealed to us what we could be doing better as a mission mainly with planning and bringing people to church. He said that for every 2 people that come to church in Mexico 1 person is baptized. And for every 5 people that come to church in Russia one is baptized, and those are the two ends of the scale. So if we manage to get around 3 or 4 people to church someone will be baptized. 

In the evening he spoke to the members in the same building, and people from all over the country came, and all the seats were filled. In that meeting Elder Cook talked about families and moving towards a more home-centered church. In both meetings he gave his special witness of Christ. And both times when he bore testimony of Christ the Spirit was felt very strongly by everyone. I learned what it means for an Apostle to stand as a special witness of Jesus Christ. 

I got to see some people that I have taught from Székesfehérvár and Szeged who came. A lady I taught in Székesfehérvár came, and it was really good to see her, also one of the people who I was teaching in Szeged came. When we taught him we could never commit him to a baptismal date. But I guess sometime after the meeting, he decided he needs to get baptized and his baptism is this weekend.  Also we sang in the choir during the evening meeting. 

We also had the chance to teach someone over Skype. There were sister missionaries in Romania who were teaching a church member's boyfriend. The church member knows both Romanian and Hungarian but the boyfriend only knows Hungarian. So we got to Skype them so the lessons could be taught in Hungarian.

The man who came to church last week is abroad right now so we couldn't meet with him. But we taught a lady who is about 60 years old and we focused the lesson on the atonement and partaking of the sacrament and invited her to church. At first she was hesitant, but she came to church and sat with a member and she seemed to like it. 

Also we had interviews last week. We are getting another senior couple in the office that is coming next weekend because the workload is too much for 4 people. So we will have to allocate the office responsibilities and set up a couple more desks and computers. It will be really good because right now we have so much that we are doing in the office. 

Office Elders

There is a YSA (Young Single Adult) activity every Friday night in the Buda church building. There is a senior couple in Hungary that works with the YSA and they organize it. We go to it every week and eat dinner. This past week was a Halloween party and a lot of people showed up, about 50, which was cool. My costume was supposed to be "Facebook" because the word "book" was written on my face.

YSA Halloween Activity--Facebook costume

Roast Beef Dinner. Yum!

I don't really know what I want for Christmas, good snacks that aren't available here are always good. Hot chocolate packs are good. Ties and socks are good. I'll try and take some more pictures this week.

Sok szeretettel,    

Udy Elder

Busy, Busy, Busy

October 22, 2018

Jó reggelt mindenkinek!  (Good morning everyone)

Last week was another busy one like always. There is a recent convert, who was baptized in July in our area named 'Z' who we met with. He is some kind of medical doctor and I guess for years he has taken trips to Salt Lake City for his work and lot of the people he worked with there are members of the church and then earlier this year he came to the missionaries wanting to join the church. Anyway, we met with him and talked about family history and he showed us a bunch of records that he has of his ancestors that he wants to put on family search. 

Also we had a young guy show up to church who we first contacted on Facebook a few weeks ago. He was looking for a new church to join and he was interested in coming to church one Sunday. He works as a police officer in Budapest and is a cool dude, and he was listening with intent to all of the talks during sacrament meeting. He said he is coming again next week and we are excited to meet with him during the week. 

There is this old guy that I knew from Kapsovár. He isn't a church member or being taught by missionaries, he is just a guy who really likes missionaries and goes to English class. He is known around the mission as the guy who randomly visits the missionaries across the country. Anyway, he visited us a couple Mondays ago and we went to a really famous old church called Saint Matyas (Matthias) church, and he pretty much just gave us a tour and told us all about the history. 

Matyas church was rebuilt in the 1300's

Reproduction of the Holy Crown and Coronation Regalia

Other than that we are really excited to see Elder Cook tomorrow. He is currently on the other side of the mission in Romania but tomorrow morning he will be here in Budapest and he will talk to the missionaries. And then in the evening he will speak to the Church members and luckily we get to go because the Buda ward choir is singing a song and we are in the choir. The last time an Apostle visited Hungary was when the Budapest stake was created--like 12 years ago.  It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to have an Apostle of the Lord visit your mission and I want to make it a memorable experience for me.

Zone Conference last week

Our apartment is on the same street as the mission home. It is about a 20 or 30 second walk, we just live across the street. It is really convenient as the office secretaries. If we go somewhere close we usually just walk, but we also have public transport passes that let us go on the buses and also on the subways in Budapest. That is goooood that you were able to give the BoM to the kid. Hopefully he will read it and meet with the missionaries in the future. I don't know what I want for Christmas. The reason that letter (telling parents they should only send padded envelopes for packages at Christmas) was sent out is because it is really hard to transport packages from the mission home to Romania since those missionaries never come to Budapest, and if they do it is usually by plane, so in order to be fair it was made the same in both countries. But it is no burden because I'm the one who usually signs for all the mail, and all I have to do is just take my package across the street. But I still need to think of what I want. I think my contacts are good but I can check and make sure.

Sok szeretettel,  (Lots of Love)

Udy Elder

Elder Quentin L. Cook is coming

Elder Quentin L. Cook

October 16, 2018

Jó reggelt! (Good morning)

I forgot to tell you last week that Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles is coming to visit Hungary and Romania next week. He will first go to Romania and meet with people on Monday, and then on Tuesday he will be in Hungary. Tuesday morning he will meet with the missionaries in Hungary. It will be a super special experience for us to hear from an Apostle of the Lord, and maybe since I'm in the office, I will be able to spend a little extra time with him-- we'll see. 

As usual we were super busy with office stuff. I have been trying to get the Romanian immigration paperwork ready, but apparently they passed some new law or something and we have to fill out a different form for our health insurance. However, the form is only in Romanian, so I have to somehow figure out how to fill it out. We also took the mission president's car to get an oil change and an inspection this past week.

We also went on splits to Dunaújváros. It was a good time. I was with Elder McCann who is from Australia. We went to a village to teach a married couple,  the husband is French and doesn't know Hungarian or English, and the wife is Hungarian. So we taught in Hungarian and then the wife would translate everything into French so the husband could understand. They were super Catholic, but they were interested in our message, so it was good.

This past week the Buda ward had a concert, and we sang in the choir. It always seems that the women outnumber the men in these kinds of choirs, so they dragged us missionaries into it. But it was really cool to participate, and there were a lot of good singers. 

Also, President Hettinger got rid of the 6-month suit season, which was very good because now I don't have to wear out my suits anymore and I don’t have to where a suit even though it may be hot outside. 

Tisztelettel,  (Sincerely)

Kedves Udy Elder Úr (Kind Mr. Elder Udy) 

(This is how a lot of landlords address me when I e-mail them.) 

We were able to watch General Conference

October 8, 2018

Szervustok mindenkinek,

This past week we have been busy doing office work, but we were able to get out of the office by 2:00 a couple of days which was nice. The missionary work in our area has been pretty slow for a while so Elder Burnett and I have been trying to revive the work here. This past week when we were using our big Book of Mormon street banner, we talked to a bunch of people and were able to teach some people on Saturday about the restoration. One of them seemed pretty promising and was really willing to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.  

One afternoon we were at a stoplight and this lady asks us if we want free sandwiches.  She was a worker from KFC. So we said yes and walked into KFC. And it turned out they were doing product research and wanted random people's opinions on the sandwiches. So we each sat down at a table and were asked a ton of questions about 2 experimental KFC sandwiches for free food. 

Also this weekend we were able to watch General Conference. We were able to watch 3 of the 4 sessions. We haven't watched the Sunday afternoon one yet, but we will watch it sometime this week. Because of the time difference we watched the Saturday and Sunday Morning sessions at 6:00 pm, but it was cool because we were still able to watch live. 

Below are the Saturday and Sunday sessions of the church's 188th semiannual general conference...

I liked Elder's Uchtdorf's talk (Saturday afternoon session) when he talked about the three things we need to do as disciples of Jesus Christ: Believe, Love, Do. It is a pretty simple formula but sometimes learning to love and act just based on our belief in the Savior can be hard at times, But if we often reflect our thoughts to the Savior and our love for Him, then it is easier for us to love and serve others. Also it was interesting to hear President Nelson be so straightforward concerning the terminology we use for the name of the church and it's members. Just a few years ago the church embraced the term "Mormon" and had an entire campaign on it. But as missionaries and official representative of the church, it is especially important we follow the prophet's counsel on this, and refer to the church as its correct name, so others can start identifying us by the correct name.

That’s cool that Puerto Rico is getting a temple. Maybe at the dedication you guys can go so Dad can finally re-visit his mission. The google translate in dad's letter was pretty good. He called me a titkár (secretary) and the thing at the end says (to work hard and to play hard) but it was pretty close. This would be the most correct translation "dolgozz keményen. játssz keményen." 

Here are some pictures of a hike we went on last week.

Elders Burnett, Udy, Spencer, and Martin

Tisztelettel,

Udy Elder 

We were made editors on the official Hungarian Facebook page for the church

October 1, 2018

Sziasztok, 

This past week we were super busy and we had to spend a lot of time in the office. It was transfer week so I had to get everyone's immigration papers ready. Earlier I got power of attorney, from the guy who is the official representative of the church in Hungary, so I can sign my name in place of his name on a bunch of immigration documents. Also this week the Romanian APs (Assistant to the mission President) came to Budapest.  We got to pick them up from the airport at 9:30 at night, and they stayed with us for 2 nights. They are really cool, one is from Sweden and the other one is from Finland. Since there is no mission office in Romania, they have to dump all of the Romanian stuff on us. So they taught us a little bit about how things work in Romania. Also a guy from Germany came who does finances for the church, and we shifted some of the responsibilities around in the office. Now some of the senior couple's finance responsibilities are on me. I have to prepare expense reports and have the mission president sign off on them now. 

Later in the week 2 more guys came from Germany to train us on using Facebook in our mission, and again we picked up another Romanian missionary companionship from the airport so they could participate in the training. They also stayed with us for 2 nights. Currently in Hungary there is a missionary Facebook page for every city, but that is going to change.  There will only be a few companionships who are authorized to use Facebook, the office Elders being one of them. They made us editors on the official Hungarian Facebook page for the church which was pretty cool, and then at the end of the training we posted something and paid money to boost it. Our job is pretty much to invite people to like the page, and then when they do we send messages to them and start a conversation. Also we are supposed to respond to both the negative and positive comments we see on the posts. And we will have a budget, and we can choose what posts we want to boost so more people can see it. It will be interesting to see if we can get any good missionary work out of it. 

Elder Burnett, Me, and 2 missionaries serving in Romania

Also the mission office phone is on my desk so I get to answer a lot of fun and interesting phone calls from landlords and immigration offices, and also random people. As a secretary I have been learning all sorts of cool new business and legal words, so hopefully by the end I'll have a vocabulary to be a Hungarian lawyer.  

My desk in the mission office

On Sunday it was the Primary program at church (children’s program), so that was cool to see. It is my first time serving in a ward instead of a branch, and it is weird to have so many people in church. As of now the missionary work in our area in Buda is going really slow, but Elder Burnett and I set some goals and made a vision for this transfer, so hopefully we can see some success down the road.

There are about 120 people that come to church here in Buda. There are 2 companionships that cover the area--the office secretaries and the APs.

Buda

Too bad BYU lost to Washington that would have been really good. But you got to go to the game so that was cool.

Sok szeretettel,

Udy Elder