We had zone conference last week. My last one.

August 12, 2019

Walking the streets of Pécs

Jó reggelt mindenkinek! (Good morning everyone)

This past week we had two people in church. One of them we were able

to teach a lesson on the Holy Ghost, and its role so she can better

recognize it as she studies scriptures, prays, and attends church.

As for our other investigator that came to church we are trying to teach

her how our church differentiates from other churches and about priesthood

authority and the importance of baptism.

We had a really good lesson with a returning family. The parents are

returning members, but the kids are not members.. The dad has been

coming to church this past month, but the mom has been working.

We taught them about the baptismal covenant , and what they need to

do to honor it. The mom said she needs to go to church to renew her

baptismal covenant as she takes the sacrament. The problem is that

she usually works on Sundays, but she said she will ask her boss for

permission to have Sundays off. 

Cool wall in an apartment building

We also had Zone Conference last week. My last one. We gave a training

on how to begin teaching. Also we learned more about the "area book

planner' app since we just got it a few weeks ago, and how we should

send the church data privacy notice to people we are teaching. Since we

just got the app that means we must digitize all of our records which is a

really long process. We have done a little bit so far but there is still a lot

more to do. We will probably do some more this coming week. 

The Area Planner Books that need digitizing

This past week I had the chance to go to Kaposvár on an exchange which

was really cool. It was the first city that I served in and I hadn't been back

since. We taught a good lesson to a new person who had showed up to

English class asking a bunch of questions about our church and the

Book of Mormon. 

Dunaújváros

Noah looks good. Does he like his little sister? The deep sea fishing

sounds like fun, but too bad you couldn't get a lot of crab. It's hard to

believe that next week you will be here. It should be lots of fun seeing

everything in Hungary.

Sok szeretettel,

Udy Elder

I decided to only write in my planner in Rovásírás--the old Hungarian alphabet

August 5, 2019

Jó reggelt, (Good morning)

Last week we were able to teach the third referral that came from the special Sunday. She is a neighbor of a member. She is not one for organized religion, and she has some false ideas about Joseph Smith and the history of the church that she read on the internet. So as of now she has quite a lot of concerns, but hopefully we can resolve them.

We found a few new people this week, and a couple of them seem pretty promising so we will see where it goes.

Our mission is doing an English fast next week, which means we don't speak any English throughout the week. This won't be too much of a change for us because Elder Brooks decided in the middle of July that he would only speak Hungarian, so it has gotten pretty normal. 

For my last transfer I decided to only write in my planner in Rovásírás, which is the old Hungarian alphabet that was used before they adopted the Latin alphabet. It reads left to right and looks kind of like Egyptian hieroglyphs. I can write it pretty well but reading it takes a lot of brain power, but I'm slowly getting better. 

"We make countless choices in life, some large and some seemingly small. Looking back, we can see what a great difference some of our choices made in our lives. We make better choices and decisions if we look at the alternatives and ponder where they will lead."

(Elder Dallin H. Oaks) 

Sok szeretettel, (Lots of love)

Udy Elder

President Hettinger came down to go teaching with us

July 29, 2019

Jó Reggelt Mindenkinek! (Good morning everyone!)

Last Monday President Hettinger, came down to Dunaújváros to be with us for a few hours.
He occasionally goes to different cities to see how the missionaries work is going. He doesn't
speak any Hungarian at all, so he just kind of sits there next to us while we are talking to
people on the street or in a lesson with somebody. Last week we were able to teach 2
referrals from church members from our special Sunday. One of the referrals we taught
Monday night. I never had more members present in a lesson than that one, we had her
member friend, a male we invited beforehand, another woman member who heard about it
and decided to come, President Hettinger and us. We translated everything that was said to
President Hettinger, so he wouldn't feel left out. Our referral was away traveling this weekend
so she wasn't at church, but we are excited to keep teaching her and help her progress.

The other referral we taught is the husband of the branch president's daughter. His wife
comes to church weekly, but last week was the first time he has ever come after being
married for some years. We taught him about faith. Hopefully we should be teaching one
more referral this week that a church member invited to the special Sunday. Also, last week
we scheduled to escort 3 investigators to church, but unfortunately none of them were home
when we showed up at their door haha. But there is always next week, so we will stay faithful. 

We also had a combined MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) with some of the Romanian
missionaries who trained or flew into Budapest. These combined MLCs happen every 12
weeks. I was able to got to the first ever combined MLC last year in August, and I was the
only one from that meeting who went to this one so everyone was a new face. It made me
realize I have been a missionary for a really long time haha. They recently passed a data
privacy law in the European Union making it a lot harder for organizations to keep records of
people's personal information. So in order to comply with this new law, we need to give
everyone we teach a data privacy notice explaining what kind of information we will keep of
them before we make any records of anybody. We haven't started doing it yet, but within the
next month we will have to. 

It seems as if our returning member we have been working with, is going to return for good.
He never made a familysearch.org account before. so we taught a lesson about family history
and the importance of it and then later had him talk to the family search specialist after
church. He also started to pay his tithing, all of which are good signs that he is here to stay.

Another returning member that is making good progress is 'H.". We have visited him a few
times and talked about the importance of church and keeping covenants, and he has come a
couple times since then. In Sunday school he admitted that he needs to come to church,
not just when he needs God in his life.  He should be coming from week to week. We hope to
strengthen him and then hopefully we can help the rest of the family follow his footsteps. 

Sok szerettel,

Udy Elder