Boldog Karacsonyt!

Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noel! BOLDOG KARACSONYT!

I hope that you all had an amazing week and especially a great Christmas Eve and that tomorrow is great too!! Being away at Christmas time is soooooo hard. I just think about my family 24/7 and wish I could be drinking hot chocolate and watching cheesy Christmas movies. I don’t think I could even explain how hard it is! But Christmas here in the MTC is unlike anything that I have ever experienced. Just as much as my thoughts are with my family, my thoughts are also turned to the Lord. I love Him and I love what He did for me, for YOU, and for all of us.

Okay I’ll get back to that later, but now for some of the details this week:

I thought the first week here was hard, and I thought the second week here would be better. BUT MAN WAS I WRONG!!!!!! This week was almost a bajillion times harder. Faster, but harder for sure.

Thursday was PDAY, aka the best day of my life. I ate a PB&J with some Doritos and Diet Coke IN MY BED and I was basically the happiest girl on the planet.

Friday…okay well actually all the days mix together and I have no idea what happened on what day so this is gonna probably be pretty jumbled up and messy (JUST LIKE MY BRAIN!!).

I have actually been really sick this week with a sore throat and a fever but I’m trying to make the best of it!!

One thing I have learned this week is that Companion Inventory is very needed, but SO HARD. I am such a people pleaser and I do not like telling people things that they need to work on. Thursday night was our first one and my comps were like “Uhhhhh you’re being really quiet! Whats on your mind??” And then I exploded. Literally I could have swam in the pool of tears that came out of me. It was just a hard day, and I’ve had a couple since I’ve been here. But we talked it out and they made me feel so good about where we are. It’s really hard because one of my comps, Sister Gertsch and I are like literally the same person. So we like to plan a lot for lessons and focus really well in study time. We are so organized and its great! Sister Roche is totally the opposite though. She doesn’t like to plan at all and wants to just go strictly by the spirit. Which I know is SO important too! But it’s just hard to plan a lesson with two totally different personalities. We ended up not planning and going in without notes because I just wanted to please, and it was a complete disaster! I think that my trial right now isn’t learning how to get along with people with different personalities, because I feel like I am good at that. BUT, I do need to learn how to speak up and make sure that my input gets put into the lessons too! I need to not be so quiet and learn how to put myself out there.

But, let me just say one thing…I LOVE MY COMPANIONS!!!!! They let me cry to them whenever I want, even one time during class. They get me and its cool because if they didn’t I would have probably died in the backup of my tears by now.

But I really don’t want anyone to think I am sad or unhappy! Because I truly do love this place with ALL of my heart! If I could stay here for the next 18 months I would be completely happy.

Sunday morning we got to watch the Music and the Spoken Word Christmas Special. It was so cool. I love hearing music here. Even though its not Taylor Swift or Austin’s super ghetto music (which i actually miss a ton) it’s still music and it helps me to feel the spirit and remember why I’m here and why I want to share the message of this beautiful gospel.

We taught our new investigator, Ildiko, on Tuesday. We went in with a pretty solid plan, and we decided to teach her about the Book of Mormon, and about how she can pray to know if it is true. It was amazing. I know that the gift of tongues is real because I really saw it in this lesson. We taught her all in Hungarian, and she and all three of us comps were in tears as we were bearing our testimonies of the truthfulness of the the Book of Mormon and that Christ lives. At the end we even invited her to be baptized and she said that it is definitely something that she wants, but she still wants to learn a little more. WOOT!! (She is just our teacher playing the role of one of the investigators that she had on her mission, but it got us so pumped to be out there teaching real people in the BEAUTIFUL language!) This lesson really showed me how the spirit can touch and convert people to come unto Christ.

Now for funny and random things:

Hughes Elder. MY FAVE PERSON!!! He is sooo funny and his mom is suoer cool because she same-day ships us Krispy Kreme and muffins and stuff from Provo Bakery. He was telling us that one time he and his siblings just went out and bought a goat. They didn’t want their mom to know, but they had nowhere to hide it so they just let it roam in their backyard!! When their mom found it she made them sell it! Hahahaha! They named it Gerome! Hahaha everything is just about a million times funnier in the MTC. We were all like on the floor dying when he told us that story. We love him. His mom also sent us new whiteboard markers because our old ones stunk and we can’t read the board and we are all just like “Ok cool were trying to learn Hungarian here thank youuuuuuuuu!”

Our sub teacher this week is a German teacher so he only teaches us in English!! YAY!! Anyway he couldn’t say missionaries in Hungarian (misszionariusok) so he calls us his mission artichokes instead because that’s kind of what it would sound like in Hungarian. Hahaha!

There’s no word for fun in Hungarian…and that’s that…

 

Knight Elder always says “BOLOGNA SAUCE” and it makes me tear up every time because I just miss my dad.

I said “I’m cold” which directly translates to “Hiddeg vagyok” which actually means “I’m sterile”. HAHAHA! So my teacher got a kick out of that and told us the real way to say it is “my cold exists”, or “hiddegem van”.

I ate a donut for breakfast and that also made me cry because I really miss my dad!

Were having a Tim Tam Slam party with the district tonight for Christmas Eve!! So excited.

Sometimes I get really stressed out because I am way too hard on myself, especially with learning this language. But our Choir director told us something that really touched me this week. He said that The Lord is the one that converts, and that really He does all the work. We don’t need to worry if they accept our reject our message, because our only job is to tell everyone that will listen. And let me tell you…I could just tell everyone! I want to scream from the rooftops how happy this gospel makes me. I’m telling you…the MTC and missionary badge do weird things to ya!

This year, because I can’t really give anyone any super special Christmas presents, I decided that I would give my heart to the Lord. I will give Him three gifts: obedience, gratitude, and faith. I truly believe that these are three gifts that will help me to show my love for Him. Obedience to the Savior is a lifelong expression of love. Gratitude is an outward expression of our love for Him. And FAITH is a huge one. If we have faith, then we will act. When we act, we show our commitment to follow Him and to do whatever He asks of us, which is something that I know is so important! The words of Come Thou Fount (MY FAVE hymn) outline it well. “Here’s my heart. O, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. Bind my wandering heart to thee”. There is nothing that I want more than to bind my wandering heart to Him and to His will for me.

Let Him enter into your heart this Christmas!!

Something we learned a lot about this week is that The Spirit of Christ = The Spirit of Change. If we go around telling people to repent, they probably won’t receive that very well. But repenting = changing and turning. Turn to Him! We need to let Him change us into who He wants and needs us to become. The common thing of the world today is “I don’t need to change, accept me as I am.” But we know that we ALL need to change. And if you don’t think that you need to change, you are not letting the spirit of Christ into your life. What a sad thing to do to yourself! I know that the spirit of Christ can change lives, as I have seen it change mine these past couple of weeks.

I love you all so much and I am so thankful for your examples to me!!!! Have an amazing Christmas!!!!

Sok Szeretettel,

Mason Nover