Egy Hónap!

Sziasztok családom és barátaim!

Hogy vagy? How goes it?

I am officially on the DOWNHILL of the MTC! I’ve been here for 5 weeks and I leave 4 weeks from today. WHAT THE?! Is this even real life??? I am so, so, so excited to get to Hungary but also I feel like I could deal with like 6 more months (at least!!) here because the language is stinking hard! But like I say every week, there is no where else I would want to be/go and there is NO other language in the whole wide world that I would rather be speaking. Honestly!!

So, this week…

Wednesday – Probably the hardest day of my mission so far. I was so down about this stinking language and I was really frustrated with a lot of tiny things that just built up into one huge frustration! I was feeling so bad that I was so upset and then… perfect timing!!! I got the sweetest dear elder notes from Joni Vincent and my mom that just helped me to see a bigger perspective and to calm down a little! I am so grateful for those two! Something we learned a lot about this week is that most of the time when you have thoughts to do certain things you have no idea they are from the spirit, even though most of the time they are. We should always follow thoughts if they invite us to do good even if we don’t know why we feel that we should do them. If we are trying our best to be good, heavenly father will direct us and he will make sure we are in the right place at the right time. And most of the time we won’t even know how we got there!

Thursday – Much much much better day. Honestly probably the best day of my mission so far! I woke up in the best mood ever and I was loving class! And then on our way to gym a random lady ran out of a building and was like, “Can you sisters help me out for like 10 minutes!? And we said yes very reluctantly. Then she explained that she wanted us to have a first lesson with a girl that was interviewing to be a golden investigator here. Golden Investigators are real non-members that they hire to have the English speakers practice lessons on! So this was her FIRST time ever meeting with the missionaries. We were freaking out!!! Basically they wanted us to teach her the first lesson and (we had no idea that they were recording us) then they watched it back and asked us questions to see if she would react positively to the missionaries! That was the most spiritual experience of my entire life! She asked a lot of questions about why God would let bad things happen to good people. She has a hard time believing in a God that would do that. She was totally crying when we bore testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ and the spirit was SO STRONG! She told us that she could see that we each loved our Savior and knew Him personally and that she wanted a personal relationship with Him like she could see that we had. It made everything worth it!!! I can’t wait to get to Hungary and teach more people like her. It was so hard to teach in English though!! I kept almost speaking Hungarian to her! So that’s a good sign! I can totally see why it’s hard for a lot of missionaries to start speaking English again. I can even imagine what it will be like when I have been out for a whole 18 months.

Friday – TRC was so amazing! Basically its like visiting teaching with return missionaries! We did two 20 minute lessons. It was so cool and inspiring to hear them speaking so well! Hopefully someday I can speak just as well as them.

Saturday – We got a new service assignment. TRUE STORY: I. cleaned. toilets. and I didn’t complain ONCE! Okay maybe I complained a lot in my head but I didn’t vocalize any of them so that gives me some points right?!

Sunday – Another great day!! I gave the opening prayer in Hungarian, and then we sang Joseph Smith’s first prayer in Hungarian for a special musical number. It was so cool! Then I gave the lesson in Relief Society too which was also cool! It was about how important the book of Mormon is in our own personal conversions. In choir we actually sang the same Joseph Smith song! And then for movie night we watched the Joseph Smith movie. I have felt my testimony of the first vision grow exponentially since being here. Brother Eggett (choir director) said something that really hit me last night. He said “Sing it like it’s true! If this story (Joseph Smith’s First vision) isn’t true, then the next 18 months of your life is a lie”. That hit me really deep! I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and I know that he truly did translate the Book of Mormon and I am so thankful for this knowledge because it has truly changed my life…for the better!

Okay a couple random and funny things:

Our new Dutch elders decided that it would be really funny to attack me with snowballs…so that’s that.

My companions and I decided to all go take showers at the same time last pday. We realized half way through that we forgot to leave our door unlocked. We were locked out in our towels!!!!!!!! And we all didn’t bring any new clothes!! So we were freaking out because obviously we couldn’t walk up to the front desk in our towels HAHAHA and also it was our pday so everyone else was in class so there would be no one else to help us. We all stopped and prayed so hard that there would be some way for us to get back into our room. They designated me as the one to go and check the door so I very reluctantly walked back to the room and the peg was magically in our door holding it open! We were all crying and yelling “THE CHURCH IS SOOOO TRUE!!!”

In Hungarian “What the heck” = “Mit csoda!” Which directly translates to “what the miracle!!” So needless to say we run around saying that a lot.

Our district has a conspiracy theory that Hungarians actually don’t speak whatever it is that our teachers here have been teaching us because it is so crazy! We are pretty sure we will get there and Hungarian won’t even be a real thing and they will all just speak English and then we will cry.

Speaking of our teachers… shout out to Robinson testver!! If you’re reading this, szia. Haha! My teacher this week told me he found my blog through the instagram hashtag so that’s pretty cool and I’m basically a famous blogger now.

We found a girl that works here in the referral center named Katelyn Naegle! She is so nice and she always gives us tips about Hungary because she just got back from her mission there like 6 months ago!

Sometimes when we yell random things in Hungarian in four square or just around campus people will ask us if we are speaking Chinese!! Which is actually really hilarious because our language does sound quite like Chinese sometimes.

This week I am so grateful for spiritually in tune people from home and companions that are here to uplift me no matter how annoying I am being to them! I love those two girls with ALL of my heart!

I love you all so much!!

Ne felj, csak higy!

Sok szeretettel,

Mason Nover