A Baptism Week!

Sziasztok mindenki!!

This week was the longest week ever but it was also really good!!! So I didn’t mind it being a long one 🙂 that’s what always happens when P Day is a day late though. So this week…

Tuesday: I spent the morning completely reorganizing our area book…which made me feel so so so good and refreshed inside!!! Then we got to meet with Bogi again. Dang this girl is golden you guys!! We always joke around that we want to stop teaching her…because she is so cool she needs the professionals!! We are so afraid of messing this up!! But then we realize that we are the professionals… and that’s that!! So we are trying soooo hard to discern her needs and pray and pray and pray to have the spirit with us while we teach!!! I love this girl so much!!

(Most of Sister Mason’s pictures were accidentally deleted this week but she was able to save a few and upload her companion’s pictures so we have those to share)

Wednesday: We were supposed to be on splits, but that fell through because the STLs were sick with that same bacteria disease thing we got a few weeks back. Apparently it’s all over Budapest??? I SURVIVED THE PLAGUE!! haha sometimes I think I am funny. We had a long tracting day again (lol what’s new) and when we were explore finding I had to buy myself this cute Paris coloring book I found. I ways really feeling like I need a new creative outlet lately…so I have been working on that. And mom guess what!! I’m even coloring in this one! I have let my perfectionist tendencies go!! I am really a new human – hahah!

Thursday: We met with Zsolt, an investigator that moved to England about a year ago. He got baptized there and was just visiting for the last two weeks! We had a great discussion about the atonement and I felt very uplifted afterwards. Then we went tracting in the pouring rain!!!!! I took the cutest photos of it… but they got deleted. (I’ll talk more about that in a second) then we snuggled up with some orange tea and watched the District and listened to the rain!

Friday: We went back to the hivatal…still with no success. Then we went and had district meeting which of course was fabulous, and then more tracting, persza. and then we got to meet with Polett again! She wanted to know all about the Millennium and the afterlife so we talked about that and then of course she took us to the cute cukrászda again.

Saturday: We spent ALL day at the church preparing for our big open house that we planned!!! The branch was so excited. We cleaned the branch house and made a TON of cute Hungarian open face sandwiches and set everything all up!! …but when it was time for the open house to start…no one was there. All of the branch members were there, and about 15 mins late one of the Elder’s investigators showed up and one of the member’s friends. I was really upset. It is so frustrating when you spend so much time putting something together…handing out hundreds of invitations…inviting everyone you know!!!! to have not one person show up. I really felt like the worst missionary!! I was trying so hard not to cry in front of the branch because I just felt like I let everyone down. But we still had the whole program anyways…and at the end we watched a part of Meet the Mormons and an Elder Holland Mormon Message on the Book of Mormon. Holy cow everyone!! Pause what you are doing and find that Mormon message. RIGHT. NOW. It was so powerful!!!!!!! The spirit was so strong!!!!! Then we watched the part of Meet the Mormons where the missionary gets his call and leaves on a mission. Holy cow that was a rough part to watch. Seeing him say bye to his family and stuff…hahaha all the missionaries from the branch were all looking at each other and crying and saying ahhh its too fresh!! too soon!! I felt the spirit so strong telling me that this is where I need to be. Even if no one will listen to me, and even if no one will come to these amazing activities that we plan. This is where the Lord needs me. And all He asks is that I do my best!! And I really am trying to do just that. So all in all, even though it may have looked like the open house wasn’t very successful, I was so uplifted by it. And that is a huge lesson I have learned here in Hungary as a missionary. If I get all of the rejection and feel all kinds of sadness and other bad things…it is all worth it if I can help just one person. (Shout out to Taylor for writing me an email all about that this week!! love you!!) And the open house truly helped me!! and that is all that counts 🙂

Sunday: THE BIG DAY!!!!!! Sándor is officially a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!!! HE GOT BAPTIZED!!!! Wow I felt the spirit so strong again. Seeing him take that huge leap of faith again reminded me why I am here. I am so happy for him and I am so proud of the amazing example that he is to everyone around him. I love you Sándor!!!

Monday: No Pday because it was Pentecost. We met with Sándor and tracted and actually had quite the uneventful day.

Randoms this week:

I am being eaten alive by mosquitos. Which is a lot less fun than it sounds. I do realize it sounds very NOT fun.

We tracted in the rain a lot this week, and there were a few times while we were waiting at the bus stop when cars would drive by and drive through a puddle and soak us to death!! I like to think they were doing it on accident…but who even knows in this crazy place! haha!! But yes I was soaking wet and all the looks we got on the bus were very entertaining haha!

I have been really missing wordly music this week. Something I probably shouldn’t admit but I’m a human not a robot okay!! haha! So we have been trying to remember songs to sing but there’s actually this disease every missionary gets called icantrememberlyricstosavemylifeosis.

On Sunday we were hiding in a closet eating leftover sandwiches from the open house and then the person we were hiding from found us and then came in and shut the door and tried making small talk…awkward!! ahah we probably shouldn’t be hiding from people in closets anyways I guess.

So… about the photos… a member tried to use my memory card to get some photos and then I lost every photo I have taken on my mission!!! I was trying so hard to keep it together and not burst into tears in front of them… See — I really am a whole new person! Normally I would have freaked out at something like that happening!! But I was really, really upset when they couldn’t get any of them back. THANK GOODNESS I USE DROPBOX!!!!!! So I really only permanently lost the photos from this week. Sadly, this week was “I feel bad I haven’t been sending many cute photos home so I’m going to take photos of EVERYTHING” week…and I lost about 300 super cute pictures!!! But it’s okay!!! I will just take more photos of everything in my path this week and my companion will probably go crazy but it’s okay because I love pictures so much!!!

So this week was really good!! I have been thinking a lot about gratitude this week, and how we shouldn’t only be grateful for things, but we should always be grateful in our circumstances. I know that it is a lot harder than it sounds to be grateful in times of sadness and pain…but its is entirely possible because of our Savior and because of the faith that we have in Him!! I feel so grateful this week for a Heavenly Father that has created a perfect plan for each one of us, and for the knowledge that He knows each one of us perfectly and personally. I have never felt so close to my Father in Heaven before, and that is something that I would not trade for ANYTHING!!

I love being a missionary and I love this work.

sok szeretettel,

Mason Nővér