Last week was pretty good. On Tuesday I went on splits to Hódmezővásárhely which was really fun. The literal translation of the name of that city is pretty awesome. It means “beaver-field-shopping-place.” Hahaha. The really cool part of splits was that I got to spend the day with Elder Kunz who was in my MTC group! We got to reminisce about our days in the MTC and to talk about how crazy it is that we don’t even have a year left here in Hungary! Also his companion is the Zone Leader so we had a car and that was fun! I felt like I was a missionary in the US. They are so spoiled. Haha. The fun part was that when we got home we found out that our radiators didn’t feel like working so the apartment was super cold. We tried to fix the radiators, but couldn’t really do much. I ended up sleeping in my pajamas with my socks, my beanie, and both of my coats! That’s what it took to stay warm.
We are meeting with this really cool guy named Tamas (Tah-mash, the second “a” is pronounced like the “a” in cat). He is only 24 but looks older because of the sweet goatee that he has. Haha. He says that he is praying about the Book of Mormon and that is promising. I hope that he continues to progress.
The family in Doboz is also doing well. The mother, Judit, wants to be baptized and is a way awesome person. The family’s biggest struggle is making it to church since they have to take a bus to get to Békéscsaba.
I have something to confess. We went to Gyula last week and visited a really good hamburger restaurant. This place had a giant TV with the Winter Olympics on and we just couldn’t resist! Haha. We watched the men’s sport where they ski down the mountain really fast making really sharp S-turns around the flags. It was pretty cool. I would so be up there at Whistler if I were back at home. But living in central Europe for two years as a missionary is WAY better! Haha.
Sunday was pretty good. Everything went smooth except not very many of our investigators came to church. That was really disappointing. Especially so because Mecséri Olivér from the Mission Presidency came to our meetings. He is so cool and he gave a sweet talk about faith and how we need to do all that we can do first before God will do His part. He used the story of Jesus raising Lazarus to illustrate his point in a really cool way. He asked why Christ had asked those around him to show him where Lazarus had been laid, why He told them to take away the stone, and why He asked them to unwrap Lazarus? Because these were all things that those people were perfectly capable of doing themselves. The only thing that Christ did was what the others could not do: He raised Lazarus from the dead. And so Olivér said that sometimes we pray really hard for God to do things for us that we can do ourselves, things that God wants us to do for ourselves so that we can learn and grow. If God did everything for us, we wouldn’t be able to learn and progress. When we work hard to do all that we can do and then face something that we cannot do, that is when God will do His part and we’ll see miracles. But God knows what we are capable of a lot better than we think. And usually we are capable of more than we think.
So it was a fun week. I can’t believe that my mission is half-over! I love this Gospel and I am very grateful to be able to teach others about it!
~Anderson elder
***IMPORTANT***
I have a new email address. It is braden.anderson@myldsmail.net.
(There’s a period where the underscore was in my old address.)
I have a new email address. It is braden.anderson@myldsmail.net.
(There’s a period where the underscore was in my old address.)
