The Wolf

Posted by Jacquelyn Lois March 06, 2017

The Wolf

Hallosztok!

This week went by so quickly. I started to realize this week (as I was shoveling manure for 2 hours at Kornél's house) how quickly time passes on a mission. I've already been on my mission for almost 5 months. It doesn't feel like that much time has elapsed in the slightest. I feel like a month ago I was in the MTC, but I've been in country now for almost 3 months.

A lot of really neat things happened this week. On Tuesday, we went to a church member's farm to help him cut wood. We do this pretty regularly. It's kind of terrifying; our job is to hold the wood down on the posts while he slices through it all with a chain saw, but with every slice he makes, he gets closer and closer to us until he is operating the killing machine about 10 cm from our arms. While Norris Elder was holding the wood, fearing for his life, I went around Tar Tibor's farm and took some pictures of the splendid weather we were having, coupled with beautiful Hungarian fields and forests (below). That night, we went to visit some members in a suburb of Nyíregyháza, Borbánya. Kata and Jozsi Akai (pictured below). They are great examples of spiritual strength, though Kata is a bit of a spaz, and Jozsi will literally sit for 2 hours with you and just talk about the gospel to your face; all you have to say to him is "yes" and "that's right" and you're golden.

Wednesday we went up to Budapest for Zone Conference. The train ride from Nyíregyháza is the longest one in the mission (3 hours one way), so on these special occasions the whole day is consumed with travelling. We got back to our apartment at 10:30, but since we hadn't really done a whole lot that day we had so much energy. We were ready to go and do some missionary work! Unfortunately our energy carried us from 11 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.; not exactly prime tracting hours.

On Thursday we went to Kornél's again, this time to shovel manure for just one hour, though about 50 minutes in, he told us that he would be back in a half hour because he's "gotta take some things to the recycling dump," so we were strategically left for what ended up being another hour shoveling all of his manure. Tricky man. Later that day, we covered for the sisters and took over one of the lessons that they were supposed to teach to Péter, an awesome guy who is obsessed with learning English nature vocab - words like, "pheasant, deer skin, doe skin, venison" and phrases like "the deer eats the sweet corn".

On Saturday we visited Hoffmann Margit again (the woman with 15 cats) and invited her to church. He cats are currently "murdering" her, which is very unfortunate, and I'm highly debating taking all fifteen of them in a box with me the next time we head up to Budapest and then just throwing them all off a viaduct or something. Norris Elder currently doesn't have the heart to dispose of 15 cats, but I might be able to bring him around one of these days...

On Sunday, we broke our fasts at Kornél's for the last time, because he is heading back to London to work for the rest of the year. We had lasagna, white carrot soup, and chocolate rum cake.

Then we biked to a new investigator's house in Bornánya. We met him on the street, and there he showed us pictures of a WOLF that he keeps as a pet. Naturally, we were very interested, so we definitely made him a priority. When we put our bikes by the side of his house, we looked just yonder, atop grassy knoll, at a chain link cage, whose backdrop was the sky. Enclosed was a terrifying creature, the wolf, with a chain around its neck, jumping about 2 meters into the air, barking at us. István, the man, gestured us to follow him to the cage. Keep in mind, this WOLF, was very excited at our arrival. We walked to the cage, but Norris Elder and I kept a healthy distance from the entrance, while István walked into the cage, closed the gate, unchained the wolf's neck, and then, to our horror, opened the gate. The wolf came barreling at us, and we kind of just stood there like tree stumps as it bounded all around the yard and just kind of body slammed us. István is super fun to teach (he knows the Bible so well), and the visit was especially enjoyable because we got to play with the wolf before and after. Imagine a German Shepard, times 2, with about the energy of a thousand suns. That was the wolf.

2 Corinthians 5:17 - Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. This wolf reminded me of this scripture. Life sometimes gets you down, but Christ, through the Holy Spirit, quickens us in the inner man, and in Him we become a new creature.

Have a great week!

Martin Elder