Nagy Magyarország

Posted by Jacquelyn Lois November 21, 2017

Nagy Magyarország

Dear family and friends,

Wow. Another week down, and it was an interesting one, to say the least. First of all, we went to Budapest on Wednesday (November 15th) for new missionary and trainer meeting, which also happened to be the day that I go home next year and also DAD'S BIRTHDAY!!! Let me just insert a few comments about how wonderful my parents are (it's hard for me to talk about them separately, because they are so unified in my mind). It takes angels to build a family like they did. Seriously. My mom and dad are the greatest team I know. They're not perfect, but in striving to be and relying on their Savior they're exalting themselves and their children too. They've brought me to a plane at which I would have never arrived without them. I can honestly accredit all that I am and all that I know to them.

In addition to a LOT of our lessons cancelling on us, we had to go to the immigration office to get Morgan elder legalized (imagine the DMV, but staffed with terrifyingly powerful looking Helga the Greats, all fluent in Russian and Hungarian), we dropped one of our investigators because he only wanted to talk about the hypothesized jewish syndicate ruling the world (really, dude?) and not the restored gospel, we visited our investigator's house (?) which ended up being a sort of soviet train car converted into a ... well he called it a bus. A solar powered water bus in fact. Our bikes were still broken, and since we don't have bus passed, we did a TON of walking.

We went to a village again to do some tracting and met with a lady on the bus going there (we did splurge on a ticket for that trip) who in the end did not want to meet with us but who told us that Hungarian is the only language in the world that fuses perfectly the body and spirit. It's so funny, Hungarians are insanely proud of their crazy hard language. She also told us that an ambiguous "they" did a sort of study and found out that 60% of the words that God used while creating the world are Hungarian words. so there. another funny quirk, Hungarians are obsessed with the idea of "nagy magyarország" or big hungary (like gross deustchland) and many of them believe in this idea that Hungary in it's original glory will be restored once again, meaning that slovakia, parts of austria, ukraine, serbia, croatia and half of romania will be restored together under the hungarian crown, which they also believe has mystical powers (and a urim and thummim among other stones in the overlay) and whoever puts it on their head will have full power to reunite big hungary but whoever is unworthy will be desintigrated (apparently ole' ronald reggie was tempted and that's why he gave it back to the Hungarians in the 50's). so yeah. also the appeal to nagy magyarország makes them believe that everyone is Hungarian. Dieter F. Uchtdorf? Hungarian, because at one time his birthplace was under Hungarian rule.

We got a new investigator this week, András, a friend of Enikő, who is 28 and is looking for a place to go to church (!). We can help with that!

Training is a bit difficult because it is hard to balance speaking time when my companion is still getting the basics down. my voice often gets sore, but whenever he bears his testimony the spirit is SO strong. He's a worthy missionary with a lot ahead of him.

Thanksgiving is not really a thing here (as in, its not a thing) but next Sunday we are having a thanksgiving lunch after church because there is an american who lives in our ward.

I love the Lord, love his gospel, and love being a missionary! seriously i didn't know i would like it this much. Like i love being here, and sometimes i just lay at the end of a day basking in the feeling of being the Lord's representative. He has done so much for me, and continues to show me infinite love regardless of my mistakes. I don't understand it, but I know it's real, because I've felt the Spirit confirm to my heart that it is. NEVER FORGET!!

That's my task now.

Sok szeretettel,

Martin elder