July 4th, 2013

HAPPY 4th of JULY! I'm grateful that you were all able to safely get together to enjoy the holiday. I'm sure you all are having an absolute blast of a time together. I've loved getting to read your emails and letters hearing how everyone is doing and what you're up to. But, I challenge you to try to have even 1/2 of the fun and good times I'm having. Although I do miss you all, especially on this holiday, I know I'm where I should be, doing what I should be doing, trying to be the person I need to be.

I want to share with you all atleast one really neat experience I've had recently:

Every Tuesday we missionaries get to walk to the Marriot Center (ike 20-30 min walk) for a combined East and West MTC Campus devotional. This last Tuesday we hear from the 2nd Councelor of the Sunday School Presidency. It was a pretty amazing talk. He told of how we are real missionaries and what our part as missionaries is. I really enjoyed the talk in large part because it made me reflect on myself and ask me questions about myself, it made me want to be better, a feeling I've found directly related to feeling the Spirit.

Anyways, the main thing I want to talk about is the walk back to our classroom at the MTC. During this walk I felt I should talk with a certain Elder. This Elder is a missionary in my zone but not in my district, so I know him and am friends with him, but I didn't know him super well. As we talked I was led by the Spirit what course to take with the conversation, maybe what questions to ask or such. We ended up talking about some very important things dealing with testimony and prayer and such. At one point as I talked about prayer I strongly felt the Spirit in some things I said. I have found that I feel the spirit strongest when others around me are also and I believe he also felt the Spirit in what we were talking about.

As we arrived at our classrooms, he sincerely expressed to me how he was grateful for our conversation and some things that I had said. He said that I had given him somethings to think about that night and that he was going to try to apply. It was then that I reallized exactly what had taken place. I was blessed with this amazing opportunity. The Spirit had led me to talk to this Elder and told me what to talk about. I couldn't have done that myself, I didn't know much about this Elder. I was so blessed to have been able to do that. Not only did I have the opportunity to serve and help someone else (the reason I'm on a mission) but I was blessed with a spiritual experience and grew in my testimony much myself.

I think the neat thing is that this happend during a usually pretty casual walk back to our classroooms from the devotional. It didn't happen in a planned out lesson or such. It happened because God knew that two Elders needed to have that experience when we did, and gratefully we were intune enought to the Spirit, and willing enough, to carry it out. That, is vitally important. Not just in my mission, but in life. Not just my life but all of ours: Listening to the prompting of the Spirit to do the will of our Savior Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for our sins.

Here is an awesome quote from Preach My Gospel. I know it can bring peace to all of your lives: "All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ." (page 52 PMG) I encourage all of you to read the seciton this comes from, "The Atonement" which starts on page 51. Infact, I encourage all of you to read the whole entire Preach My Gospel, it is awesome and inspired. But, if you just read those two pages, 51 and 52, that'd  be great.

I am very grateful to live in the country I do. It is such a blessing to have had all the freedoms we do all my life. In Hungary, they've only had these freedoms from Communism for about 25 years. However, on this day of celebrating feedom we need to remember that our gratest freedom comes through the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. Only through this act of pure love can we be freed from the chains of sin that so easily pull us down in the wonderful world filled with much evil and temptation.

For the 4th of July today we get to watch the Stadium Fireworks from a grass field nearby the Stadium, Julie can tell you about it because she talked about it in her email. This last week has been challenging in many ways but also FULL of blessing. Because of the challenges I fasted and from that have seen amazing blessings. I still get along awesome with my district and my companion and I seem to become better friends and better at teaching lessons together every day. The language is hard but we are learning lots, we taught a 40-50 minute lesson in Hungarian recently.

I love you all much!!!!!