I thought for a bit about the title so I hope you all like it. I think its a pretty good sum of the week. It was an awesome week. It wasn't easy, but it was great.
Something on my mind recently is obedience. Its something I will have to work on throughout my entire life. Elder Cutler (awesome companion!) and myself met with a recent convert last night, besides him feeding us some delicious desserts, we talked about Gods love for us and commandments in relation to that. My companion put up a great question (thats how we say it in hungarian, we dont "ask" questions, we "put up" questions, felteszunk egy kérdéset, which litterally means, "we put up a question") anyways, he asked, "Why does God give us commandments?"
So ya, why does he give us commandments? The first thing that Pál (Paul, the recent member we met with) said as a joke at first, "to make us suffer!" he said it as a joke, but that might be my first reaction too, to just say to myself "well I know he doesnt give them to us to make us suffer, theyre important, thats the most important thing." But really, why?
Simple answer, He loves us. And its super true. His ways are better than mine and his thoughts really are much higher than mine. And so, because He loves us perfectly, He knows what we need to progress. Throughout my mission, and recently, there have been rules we have as missionaries that are hard to follow because it would be easier to, as an example, sleep in past 6:30. But I have found that I do try to be obedient and do my best, because God wants be to be obedient, as I prayerfully ask for His help, He helps me be obedient. Ive had a lot of experiences with this and Im greatful to know that, yes, Im not perfect, but that God always wants to help.
Alright on to my week. First off soccer. We play soccer on Saturdays and Mondays (Sat. as a branch activity, Mon. because its our pday). Its always super fun. Unfortunately Im not the greatest soccer player, but its super fun. A guy in the branch named Géza always comes, hes super awesome and a great soccer player too. Always very kind to us.
We are meeting with a Mom named Illona and her daughter named Csilla right now. We found them tabling. Really neat pair. They also want to learn english so for the first part we teach them english, but I think they really believe religion is important. The Mom is just incredible nice and seems like she constantly thinks of others and serving them. The Mom is also trying to provide the best future possible for her daughter as possible, she works really hard to help her daughter learn and grow.
Ive talked about Matthew before, or Máté in Hungarian. The one thats sick. He says sometimes that he wouldnt be surpirzed if he died soon, its super sad. But, he also has really embraced the gospel and through it seems to have changed a lot. We started to go through the plan of salvation and it ended up being a super long program, but super awesome too, one of my favorites, if I can pick favorites. Super spiritual, and incredible. Any one of these people makes a mission worth it.
Kept meeting with Ati too, talked about him last week too, the kid with gauges. We kept reading though the Book of Mormon with him and talked about the tree of life and what it meant. We are going to try to help him progress more this week. Both him and Máté came to church this week.
Ok skipping ahead to a program Im really excited to talk about, infact super neat experience this last week, the type of experience that shows me why we do all this. Elder Cutler and I streeted and tabled for a fair amount of time our first 2 weeks together and a fair amount of success came from it, but also a lot of the contacts we got fell through as well. There was someone that we streeted and scheduled a meeting with for this last Saturday.
I called her in the morning on Saturday and she didnt answer, so to be honest I wasnt completely sure if she would even show up to the program. She did, and much more than that, she was searching for the truth. That was one of the first things she said, seeming a bit distraught she said that there are just so many churchs and if there is only one Lord, then where is the truth?
Wow! It was awesome, so we told here about Joseph Smith and how he asked the same question. She said that if she came to believe this was true she would get baptized. Isnt this work worth it! Some days as a missionary are hard, some weeks are challenging, but the people make it all worth it. Im glad that we could find this daughter of God and that both Elder Cutler and myself came on a mission and did the work necessary to find her.
We also met Nándor this week. We were tracting in one of the many communist 10 story buildings and came across a man who didnt seem to happy. I think Elder Cutler and I both felt something different when talking to him at the door, because at first he didnt really want to talk to us, but for some reason he just kept standing there and so Elder Cutler and I just kept saying what we felt we should say. After a little bit he asked us to come in so we could talk. As it turns out, this man is very depressed, in a really rough state. Diabetes, super depressed, doesnt really leave his tiny appartment where he lives alone, and to my understanding his family doesnt really visit him too much. As we talked I think we were able to give him some hope in his life through the gospel. When we talked to him a few days later to talk about when we could come back he really seemed to have more hope in his voice. Im looking forward to going back.
Well here in Szeged we had like 8 inches of snow on the ground for like a week, but today it has really started to melt and I wouldnt be surprised if it was all gone by tomorrow, itll be nice if things warm up for good. Either way, this is great. I just love being a missionary, and I really love Hungary.
Thanks for all of your messages, I love hearing from everyone. I tried to send more in this email, hope its good. Love you all and wish you all the best in your strugles this week. Have fun!
Sok szeretettel,
Elder Shoop
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