Elder Mitchell Young: April 21, 2014

Happy Easter!

I'm glad that the location of our new home brings lot of great things to do. I hope you were able to do something fun with the family in our new house. I got a couple letters this week from you, Mom. It was cool to see some things from the house! Do you have any more pictures? You can just send them to me by email.

This week was pretty crazy for us! We had a stressful start to the week by planning Balázs's baptism. The ward mission leader was out of town last weekend, and so has everyone in the bishopric, so planning was really hard because nobody knew who would be available. I did what I could and everyone else said they'd figure something out. But we'll get back to that later.

We kinda went crazy on our investigators with baptism. Szilvia, who we've been meeting with and who has been thinking about baptism showed up determined to get baptized. We brought a lesson about temples or something and she said, "That's fine, but I already know this. Let's talk about something that I'm really interested in- baptism!" So she told us that she would love to be baptized on the 3rd of May! But she actually lives in a part of town that belongs to another branch.... Érd! My greenie area! So we have been working with the Érd elders to get her moved over there. I was really nervous, because I have a friend who had the same situation, only reversed, and she stopped going to church because she didn't like it here in Buda. So we introduced Szilvia to the Érd elders, and they invited her to church with them. She went there, and loved it! Last night, she passed her baptismal interview, so she will get baptized in Érd on May 3rd!

Other investigators- We are meeting with a kid from english class who is really interested in the Gospel. We just do all of our lessons in english. We brought up baptism for him and he was really open to it, so we suggested a date of June 14, and he accepted!

We also meet with an older guy from tracting. He seems like he doesn't really have much optimism for life, but we've seen that he is enjoying our visits more and more and wants more faith and hope in his life. He would be willing to be baptized on the same day- June 14!

Our Zoltán guy who met us begging to be baptized changed his mind. He texted me this week- "Hey, I can't meet your church's expectations in the sun- I'll just go to the stars." So we are working with him some more too. He actually wants to be baptized, just wants more time.

Basically, we have a lot of pretty golden people to work with right now! It's really exciting! Last week, we started praying specifically for golden investigators to find, and ever since then our investigators have been softening their hearts, and we've found about one legit person each day!

The baptism for Balázs went really well this week! Sort of.

So they managed to wrangle up someone from the ward to conduct the meeting, but the first problems hit when the guy to give the musical number wasn't able to come, and the hot water to the font decided not to work. Did you know that if you take a huge font full of ice water, and spend just 45 minutes dumping buckets of boiling hot water into it, absolutely nothing happens? Because that's what happened. Ricsi and Balázs were super scared for the cold water, but they ended up braving through it! I was asked to speak about the Gift of the Holy Ghost- I mentioned that after a baptism of ice, the "baptism of fire" will feel super great! Everything ended up working out- we got a special musical number from the Buda missionaries, a whooole ton of people showed up, and there were refreshments afterwards! Milka chocolate, and some strange green Russian soda, that I accidentally spilled all over my companion.

Balázs is finally a member! He's been waiting for this for a long time, and it happened exactly on Easter! What a perfect time to start a new life!

Szilvia is also doing really well. Last night, after her baptismal interview, she hung out with all the Buda missionaries as we dyed eggs and ate Paprikás Csirke, the world's best food. Today, we taught Szilvia with Balázs (his first lesson as a member) and the Érd elders.

We played soccer with a bunch of people this morning. I injured my foot, and so I have been hobbling around to all of our other activities, including visiting the Máttyás Templom and looking at touristy shops. I have a present for Lesa, but I don't know how to get it to her, so she'll probly just have to come back to Hungary if she wants it... just kidding.

Well, this has probably been one of the best weeks of my mission so far. I can really tell that the Lord has been mindful of our work here, and it's so exciting to be able to see some things happening, and see my investigators progressing. I was talking to Balázs about how far he has come in the last few months, and he reminded me of when we taught him to pray for the first time! I am loving being able to see people make changes to their lives and becoming happier! Hurray! Happy Easter for new lives!

Speaking of Easter, today is Easter Monday, with the old tradition for boys to dump buckets of water on the girls. Nowadays they just spray perfume or water on them. (Some old guy was telling us about it on Friday, and to demonstrate, he grabbed some of his "smelly old man cologne" and opened up the bottle and dumped it on my hand. My hand still smells bad, haha.) Maybe I'll go around and try my luck at it on the sisters or something... haha.

Okay, that's all I have. Have a great week all.

Love,

mitch

1. Playing cards as we teach Szilvia.