What a week! We started off by having the Miskolc Elders over for a daily exchange. I was with Elder Peery, who is one of my best friends out here. This was technically our 3rd exchange together, but our first that was official! The other two occasions were when I was banished from Buda. We had a super fun time together tearing up Debrecen.

 

After that we had another exchange, this time in Nyíregyháza with Elder Hudson and Proctor. I got to be with Elder Hudson, which was a throwback to our good old days in Sopron. Also, this was one of the weirdest exchanges of my whole mission... So apparently there's a less-active member in Nyíregyháza who has heard all about me because I can play guitar, and he's been praying that I would come to Nyíregyháza so we could play a little bit haha. When he showed up to the Branch house, he jumped out of his car and his face just lit up and was so excited to talk about guitars with me. I'm afraid I disappointed him, because he's into a completely different style of music than I am and I had never heard of half of the guitarists he talked about, but he was still pretty excited about the whole thing. He kept saying that he hopes that I'll serve in Nyíregyháza someday so that we can start a church band. (I don't wanna be a bummer, but It's probably not happening hahaha).

We then met with József, a recently found person who is interested in the Gospel. József was so open to our message and Elder Hudson and I decided beforehand that we were going to throw it back to our Plan of Salvation lesson with Robi in Sopron (in that lesson, we invited Robi to be baptized). Anyway, we felt the Spirit so strongly, and I knew that it was time to bust out the questions. I asked "Do you believe that God's plan could be the way that we explained it?" to which he replied, "I'm positive that God has a plan for us, and it makes perfect sense the way you boys have described it." Then I asked, "Do you believe that the Book of Mormon is true?" He looked at me and exclaimed "It has to be true, and I know perfectly that Joseph Smith had that vision! It has to be true!" And then I turned to Elder Hudson, and just like we did with Robi, I whispered, "Do it!" So Elder Hudson extended the invitation. József said, "I will, but I need a little bit of time to prepare more. I only met you two weeks ago, but I will come to Church tomorrow and I'll keep praying about it and I will prepare my family. If my family could join me in this journey, it would be so much better, don't you think?"

 

 

I'm excited to hear about how József progresses. It was awesome to meet him and I'm grateful for the experience.

Missionary life is just full of adventures! I'm happy to be here :) Not much time to wrap this up nicely, but I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's celebration! In Hungary, they call New Year's Szilveszter because December 31st is the name day for Szilveszter.

Boldog új évet! (Happy New Year!)

Elder Burnett