It's hard to believe that it's time for transfers again... I'm staying in Debrecen and getting Elder Smith. I'm super excited! It'll be a great transfer for sure.

We finished off this transfer with a super solid week! We got to meet with some awesome people this week including several part member and less active families. 

-Valéria is Hungarian and her husband, Muhammed is from Iraq. They recently moved back to Debrecen from Qatar and we had a good time getting to know them and their son, Gábor. Valéria is the only member.

-We met with a man named Tóth Lájos, who is the only member in his family and a recent convert of about a year. He has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, but family obligations make it hard for him to come to church sometimes. We are going to help him and his family start the Come Follow Me program, since it's based on the New Testament and would be perfect for him and his family, who are not all of the same faith.

-We were invited over for dinner by two of the sweetest nénis in the world, Valcsi and Érszi. Érzsi taught us how to make fruit soup the Hungarian way, so now we're pros ;) Valcsi helped translate the Doctrine and Covenants into Hungarian and they have been members for almost 30 years! True Pioneers!

-We trudged through a crazy blizzard for about a half hour searching for another less active family. We met with them, had a great lesson, and they came to church this week!

-We met with a recent convert, Andrea, and were able to introduce the Gospel to her 16 year old son, who was super cool and very open. She also has 3 really funny cats and a rabbit.

Two crazy stories from this week (kinda long, but worth the read I think):

We were tracting in a neighborhood near Érzsi and Valcsi and generally, people were pretty rude to us over the csengő. After we finished one building, we went next door and found that the door was unlocked. Hooray! So we pranced in and went up to the top of the building. The first door we knocked on was answered by a middle aged woman who said, "Oh, you were here about two weeks ago. Well, not you, but two older women who looked just like you." So in other words, the Jehovah's Witnesses were there 2 weeks earlier hahaha. We explained that we weren't the Jehovah's Witnesses, and she said, "Well you should come back sometime then! I'm really busy right now, but I'd love to talk. Maybe next week?" So we scheduled an appointment with her. Top floor first door... You never hear about that happening, right? Anyway, although we had had success with the first door, we felt uneasy about tracting the rest of the building knowing it was recently visited by the Jehovah's Witnesses just 2 weeks earlier, so we went to a different building.

Which was a good move, by the way.

In the next building, we had great conversations door after door after door. We almost averaged a return appointment per floor! On the 2nd floor (which is actually the 3rd floor in America), we spoke with a man who was on his way out the door. He was kind, but not interested. He had his faith and wished us all the best. We rang the next bell and a woman came out and as we were talking, she seemed pretty disinterested. Then, we started talking about the Book of Mormon and bearing testimony of how it can help us and she started to ask questions. Then, she said, "My son just barely left, but he would love to hear about this! You guys should wait here for him to come back!" We explained that we already talked to him, but she said, "No, no, you need to wait and talk to him again!" So we waiting and sure enough, the same man whom we already talked to came back. She said, "We should let these boys in, don't you think? Let's do it!" So they invited us in and we had one of the most incredible conversations ever. Without getting into too much detail, Balázs, this guy, really opened up to us about how he feels kind of alone in his search for God. He can't really find which Church believes in God the way he does. He is tied to the Lutheran church by tradition, but feels better amongst Baptists. He also explained some very personal frustrations with mental illness, which I was able to really relate to. In the end, we had given him a copy of the Book of Mormon and links to resources where he could find more information. It was incredible. Like I said last week, God is always guiding us. Think of the dominoes that were set up to get us to meet with Balázs!

The next miraculous day came when we were revisiting some of the people we found last week in Balmazújváros. We went back to that one family I wrote about last week, the ones who were the last door after we had the awesome lesson with Zoltán. Anyway, we came back, kind of expecting them to turn us away at the door, saying, "We didn't think you would actually come back!" but they were home and let us in and we taught probably the most powerful Restoration lesson I've ever been a part of. The Spirit bore witness of the message we shared, and József and his mother Erzsébet humbly agreed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.

We also found another woman in Balmazújváros who recognized us because she read an article in a women's health magazine about us. I can't remember if I wrote about this or not, but while I was in the office the Assistants were interviewed and followed around by a camera crew for a day and they were featured in the women's health magazine "Meglepetés" (Surprise) hahaha. The article was just about missionaries and missionary work and what we believe etc. and turns out it was a really good missionary investment of time. 

Okay I know this is long, but I'm going to finish off with a funny story. Elder Proctor and Elder Hudson came to Debrecen for exchanges earlier this week and Elder Proctor and I were headed to our lesson with Andrea. We were standing at the tram stop, which is a little concrete island which splits two lanes of traffic, waiting for our tram when suddenly I felt a heavy pressure all up and down the backside of my body. I was so confused by the sensation, but quickly realized what had happened when I saw a tidal wave of brown slush splash all the way into the other lane of traffic. Someone had seen us standing at the tram stop and purposely drove through the slush which had built up near the stop and completely splattered us with muck! I would have quickly labelled this as a persecution, but we weren't the only victims! Also caught in the blast were two young women in their 20's who were just chatting next to us. Their reaction really surprised me. I was outraged and couldn't believe that someone really could be so cold hearted and cruel as to pull such a stunt, but the two women couldn't stop laughing. They were just as dumbfounded at the act as I was, but they decided to brush themselves off and laugh about it. I thought that was an important lesson. We choose how we react! I could have let that ruin my day, but instead I couldn't help but join in with the laughter. Other people started gathering at the stop well after the drive-by splashing and they also couldn't help but join in on the laughter. Oh man...

Sometimes we just have to brush off the slush and smile! (Even if some of it gets in our bags and destroys our books!) When we press forward, we see miracles. We found 11 new people to teach this week, visited 4 families, and had an investigator, that investigator's grandfather, and 5 returning members come to Church this week. Don't let the slush get you down!

Szeretettel,

Burnett elder