Does Happiness grow on Trees?

The tired missionary opened his eyes to a dark sky and quiet night. He leaned over and hit the light on the alarm clock....2:30..... Yet another night of bad sleep. He drifted in and out of sleep for the next 2 hours and hit the alarm clock again. 5:00. Hmm 30 minutes till the alarm went off. a usual thing to up before the alarm clock. He got up went and got a drink of water and laid in bed for a little longer. Decided he'd start his prayer a little early so he rolled out of bed and hit his knees. The long nights were a usual thing and a constant companion for the last 4 years. Tired and wondering why sleep avoided him like the plague but as soon as his knees hit the ground all he could feel was gratitude for the God that he was silently speaking to. He had complained many times and wondered in anger about this but this morning all he could feel was an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. He thanked his Father and asked him for a couple things and the alarm went off and the next day had started. "all of these things will work for your good" Life has it's ups and downs but one thing you can always have is a heart full of gratitude. Some days it's harder than others but it's always possible. When life seems hard and the mountain seems a little too big today remember a couple things. 1 follow the commandments because they bring true happiness and 2 if you're doing what God asks you to do you can be assured that no matter how hard it gets it will all work out for your good. 

 

Ladies and Gentleman. Another week. Another month. The time flies by out here. Why do 18 and 19 year olds sacrifice two years of their lives and go to crazy countries and sacrifice so much for this mission thing? Because we know this happiness and that others need it in there lives. I will forever be grateful for this experience and what I'm gaining from it. Alright this week. 

        We had an exchange and I was with Elder Wally from my mtc group. I learned a couple good things. I realized I need to become an amazing missionary and teacher for myself. My trainer and my companion right now have been safety blankets for me. I can always turn to them and be ok if I can't do something but co-senioring made me see that at some point I'm not going to be able to do that I'm going to have to be my own safety blanket. I need to be capable to handle things on my own and be that senior companion. The other was that I need to be me all the time. Shouldn't matter who I'm with or what situation and that the obedience level I want will set with my companions. Not that he was extremely obedient it was just that it wasn't as good as it was with Elder Ostergaard and It will definitely be a thing I want with every companion I have. That lesson in general has been learned over my mission that I should be the same and act the same with everyone no matter who I am. 

       This week has been English fliers! It's been exciting. You literally just walk around and go up to everyone and say the same thing over and over again and it takes away all your turp. English Course starts Thursday so hopefully we can get a lot of people again. I need to transfer my English flier excitement to contacting. It is such an interesting thing that we stand in the street and try to talk to strangers and get them to meet with us. 

      Church this week wasn't great we only had 14 people which tied our lowest but we had 3 out of 4 baptismal dates there so that was a success. It's weird that having so few people is my normal now. Hopefully the next couple weeks will be bigger. We need to get more people and get our members paying tithing if we want a building and as of right now none of them pay tithing so we need to get them started on that. 

     We played soccer this week because we finally found a place here but we only had a couple people come so we are hoping that next week will be a better success. We are going to do an activity on Mondays that will be a mutualish kind of thing and then on Wednesdays we have FHE and then on Saturdays we play soccer and we hope to find a frisbee soon and some flags for flag football and English course is starting again so we have a lot of activities going right now and I hope they bring success. 

Not to much happened this week but we have stake conference next week so I will let you know how that is. They are doing a split sc so half of Albania will be in one city in the morning and the other will be in another city in the afternoon. It's exciting that we are having stake conference though. The stake was organized only a bit ago and it's exciting to see the growth we are having here. I love you all and miss you like crazy. Keep This crazy place in your prayers. If you pray hard enough maybe we'll have a a temple in a couple years.... Your probably favorite missionary Elder Szabo