Weekly letter to family

Dear Family,

The Avas,  the apartment subdivision
 just up the hill (2 kilometers) from our house! 

I am sorry that I didn’t send a letter last week. We had a lot of distractions and preparations for project approvals and just ran out of time to write to anyone.  

How can I bear being in Hungary when professional football players are knelling at the national anthem or not coming out onto the field until after it is played?

Let’s see, an increase in the number of hurricanes, an almost unheard-of increase in the number of earthquakes, illnesses, wars and rumor of wars and we worry about football players! I would start to worry about what Isaiah, John the Revelator, Nephi, Jacob and Mormon had to say about the last days, just prior to Christ’s second coming! But then again, who needs warnings, God does not exist.

Tonight, I was asked to go with a newly returned missionary from his mission in Italy to go to the hospital to give a blessing to a 93 year old man who is a member of the church. We also took him the sacrament.

This elderly man was “lost” to church members for over 8 months. The story about us finding him again is miraculous. Due to his advanced age and inability to drive himself to church, his family decided that they would going to have him “disappear” as far as the church was concerned. We were told that he moved to a village south of Miskolc, then that he lived in a relative’s house up next to the Ukrainian boarder. No problems a 1.5 hour drive up there we could visit him. But then they didn’t know the address. We said, “no problem, in small villages we will talk to the mayor and they will know who is in town.” Then we were told they really didn’t know where he was living. One day on the main walking street next to the electric streetcars, two elders were passing out pamphlets. A woman stopped and said that her uncle was a member of our church. She gave his name, it was our elderly member! She said that he was living with his daughter in the Avas. The apartment subdivision just up the hill (2 kilometers) from our house! She gave the missionaries the address and telephone number. She said the elder man was pretty upset about not being able to come to church. She said that he was always kind to all people and was interested in going to church.

We made contact and have people picking him up for church. We have a wheelchair at the church so he can come and go very easily! With a city of 160,000, the possibility of a relative of this man seeing the missionaries and stopping and saying, “Hey, my uncle can be found at this address and here is the cell number of my cousin who is keeping him” is quite surprising.

Last week, he entered the hospital. He will come out in a week, but may only have less than six months to live. He got very emotional when we came into the room. One of the first things he said was that he didn’t want to die. But added, he had nothing to fear. He then bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and how it changed his life and its messages had prepared him for death.

In today’s world where the big news of the day is what the President has tweeted, how Hollywood has reacted, how government can’t do anything, yet here is a man getting ready to pass from this earth to life eternal and his thoughts are on the important aspects of life. No tweets, no death bed repentance, just a little apprehension about dying, but not one of fear. Hope, in the trilogy of Faith, Hope and Charity has been replaced with knowledge. Knowledge that God lives. Knowledge that Jesus Christ’s atonement is for all people, knowledge that there is life eternal. His joy, being reunited with his wife who passed 30 years ago. 

We went thinking that our visit would be an opportunity to lift the spirit of this gentle man. However, we were the ones that came away from the meeting being uplifted. We were the ones that on this Sabbath night were reminded “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2. To Brother Istvan Jozeph Peri I say, “Thank you. Thank you for reminding me why we are here on earth and what in truly important in life.”

It is my prayer today that each of us stop for a moment and think what are we doing that is not bringing us closer to being more Christ-like. Then stop and do an act of kindness to a neighbor or to a stranger. I bet you walk away feeling the same thing I did last night.

Dad

Elder Jonathan A Moser