From Salt Lake to Dunauj

So this post is to explain the reference in my last post to Viki.


The story starts in February of 2010. I have a mission call but am still all nervous about actually going and if it's the thing that God wants me to do. After so many unanswered prayers about whether or not I should go, I'm about at my wits end! A few friends and I went to Salt Lake and after finding out that the Salt Lake temple is closed we decide to go see The Joseph Smith movie. We'd each seen the movie at least 3 times but there was nothing else to do so we went!


Like I said I had seen it several times but this time something different happened. There's a part where the prophet, Joseph Smith, stands in chains and rebukes his guards for their disgusting language and boasting of horrible crimes they had committed, including the murdering of several Latter-day Saints on several occasions. He stands and tells them pretty clearly that they should stop talking or either they or he "will die that instant." That part is pretty dramatic and at that moment your a little caught up in his bravery but it's what he says next that caught my attention as well as my heart. It was something to the effect of:

The worth of every soul 

is great in the eyes of God.

At that moment I suddenly had the strongest experience with emotion I can remember having. Suddenly I could only think of Hungary and had a very distinct impression that the decision to go on a mission was mine but if I needed a reason, this was it. I could go tell people that they were worth an indescribable amount to their Father in Heaven.

Fast forward almost 2 years. I come to the end of my mission and honestly I feel like I've had a pretty great mission but as if I haven't really had an experience where I really helped someone understand that God loves them. I mean you have many experiences where that naturally comes and it's a great experience but I hadn't had a moment where it was very obvious that I was there to deliver this message. And that was fine, I just accepted that it had naturally been woven into my work, until I met Viki.

As I said before, Viki is an absolute sweetheart who's had her fair share of hardships. The Relief Society President asked us to meet with her and actually came herself. So the 4 of us sat down at a table and started to just chat. The RS president is really good with people and of course speaks Hungarian perfectly so she kind of led the lesson until a maintenance man wandered into the church building. She went to help him and my companion also went to help. This left me and Viki at the table.

As we started to talk she expressed feelings of distress at the idea that she was trying so hard but struggled so much. Eventually she told me that she was afraid that God wasn't happy with her. With all the missionary authority I had in me I told her that "[her] worth is great in the sight of God" (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10). I then explained a few thoughts that I had developed over the past two years from the time this idea first struck me. The feelings in the room were of confirmation that Viki was truly precious in the eyes of God. 

There is no soul that is not priceless to God. I know that because by all logic I shouldn't have even been in the area I was in when I talked to Viki, through a strange series of events we found ourselves together in a little room/ kitchen in a branch house in an obscure part of Europe helping each other understand that God was on our side and rooting for us. And if God is with us, who could be against us!