Hmmm... Maybe I should learn Hungarian

Jó napot kivánok!

So this was an interesting week with a lot of cool experiences.

On Wednesday we had zone training, which was way good. Our leaders pretty much talked about everything that Elder Jensen and I had identified that we wanted to work on, so hopefully we can take all that into our work here. I also got assigned to give a thought on our Missionary purpose at the training, but what they didn't tell me beforehand was that it would actually have to be in Hungarian (we usually do it in English) but it went well anyway and as far as I know I got across the point that I was trying to share.

Also on Wednesday, we had a lesson with our investigator Marton who is getting baptised in less than 2 weeks. But what was super crazy was that he asked me to confirm him, so in three weeks time I'm going to have to stand in front of my whole ward here and give him a blessing (by the spirit) in Hungarian. I'd like to say that I'm super confident and that I could do it no problem, but I'm a missionary, I couldn't lie to you all like that. I know that as I put in my study though that the Lord will help me to know what to say and how to say it when the time comes, so I'm really excited for it.

So there's this woman in our ward named Edit and pretty much all she does all day every day is sit in the Family history centre and find names to send to the temple, she's probably found close to, if not more than, 1 million names. Well an American family came to our ward yesterday because they were on Holiday and after sacrament meeting the wife asked us if we knew a woman called "Edith", so we asked her if she meant Edit, the one who does all the family history work, and she said that was her. So we introduced them and the American woman started crying and told her that she had done the temple work for 50-60 of the names that Edit had found. It was a super cool experience, and it was super cool to see how the work of salvation had connected these two people who lived thousands of kilometres away from eachother.

I've been thinking a lot the last couple days about the trust the Lord puts in each and every one of us, every day. Each of us are representatives of Jesus Christ. Not just missionaries, but each of us that profess to be members of a church. The way we act as followers of Jesus Christ influence how everyone around us sees him and his teachings, so we need to do everything that we can to represent him in the best way that we possibly can. He also gives us promptings every day through the spirit and puts that trust in us that we will follow those things that he tells us. But even though we break that trust all the time and we move ourselves away from him, he still always wants us back, because he loves us so much and wants us to return to him.

További szép napot!

Sok szeretettel!

-McKim Elder

P.S. Once again, sorry no pics, I took a sweet video of this weird party thing with a bunch of old drunk people that we found on friday, but it's too big to send.

Week 13 - Diligence brings blessings.

Sziasztok!

What a week!

Nothing probably that exciting to any of you actually happened this week, but we had a lot of success this week, so it was a great week.

By the way, sorry for not emailing yesterday, it was a public holiday, so P-Day got moved, but they didn't tell us until like wednesday.

I got to try a few new Hungarian foods this week, which was super cool. On Tuesday we went to a members house for lunch and ate töltött paprika (filled paprica), which is basically just some kind of meat stuffed inside a pepper and covered in tomato sauce and paprika, it was pretty good. Then on wednesday we made ourselves rakott krumpli (stacked potato) which is super delicious, it's layers of potato, meat, egg, cheese, tejfö (kinda like sour cream but not), paprika, just super good. Plus I got some pastry as well but I have no idea what it was, it was delicious though.

I got to go on splits with one of our zone leaders, Elder Martineau, this week as well which was super cool. He taught me a lot about finding techniques and principles and he was just all round pretty cool to do work with.

We had a cool experience in a place called Vác this week. We had a lesson with an investigator get cancelled and so we decided to go tracting on this little street nearby. None of the houses there had Csengö's (like door bells) but we kept going anyway and the first house that we found with a Csengö this lady came out and started talking to us who said that she had been studying the Bible because she wants to know the truth. So we talked to her for like 2 hours and taught her the first 2 lessons and she said that we could come back, so that was super cool.

We really saw how diligence brings blessings this week, so many great experiences came to us because we were willing to work hard. The Lord really does bless those who do all they can.

Also, our mission president challenged us all to get a copy of the Book of Mormon and go through highlighting every reference to Christ, so I've been doing that challenge the last couple weeks and it's been a crazy good experience. It's really shown me how much the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ and it's let me find verses or chapters that contain so many things that can help me, that I never knew of before.

I just thought I'd finish by encouraging all of you to just read the Book of Mormon and to feel of it's wonderful testimony of Christ and the great help that can come from it's words.

2 Nephi 33:10

˝ 10 And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the earth, hearken unto these words and believein Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good.˝

Sok szeretettel

McKim Elder

PS. sorry no pics this week :/

Conference and catch ups.

Sziasztok!

Hogy vagytok? Milyen volt a heted?

Okay now that I've exhausted my Hungarian vocab let's get into what happened this week (just kidding, I have actually learnt a bit more than that in the 3 months I've been gone). Woah, I just realised today is my 3 month mark, time really flies.

So I actually got to eat normal American food (well pretty close to normal) a bunch of times this week, which was pretty exciting. We had a less active member make us the best PB&J's that I've ever eaten in my life, we made ourselves some burritos for dinner and an American family in the ward invited us over for dinner, so the food was pretty great this week. But we also had a Hungarian member in our ward make us a little Hungarian food yesterday too, so yeah, food is good, let's move on.

So on Wednesday we had our greenie training, which was super cool for a lot of reasons. Firstly, getting to see my MTC district again. I really miss those guys, they were pretty cool. So it was great to catch up and hear how every one else's first few weeks of their missions were going. But the training itself was also really good, we talked a lot about the white handbook and our calling as missionaries, I learnt a lot from it. Finally Pékség! or Bakery I guess it would be in English, but yeah delicious Hungarian baked goods. The not so fun part on the other hand was that we got given all of our stuff so that we could spend another whole day sitting in a Hivatal, which we did this morning. So that's a real pain, but hopefully we'll get it over with soon.

So we had Stake conference this weekend, which would normally be great, except for the fact that the whole thing is in Hungarian, so I kind of just sat there picking out words here and there to try and at least get the topic of what they were speaking about. But when we were tracting the other day we tracted into this girl, who we talked to for a while and Elder Jensen gave her the number of a member in our ward. Then on Saturday night, she came to conference, so that was pretty crazy, but also pretty cool.

So funny story from this week, we were tracting in this 10 story and we knocked on this door and this guy in his mid 20's comes to the door with no pants on. So we just talked with him for a while and ended up giving him a Book of Mormon, all while he was pantsless. It was a strange experience.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, so last week after emailing we went to the Basilica and saw a bunch of stuff around there, so I'll send through those pics.

Anyway, Minden Jót Kivanok.

Sok Szeretettel,

McKim Elder

 We found a Kovács Jószef (well almost, Jószefné means wife of Jószef), that's Joseph Smith in Hungarian by the way

Hard work and Hospitals

Sziasztok!

Firstly before you freak out (mainly talking to Mum here), it wasn't me who had to go to the hospital, so don't worry but I'll talk about that later.

The first cool thing that happened this week was that we had a lesson with David on Tuesday and he was completely normal again, so we challenged him to be baptised on the 11th of June and he accepted! So that was really cool. He's also come to some activities this week and he bore his testimony on Sunday, he's pretty much golden. I'm really glad for David because right off the bat he's shown me that there really are people prepared out there and it definitely wasn't anything that we did that made David want to be baptised, he learnt it all by himself and we were just there to guide him onto the path. So if all goes well we should be having 2 baptisms in Pest this transfer which is amazing because there hasn't been a baptism here in almost a year. I guess it's just one of those greenie miracles that they always talk about.

After David we had Sport nap (sport day) where the first part of the hospitals comes in. So one of our zone leaders Elder Martineau did something to his ankle while we were playing basketball and hurt it really bad, so we ended up having to go to the hospital and he's probably going to be out of it for the next week or so. I know what you're thinking "that must suck to be his companion", well it does but not for that reason, right after that happened his companion, Elder Priest, had to go to the hospital where it turned out that he actually has appendicitis and he had to have surgery. So we've been helping them out a lot this week because they're both kind of dying in a hospital in Buda, so it's been an interesting week.

Other than that, we had zone training this week which was way sweet. Elder Martineau and Elder Priest are our zone leaders so they were both like dying but still taught pretty well. Then we just did normal work for the rest of the week, nothing too exciting. But we have greenie training this week and a few appointments with some members, so we're excited, this is going to be a good week hopefully.

Unfortunately I only have one picture this week, turns out the Villamos (tram) stops at a place called Szentlélek Tér or Holy Ghost Square. I thought it was funny anyway.

Minden Jót Kivanok! (I wish you all the best!)

McKim Elder