Week 26: Transfer call Tuesday...

Jó napot barátaim!

So what a crazy week this was. I guess I'll start with this morning because it's really the most interesting. So today is transfer call tuesday and after 4 months here in wonderful Pest, I'm finally getting transfered, but I just have to hop over to the other side of the Duna river because I'll be serving in Buda. So I still won't get to leave the big city, but it's going to be a fun adventure. I'll be serving with Elder Stringham from Utah, who only came in one transfer before me and we're opening up the companionship, so it's going to be a crazy transfer full of adventures. Buda is also going to be interesting because it's the centre of the mission, so we'll be serving around the AP's and STL's and going to church with President Szabadkai, it'll be a super fun experience.

So, the rest of the week. Monday was super fun, we went to the Budapest zoo as a district. They had a whole section on Australian animals so I got to show all my district our wildlife, I even got to pat an emu. Then we went over to Hero square and got a sweet district picture, because it'll probably be our last.

Most of the rest of our week was pretty chill, just doing normal missionary work and getting ready for transfers and stuff, until Saturday. Saturday we headed out to Vác to visit a few people, the first was a guy who we met with at the start of last transfer but were never able to meet with him again. So we couldn't quite find his house and a nice néni started helping us, then she told us that we could come teach her as well if we would like. So we called the guy we were trying to meet with and he said about an hour later would be good, so we just had a super good teaching with this lady, who feels like she has received a calling to share christianity with people and she was super excited when we gave her a Book of Mormon. Then we met with the guy from before, he basically just told us that he read the entire Book of Mormon and Jesus taught people on mountains and stuff so he'd rather learn like that then going to church. So my companion just said "well you don't really know what our church is like, so how can you say it's not good?" and so now he's coming to church next week. Finally we went to visit our friend Mihaly who lives in the tallest building in Vác and he used to be the person who looked after the building, so he took us up onto the roof so that we could take pictures of the whole city, then we went and had a super good lesson about temples. Way cool day, I also bought a fly winter jacket.

On Sunday I had to speak in Church for the first time since I've got here. I got given the topic of fasting, which is already kinda hard to talk about in english, but Hungarian was just another whole level, it was super hard. But I think it went okay in end, it felt super weird to have something I say get translated back into english though haha.

Then Monday was just black monday, so we got some lunch with a member and then went tracting with them before going and meeting with our super cool friend Greg. Black mondays are always just super strange days but it was still kinda fun.

So yeah, new area, new comp, same city. It's going to be a great transfer ahead.

Have a great week!

-McKim Elder

                                                                          A Lemur that I touched at the Zoo

                                                           
                                                                         Picture I took from Mihaly's roof

                                              Pretty much the most interesting guy in the world, Greg Hughes

So normal it was strange...

Szervusztok!

Well another week has passed here in wonderful Hungary and strangely enough it was pretty much a normal missionary week. It was honestly a nice change of pace from the crazy weeks we've been having.

So with the transfers coming up, that meant that last monday would be our interviews with President Szabadkai, everything was going great and normal until the very end of my interview when he said "We have a lot of new missionaries coming in so I can say that you're going to be training very soon, make sure you prepare for that", so I don't know if that means that upcoming transfers I will train or just in the future, but I'm a little terrified. It would be kind of hard to train a greenie when I barely speak Hungarian myself, but I'm sure I'd get through if that's what happens.

Later in the week we were able to meet with our investigator Dávid twice, which was super cool. One time we just answered a few of his questions and then watched "Meet the Mormons" with him and the other we talked about service. It went super good and he's super excited to be getting baptised.

Somehow our entire district got sick this week except for Elder Winkel and I, so not really sure how that happened but we dodged a bullet apparently, so that was good. Well for us, not really for the rest of our district.

We also got to do service and help our American friend Greg to move all of his furniture and stuff in his apartment so that he can get some painting done, so that was cool, he bought us some pizza as well which is always sweet.

But yeah nothing really crazy happened this week, just preparing myself to say goodbye to everyone because I'll probably be leaving to a smaller city in a week and a half.

Hope you all have a great week. All the best!

- McKim Elder

PICS!

Trio pics that I wanted to send last week but they didn't work

                                                                              Keleti train station

                                                           Hero Square (Hôsōk Tere)

                                                                    Parliament

We got a QUAD!

Üdvözlöm titeket a heti emailnek!

So as seems to be the usual with these emails, this week was just full of curveballs.

  So we started by getting just our first new comp for the week, my good friend Elder Murphy from the MTC. We had a cool experience that night though where Elder Murphy and I had to go out tracting together because Elder Winkel went on splits with the zone leaders, so we had two missionaries who had only come into the country a bit over three months ago trying to speak the very little Hungarian that we have to share a message about the gospel. But by some miracle a man let us in, and then told us that he was just studying about Christianity and that he had seen us walking around before and wondered when we would come knock on his door. So I had to share a message about the Book of Mormon with him and he loved it, took a book and said that we could come back. Super scary but super sweet experience.

  Tuesday we received a fourth member to our companionship, but we got to head over to the parliament building to pick him up, so that was super sweet. If anyone tried to blame us for anything or saying that something couldn't happen this week we've pretty much just been responding with "We got a QUAD!", it was pretty crazy. Then after we dropped him back off there later in the day, we went in our trio to Hero Square to try and talk to people. The only issue was that nobody that we tried to talk to spoke English or Hungarian, so not very successful but still good fun.

  Wednesday was really cool, we got to meet with our investigator Dávid as a trio and just discussed callings with him, he's really pumped to be able to help out the church when he gets baptised, he's so solid. Then we had international night and I got a bunch of Hungarians to try Vegemite, strangely enough none of them actually hated it and one of them even loved it, it was way different from when all the Americans tried it.

  Thursday, our lovely three days of being in a trio/quad came to end with a very complicated drop off of our friend Elder Murphy to his new companion. But it was pretty cool because we got to go over to the Keleti train station, which is a super cool station. Unfortunately though that day just decided to start having a huge storm and so we all got completely soaked on our way over there, but it was still way fun.

  Friday we got to have a movie night with the ward where we watched the movie Legacy about the pioneers. Fun time and our investigator loved it so it was pretty good all round.

  Saturday we found out that the member that we had set up to come with us to both of our teachings that day actually dogged us to go fishing in some tiny little city that's like 2 and a half hours away, so that didn't help our programs but the one that we still did went really well and we had district meeting that day so it was still a pretty good day all round.

  Sunday was just a classic missionary sunday, we taught sunday school, talked to a bunch of people and then we went and visited a family and had a solid lesson with them, so it was still a good day all round.

Well missionary life is crazy, hope you all also have interesting weeks.

- McKim Elder