AP for a day

Sok szeretettel köszöntök mindenkit!

These weeks just keep getting faster and faster and feels like I have less and less to write every week, but here we are again anyway.

  This week started with our interviews with President Szabadkai and as seems to be the usual these days, mine was very normal. Nothing too special happened at all but it's still always a great time to be able to sit down with President Szabadkai for a bit and talk about life, it's one of my favourite parts of every transfer.

  As per usual we had more exchanges again this week firslty with the other elders here in Szeged. It went pretty well, we found some potentials, ate some food and met with a couple investigators, so it was a good time.

  Our other exchange was with the assistants, which usually aren't anything too different to a normal exchange, but this one had me end up playing AP for a day. When we got there it was pretty normal, we met with a couple people and I got to catch up a little with some of the people that I knew from when I served in Buda, it was a really great time. Then the next morning we had to attend a meeting... with the entire mission presidency... and both of the Hungarian district presidencies... and our AP Elder Fitzgerald, and then me. You could say that I felt a little out of place. It was really cool to be a part of though, it was just a room full of people discussing how to further the church in Hungary and help it grow. We also got to go up into the Szabadkais' house to have lunch which is always super nice.

  Our work is doing alright these days, we have a few new people that we found this week that we're really excited about so things are looking up from over here, we should have good times coming ahead.

További szép hetet!

- McKim Elder

A fairly normal week.

Kellemes Pünkösdöt kívánok!

Well here we are, another week flown on by. For anyone who was wondering, I emailed today because yesterday was the holiday of Pünkösd (Pentecost) here in Hungary. I honestly didn't know that anyone celebrated it, but apparantly we do here, so there you go.

  Our week was pretty full of finding, which meant plenty of time out in the crazy heat of what is now Hungarian summer (it's still going to get hotter...). We had some exchanges this week though to make finding just that little bit more interesting, firstly with the elders from Szolnok and then another with the other Szeged elders. They were both really good, I've really come to enjoy doing exchanges all the time because I learn a lot from the other elders, they are very tiring though haha.

  Our work is kind of struggling a little at the moment, Márk basically officially dropped us at this point and a few of our investigators ended up in the hospital in this last week. But we're still seeing cool things happen everyday and we're excited for a few new people who we should be able to start teaching.

  We had a cool kind of miracle yesterday. We had finished doing some tracting and went over to meet with a man who told us to come back at 3, but after ringing his bell it turned out that he wasn't home. We were going to visit the husband of one of our investigators in the hospital after that at around 4:30 but in the end we both felt that we should go right away and get there a little early. After a few things happening with the public transport we arrived at the hospital at 3:59 to find our investigator waiting for us. She then proceeded to tell us how much of a blessing it was for us to come right at that moment. It was just a testimony to us of Heavenly Father watching over his children even in the little things. We thought nothing of that 30 minutes but to our investigator it meant a lot and Heavenly Father was aware of that.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Sok szeretettel,

McKim Elder

Prison cookie drop offs.

Üdvözlöm!

Well the weeks are coming and going so fast these days that I feel like I have less and less to write about each week, but life is still fun.

  We were able to meet with Márk again a couple of times this week and we officially finished teaching him everything that he needs to know before his baptism and he's been doing really well in keeping the Word of Wisdom too which is super cool. He has cancelled our last two teachings now, but hopefully it won't be a problem.

  We were also able to teach that couple from last week again and then they both came to church again this week and stayed for all three hours! It was super cool, István really loved being back there and it's just a super cool experience to see somebody coming back to activity in the church.

  We also headed over to Békéscsaba this week to do some exchanges with the Elders there. It was a great time, their apartment makes it feel like you're living in a tree house so it's an adventure. I wish I had taken some pictures of it, but oh well, maybe next time. Working with Elder Veres was great though, he's not scared of anyone, so we had plenty of great conversations in situations that you don't often find yourself in if you stick to the easier people to talk to. It also started raining... a lot... and I had no coat or umbrella... so I got a little wet. For some reason this always happens when we go to other cities.

  We also had someone try and recruit us to go preach in the prison here in Szeged for mainly murderers and rapists and although I know they need the gospel, I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little glad that President shut that idea down pretty quick.

  We made a lot of cookies this week. We gave most of them out, but we also ate a lot of cookies. No regrets...

Have a wonderful week and if anyone wants a delicious cookie recipe I now have one...

- McKim Elder

Unfortunately I can't plug in my thing for pictures this week...

Happy times...

Hellosztok!

This week has just flown by super quick and it's crazy that it's already time to send another email, we had a really good week though with a lot of cool little miracles happening.

  So basically Márk is just one of my favourite people to teach in the entire world, he's just such a pleasure. He's progressing super well and he just loves everything that we teach him. We really only had the commandments left to teach him before his baptism, so this week meant my first real times teaching both the law of tithing and chastity. He seriously loved both of them though and he's super excited. He's also becoming such good friends will all the members here and he loves them all, it's so great. For those of you who will be at my Home coming talk I hope you are excited to hear about Márk because he's seriously been such a huge blessing to us and so he's probably going to be half of my talk.

  We had two sets of exchanges this week, one with the elders from Kecskemét and another with the elders here. There were some good fun meeting with a few crazy people, walking out in the sun, almost getting stung by the HUGEST wasp I've ever seen in my life (seriously this thing was like 2 inches long, it died on the floor next to us for like an hour, it was so gross) and catching up with some old friends.

  We had a really cool experience this week with a couple named István and Mónika that we've been meeting with a little. So István is a less active member and is living with his girlfriend Mónika out in a little village just outside of Szeged and we visit them occassionally with the senior couple from Békéscsaba. A few things happened and a lot of little miracles that led up to this but we ended up meeting with them on Wednesday night and had a super good meeting with them. Afterwards Mónika said that she would love to start taking the lessons and learn more about us and then on Sunday they even came to church, Istváns first time in years something that was really hard for him, but the members welcomed them like an old friend and they really enjoyed being there, so hopefully we'll see more progress with them in the future. 

  We also got roped in to helping the branch organise a family night on Saturday and we kind of thought it was only going to be like 10 people that would end up coming but when we got started there ended up being probably around 30ish people including a bunch of non-members, so it went pretty well and it was a lot of fun. I even got to do some stick-pull against Márk.

Hope everything is going fine and dandy in all your lives!

Szervusztok!

- McKim Elder

Pic

I've been terrible at taking pictures recently, but here is a picture of when they shut down the main brigde in Szeged this week to have a huge festival. I ate a HUGE Kürtös kalács (chimney cake) after I took this, it was great.

How can I even describe it?

Boldog Anya napját!

Well this week has honestly just been incredible, I'm not sure how to even put it into words, but I guess I'm going to have to try now, so here it goes...

  Tuesday was the first of many busy days for us this week. We met with a few people but the coolest was meeting again with our investigator Márk. Because he had taken a bit of a break from meeting with us we were a little worried for what might happen, but it went incredibly. He had started praying every single day, he read some from the scriptures and the pamphlets and even found MoTab online and had been listening to it all the time. It was such a beautiful reunion, it made us so happy.

  Wednesday was just incredible. We headed up bright and early to Budapest for mission tour which was basically 5-6 hours of being instructed by Elder Kearon who is the Area President for Europe and soon to be in the Presidency of the Seventy. I wish I could share all the things that I learnt but the biggest lesson that I took from it was just his pure Christ-like love for us and how big of an effect that can have.

  Thursday we had a couple lessons, still super busy but nothing too insane happened, it was just a good solid day of work. We also had our landlord randomly deliver us a new oven at like 9 in the morning because our old one didn't work and Elder Hughes and I had to carry it up 4 flights of stairs. Good thing we've been working out recently.

  Friday was another wonderful day spent being instructed by Elder Kearon. We had our MLC and it was basically just the mission leaders discussing what we learnt from Elder Kearon and how we can help the mission here improve on those things that he shared. It was an incredibly special meeting to be a part of and I am so grateful that I got to take part in it. We also had the surprise of Robinson Testvér (my teacher in the MTC) making a surprise visit to us during MLC, so we got to have a nice catch up with him which was fun. Then when we got home a man came to connect our oven but told us that our entire kitchen was illegal and wouldn't do it, which left us with basically no way to cook any food...

  Until on saturday when a random man who lives in our building came and hooked up our oven! I don't know how legal it was and frankly I don't think I want to know, but we have a working oven now, so that's nice. Saturday was also full of meeting with people including a brand new investigator who turned out to be psychotic (like literally, she lives in a hospital and everything) but she was pretty normal and actually quite cool and also another investigator who we have been trying to meet with for 3 months and they finally set up with us. But the most important of all was Márk, who after a wonderful lesson agreed to be baptised on the 17th of June! Márk really is our miracle here and I just can't express how glad I am for what I've learnt from this experience with him.

  Then Sunday brought the classic mothers day skype with my family, which is always great and we also got to visit with a couple of the members here in the branch. Another wonderful uplifting day.

Well that is the novel of this week. There a thousands of more things that I could have said about things that I learnt or other miracles that we saw, funny stories, etc. but to quote 2 Nephi "nevertheless only these things have I caused to be bwritten, for the things which I have written sufficeth me." Just know that this week has been incredibly wonderful and I loved all of it.

További szép hetet nektek!

-McKim Elder