Time keeps on going...

Szervusztok!

Well if I'm being completely honest, this week wasn't the most exciting week that I've had on my mission, but it was still a great time. Also just because I have to make a mention every week about how quickly the time is going, I have 4 months left to go from today which is absolutely crazy. The time is going to be over way too soon.

  Well the coolest news that I have coming out of this week is that our investigator Gyöngyi had her baptismal interview and she passed. So we're going to be having a baptism this weekend. It's actually really crazy to be here for this because she has been taught by a tonne of missionaries for well over a year now and there's never really been a clear reason for why she didn't want to be baptised, but she's finally ready now and it's a super exciting time.

  We had splits this week too here in Duna with the elders from Pécs. This was the first time that I ever got to hold splits with a new missionary, so it was pretty fun. We didn't get to do anything too crazy, just met with some people, did some tracting and made some delicious chicken, but it was still a good time and Elder Fales (the missionary I was on splits with) is a stud.

  There wasn't really too much else exciting going on this week, we were able to visit our branch president out in the village that he lives in which was fun, they gave us some really delicious Hungarian food. We also had our sisters get kicked out to Budapest for the entire week because they found bed bugs in their apartment, so that was also fun to deal with, but everything is fine there now.

Well, this email was super lame, so I apologise, I'll try to make it better next week and have some baptism pictures.

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

Pics!

                             

              The Veszprém elders have this weird suit in their apartment, so i had to put it on.

              I got this picture that perfectly describes Elder Thomas' relationship with Sister Szabadkai

The show must go on.

Sziasztok!

Here we are, another monday, another email. Somehow we are already down to the last 3 months of this year and this last week I hit the anniversary of 2 years since I got my mission call. I really need to stop complaining about how fast the time is going in these emails...

  Unfortunately, this week started out with me getting a bit sick, but despite the advice of my mission presidents wife, I still had to go out to work, because my great friend, former companion and now assistant to the president, Elder Hughes came down for splits with us here in Duna. Well I at least went to work until Elder Hughes made me come back inside and put me on house arrest for the rest of the night because I was too sick. He tried to heal me with weird juices and a tea made by boiling an onion in a pot of water...

  We were then able to finish off our split the next day with some work which was great, because being inside was the worst. Then after they left we headed off with the sisters to give one of their investigators a blessing in a village a bit outside of the city. It was a cool experience, it's always interesting giving blessings in Hungarian, because you have to listen to the spirit in another language but it works out in the end, so it was fun.

  Thursday we had district meeting and english class, it was a good day, but nothing all that exciting happened.

  Friday we had interviews with President Szabadkai, as per usual, mine was great but nothing too exciting happened. I did get rebuked by Sister Szabadkai though for not resting enough, especially because we were going to Veszprém for splits right after, but we had been super busy last week so there was nothing we could do about it.

  We spent most of the weekend in Veszprém and we had an incredible split. I was with Elder Burnett from Idaho, and he is one of the funniest people I've ever met. We also both started our missions in the same area, so we bonded over that and relived all of our first two transfer stories. We tried to go whiteboarding and it didn't work super well, but we still had a super fun time nonetheless.

  We then came back to Duna for our great weekend of conference. Because of the time difference we watch the first session on saturday night here, then on sunday we watch priesthood at 11, saturday afternoon at 2 and the sunday morning at 6, so we had a pretty full schedule of conference watching, but it was great, especially because we got to watch it in english. One of my favourite talks definitely had to be Elder Rasband's, I really liked all that he said about there not being coincidences, but the Lord's hand is in our lifes in all things. So that's definitely one of my recommendations, but you know, just watch them all and pick your own favourites.

This email ended up super long...

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

Meetings with the Board

Helló!

Well another week has come and gone and the time is still flying just as quickly as ever. This week is already going to be october and the last general conference of my mission, so that's pretty crazy, but I'm super excited to learn from our church leaders this week, regardless of the fact that it keeps reminding me how little time I have left...

  Anyway, the interesting part of this week honestly started on wednesday when we had the Kaposvár elders come here for splits. Once again I got to go with my good friend and former companion Elder Stringham, so it was a fun time. We were able to meet with the mayor of a small city just north of Duna called Pusztaszabolcs, but unfortunately there was a slight misunderstanding and he thought that we wanted to meet so that we could discuss establishing a branch in his city and stuff like that, but we were still able to talk about the first vision and stuff like that and he almost started crying, so it was still a cool lesson either way. We also met with one of our recent converts, Eszter, and happened to run into a sister who served here just before we got here at the branch house.

  Thursday we had our zone conference, which took basically our entire day out. It wasn't my favourite zone conference ever but I still always enjoy the conferences. Our training was super short though, so it was kind of nice that we didn't have to prepare too much for it.

  Friday we did some weekly planning to start of the day. Then after that we headed out with the sisters to do some whiteboarding. We could only do it for a little less than an hour but it stiill went pretty well, we each got two potentials out of it, so that's not too shabby. We then got to go to this party that our branch was throwing for something to do with the sun changing, I don't really know. But there were sandwiches, a drawing class, jewelry making and Elder Thomas jamming out on his ukulele, so it was a fun time. By the way, fun fact: Hungarians really love the song "Hallelujah".

  Throughout my mission I've always wanted the opportunity to take something that one of my investigators is addicted to and throw it out for them and saturday was finally the day. I got to throw out all of the cappucino in our investigator family's house and then we bought them hot chocolate to replace it, it was a great feeling.

That's about it for interesting things this week. Have a great week!

Szeretettel,

McKim Elder

PIC!

Post whiteboarding jump pic

A little bit of szépség

Szerbusztok!

Another week gone and past, another tonne of fun stories.

  We found a nice little pond/lake thing this week, so we felt obligated to have a little picnic around it this P-day, we made Hungarian sandwiches, it was pretty fun.

  Tuesday we had to sit on a bus for like 3 hours, but it was okay because we headed to everyone's favourite city of Pécs. I know I've probably said this at least 5 times in here, but that place is absolutely beautiful, the little bit of szépség that I needed in my life. I was with Elder Willes and it was like the 6th time that we've been on splits together, so it was pretty fun. We went whiteboarding in the evening, where we set up a whiteboard on the street with a question like "What makes you happy?" on it and stop people and ask them to write their answer up on the board. It was super fun, we met a tonne of interesting people and Elder Thomas got hugged by some random drunk girl. Great times...

  On wednesday we ate at a delicious restaurant in Pécs before sitting on another bus for a bit over 3 hours. We did get to meet with our investigator family that night too though and we finally discussed a specific date for her baptism, october 14th, so that is going to be sweet.

  Thursday was pretty normal, had a district meeting and taught some people english.

  The rest of the week was also pretty normal, we met with a few people, got fed some delicious food and did a bunch of planning. We also tried to use the whiteboard ourselves here in Duna, but it's slightly different doing it at night in a buzzing university city of 150,000 people and on an overcast saturday afternoon in a city of 50,000 people. We still had a good conversation with a woman though, so it was cool.

Well that's about it from this week.

Nagyszerű hetet kívánok!

- McKim elder

PICS!

                                                                District picnic

                                                           Elder Willes and I in Pécs

                                                          Our whiteboard after finding

"Ez volt az én hibám, ugye?" (It was my fault anyway)

Jóóó napot!

Well time is still flying and life is still great here in the wonderful city of Dunaújváros. Doing missionary work with Elder Thomas basically just feels like a huge party most of the time, so life is good and the work is going.

  We started the week with the classic Duna first p-day of the transfer and we headed out bowling. It was super fun, we basically all suck, but it's still good. We also grabbed some ice cream and just had some chats together.

  On tuesday we went home teaching to visit one of the members and it was her birthday on monday, so we had some cake and had a little celebration. We also had our lesson cancel on us, so we went out streeting and Elder Thomas used his incredible courage to talk to this family sitting out on this bench and they loved us so much that we left with those little things that you clean glasses with. They weren't really interested and I don't even have any glasses but it was still worth it.

  Thursday was a super crazy day. We were basically just in meetings all day but we had to have our district meeting here in Duna and then immediately head up to Budapest for MLC. We ended up being late for MLC because President Szabadkai told us that we should take the later of two trains and risk it. I had to call him to tell him that we'd be late and he just said "This was my fault, wasn't it?" (Translation of subject line) and we had a good laugh about it. It was a good meeting though, all the stake leaders were there also, so we had a nice chat about what we can all do to work together as a mission and stake.

  Friday was sweet, we did some weekly planning, made a great spaghetti, did some hilarious service at the place that we go to every week and met with one of our recent converts.

  Our branch mission leader asked us if he could take all of us out to lunch during our coordination meeting on saturday and so we got permission from President Szabadkai to go, but what we didn't realise was he was taking us to this pretty fancy restaurant that is over on the island in the middle of the duna. He literally rented a van to take us all there and paid for all 6 of us to eat at this place. We all ate some pretty good fish soup and then he made us get fish for the main meal too, so I got some fried cat fish, because that was his favourite. It was pretty delicious and just an all round pretty hilarious lunch.

  On sunday after church we tried to go ukulele tracting because Elder Thomas has one. Unfortunately it didn't really work out any better than normal tracting, but it was still pretty fun playing little tunes as we walked from house to house as people rejected us.

Jó hetet!

-McKim Elder

PICS!

Our little lunch