Bucsúzóul

Sok szeretettel köszöntelek benneteket!

Well here we are. I honestly thought that this day was never going to come but this will be my last email as a full-time missionary. It's honestly a bit of a sad time to think that such an incredible period of my life is coming to an end, but I'm trying to look at the bright sides of it.

  We had a pretty cool week, it started out with us having splits, which gave me the great opportunity to spend some time with my now good friend, Elder Millett. We had a great time tracting a bunch and even managed to get the phone number of a young female that we streeted. #OvercomingFears

  We had zone conference this past wednesday and it was honestly a really great meeting, all of the trainings were fantastic. Unfortunately we have this tradition where in your final zone conference they make you stand up and bear your testimony to your entire zone, so I had to do that, as well as watch two of my good friends, Elder Norris and Elder Robinson give their departing testimonies. It was hard but luckily I was able to keep it together. President Szabadkai also likes to make jokes about me going home, which is slightly annoying, but he thinks it's hilarious and I can't help but chuckle when he is, so it's okay.

  The rest of the week just flew by and was filled with a lot of lasts. We had our last district meeting, weekly planning, church, etc. It was a pretty crazy time. The members here were all pretty sad to be saying goodbye to Elder Norris and I already and they kept all thanking us for all of our service that we've done, so in some way, that was at least kind of uplifting.

  Yesterday we also got let in by some woman, who said that she was married to John the revelator in her previous life, can heal apparently anything by just touching it and may have given me some sort of demonic curse, which I don't have more time to explain, but it's okay because we're pretty sure if there was anything that it's gone now.

My mission has honestly been such an incredible time and it's incredibly weird to think that I have to move on now. But I will be forever grateful for all of the things that I've learnt here, all of the things that I've experienced and all of the people that I've met. Hungary will always have a special place in my heart, because this has given me the opportunity to come to better understand this sometimes misunderstood but still wonderful people. Missions will honestly change your life for the better, because it allows the Lord to take you and use you in such a way that helps you become greater than you could ever be on your own.

Tudom, hogy Jézus Krisztus, a szabadítónk, él és, hogy az ő evangéliuma visszaállíttatott Joseph Smith prófétán keresztül. Tudom, hogy a Mormon Könyve Isten, az ő elhívott képviselői által kinyilatkoztatott, szava. Tudom, hogy az Úrnak a felhatalmazása, az ő papsága, az nálunk van.

I love you all and I'll see you soon.

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

Lazy updates...

Hellósztok!

Well, if I'm going to be honest with you all, the closer that I get to the end the less motivated I am to actually write these emails, so sorry about that. Life is wonderful though and this is seriously an incredible way to spend my last bit of time as a proselyting missionary.

  We met with Balázs this week, he's still doing great and hasn't smoked at all, which makes it almost a whole month. Balázs is super great and an absolute pleasure to teach, he's a pretty cool guy, who just has some hard stuff to overcome before he can get baptised, but I love chatting with him.

  We have this investigator named Petra, who is a friend of a member. We've been trying to meet with her ever since I got here and it has never worked out, but it finally happened this week and the lesson went great. It was mainly cool to see how excited the members that were there with us were to be doing missionary work, they seriously love it here, they even got Petra excited to go to the temple with them some day, so I mean that's pretty cool.

  We also have an investigator family that is Chinese and it was so cool because on Sunday the mother came to church even though she cannot speak Hungarian and all of the members loved her. They were all doing everything they could to talk to her even though they speak 2 different languages and they even somehow convinced her to stay for all 3 hours of church despite understanding nothing that was going on. They're great people.

Well, that's it for another week!

Viszontolvasásra!

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

                                                                            It got cold this week...

                                                         But then it got warm and Elder Beeton and I got haircuts
                                                 

                                                            Elder Millett preparing the duck that we roasted

Bocs!

Helló!

Well, my email has been down for a couple weeks now, if you're all wondering why you haven't been receiving my wonderful emails. As much as I would love to go back and tell you all everything that has happened in the last couple weeks since I've been here in Pápa, I honestly don't have the time nor the patience to type all that out. So enjoy this update instead.

  We have this investigator name Klaudia. When I got here she was our most progressing investigator and last transfer almost got baptised. In the last couple weeks, for a couple reasons that I'm not really going to talk about, she has gone kind of crazy and after some discussion with President Szabadkai we came to the conclusion that we probably shouldn't meet with her for a while. So that lesson happened this week and that was super fun, she still came to church on sunday though, so hopefully it all works out.

  We have another investigator named Balázs. He's been an investigator for almost 10 years now, but he hasn't smoked now since last year, so hopefully his time is finally here and he can get baptised pretty soon.

  Other than that being in Pápa is pretty much a party. Living constantly in an apartment with 2 companionships is crazy fun and I'm kind of sad that the other missionaries here only get to experience it on splits. Because there are 4 of us it also means that we can actually eat an entire meal that we make, so we've been making some pretty fun dinners over the last couple weeks. (eg. Ribs, duck, random hungarian food, burgers) It's a great time.

Well, I don't really know what else to write about, I guess if you want to know all about my time in Pápa you might just need to talk to me in a couple weeks, because my emails are getting pretty lazy...

So once agian, bocs!

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

Here's a picture of the Pápa crew!

BUÉK

Szervusztok!

Well I guess somehow it's already time for another transfer call, which also means the start to my last transfer here in this wonderful country. Unfortunately I don't get to spend my final transfer with elder Robinson or here in Győr, but it's still going to be a great time. I'm going to be in a city called Pápa which is just south of Győr with elder Beeton who is in his third transfer. We're just now opening up this companionship, so we get to live in an apartment as 4 elders, the only one in the country. It's going to be super fun and one of the elders in my apartment is elder Norris, from my MTC group and he'll go home with me in February.

A tone of stuff happened these last two weeks, but I don't really have time to talk about them all.
We got a fed a bunch, elder Robinson and I didn't have to make dinner after the 22nd of December, so that was pretty fantastic.
We had a super cool Christmas, we had all the missionaries in Győr over for breakfast, after that we gave out all of our leftover Christmas cards and then we had Christmas dinner with the senior couple here and the other elders. We also got remote control cars and sleeping bags as gifts, which was super nice.
On Boxing Day we got permission to go with the Bradshaws to a city called Pannonhalma to go see an organ concert in a 1000 year old, still working, monastery. It was super pretty and super awesome.
We also had a super cool experience the other day. On Saturday we went out tracting and we met someone who told us to come back the next day at 3. Well, when we came back unfortunately she wasn't there, but that just gave us time to go tracting again. The first door that we knocked on we met this super cool girl named, Beatrix, who was super interested and wants to come to church, read the Book of Mormon and watch general conference. We set up to meet with her again on Friday and unfortunately I won't be here, but it was super cool to meet her.

Have a great week everyone and a very happy new year!

Szeretettel,
McKim elder

Do I even get to work in my own area anymore?

Sziasztok!

Well here we are again at the end of another week. Times moving super quick and it's basically Christmas already, which is super crazy, but it makes life as a missionary super fun and interesting.

  On monday we met with our investigator Erzsi and she told us that she hadn't drunk coffee in an entire week, which means that she's basically totally prepared for baptism. We talked to her again about setting a date and she said that she had been praying about it and felt like she should be baptised towards the end of march. It's kind of far away, so we're trying to help her feel comfortable in pulling it forward, but she's definitely going to get baptised sometime, even if I'm not going to be here for it, which is super cool. She's so prepared.

  On tuesday morning we all headed out to a childrens hospital because we are going to start doing service there every week or two. They just showed us around and we got to talk to some of the kids, it was pretty fun. After that I headed out with Elder Surdu to go to Tatabánya,. so that we could have splits with the elders there. I was with Elder Gajdos and we got to meet with a Slovakian members aunt and we got let in by a 93 year old man who's last name was also Gajdos, he ended up giving us a giant thing of sausage, so it was pretty sweet.

  Wednesday was pretty normal, we just came back from Tatabánya and then I did normal missionary stuff with Elder Robinson for the day.

  Thursday we had district meeting, which was super good. We also got to help one of the people who come to our english class with their family history stuff which was actually pretty fun.

  Friday we had to head out bright and early for MLC up in Budapest. It was super good, we basically just talked about what it means to be a powerful leader and how we can make all of our finding time useful, it's also fun to get to catch up with everyone. After that we had to jump on a train and head to a city called Szombathely (literally translates to "Saturday place"), to do splits with the elders there.

  I got to spend my splits with Elder Katics, who is actually a Hungarian from a city called Békéscsaba down in the southeast of the country. We had a good time, we did some streeting, whiteboarding and got some delicious milk.

  Sunday we had our normal church and then we had to head over to Pápa to do a baptismal interview for the elders there. She passed! We got to make paper airplanes with her kids for the entire time that Elder Robinson was doing the interview, so it was pretty sweet.

Well that's the week. This week is going to be pretty sweet/hectic, but I'm not going to be emailing at all next week, so I guess we'll see how much I end up writing about it.

Viszlát!

-McKim elder

They have christmas stands up in the main square in Győr, we couldn't help ourselves

                                                         Elder Gajdos with kolbász in front of kolbász grafiti

The weeks are still going...

Üdvözlök!

Well, here we are again at the end of another week of adventures. I don't really have a lot of time to email today, so this probably won't be too long.

  On monday we went exploring the christmas markets that they have set up all over the city here. They're all just these wooden huts full of random items, so it's a fun time to go exploring.

  Tuesday we visited a man named Imre, who lives in an old people's home, because the topic for the day in the Hungarian Light the World campaign was "Jesus healed the sick and so can you", he's a cool dude. We also met with our three young investigators and taught them about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

  Wednesday we had interviews with President Szabadkai, mine was absolutely nothing special, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens to me at transfers in a couple weeks. We had splits with the other elders that night and because it was what they call "Mikulás" (Santa day, basically) here in Hungary, we decided to give out these little chocolates called "szaloncukor" along with a card to all of the kids that we saw. It was super fun and the kids loved it.

  Thursday we had district meeting, where we watched the Christmas devotional and english class along with a little bit more whiteboarding, pretty normal day.

  Friday we had splits with the assistants here in Győr, which means that I got to be back with Elder Hughes again. Our ward had a "Mikulás" party, which ended up having us walking an investigator family through the rain, to get there, and then Elder Hughes and I singing a very awkward rendition of silent night in Hungarian to all of the children so that we could get some sweets. It was a really good time though and all of the kids were super cute when they went up to santa.

  The rest of the week was pretty normal, we finished up splits, did a bunch of finding and went to church, nothing too special. But we have found more potential investigators in the last 3 days than we have in the whole rest of this transfer, so things are looking up.

This article is in Hungarian, but a photographer from the Church came a couple months ago and took a bunch of pictures to show what the Hungary, Budapest mission is like. I'm not in the article at all, but it's a pretty good look into what it's like being here, so give it a look if you're interested.

http://www.mormon-sajtoszoba.hu/cikkek/mormonizmus-keepekben--mormon-misszionaariusok-magyarorszaagon

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

                           

                                                    

                                                                                  Mikulás

                                                                      Streets of Gydr

Do I even have a real companion?

Szerbusztok!

Well to give you a little insight into how crazy the last week or so has been for us, from last saturday to this saturday Elder Robinson and I have been on some sort of split with 5 of the 6 elder companionships in our zone. So basically we only got to spend monday and sunday together. Let me explain...

  Last saturday as previously mentioned, we had splits with the Pápa elders which was fantastic and then we had a bit of time to ourselves to prepare for our next splits. We even went to an all you can eat chinese place on monday to make sure we were ready for our upcoming splits.

  On Tuesday we had splits with the elders from Szombathely, which meant that I got to spend 24 hours working with my son, Elder Thomsen. It was actually pretty weird because I trained him almost a year ago and now he's all grown up and a district leader. We basically just found for most of the split but it was still pretty fun.

  We finished our splits with Szombathely and sent them on their way only to pretty soon after receive a phone call from the other elders telling us that they need us to do a weird little 3 way split with the elders from Tatabánya. Basically the Tatabánya elders had to move apartments, only they had to be out of their apartment by 9:30am thursday and their new landlord wouldn't give them the keys to their new apartment until 9:30am thursday. One of the other elders here has had some stuff happen in Tatabánya and so he didn't feel comfortable going back, which meant that Elder Robinson got sent up there, while I stayed here in Győr. Luckily I got to stay here though, because it started snowing, so we just got to teach a sweet lesson to one of our investigators and get fed fruit salad while the other elders had to haul bags of stuff from their apartment to the branch in the snow. 

  Thursday was cool but not all that interesting, we just got to head over to Tatabánya for district meeting, spent a bunch of time in the senior couples car and taught some english.

  Friday morning we headed over to Sopron so that we could have splits with the elders there too. We did this super cool finding activity where we went out to the city centre, set up our whiteboard and had 10 missionaries going around asking people if they would write down an uplifting message and then in return they could take another message that someone else had written along with a glowstick. We also had the senior couple in Sopron bring their iPads along so that we could show people the Christmas video. It went super well, we showed at least 60 people the christmas video, got a bunch of numbers and had a lot of fun, even though it was absolutely freezing.

  Saturday we came back to Győr and tried the same thing here, but we only had 2 people and no glowsticks, so it didn't quite go as well but it was still pretty fun.

This email is way too long already haha.

Viszlát!

- McKim elder

                                                                         Sopron (ft. Elder Suggs)

Elder Knight, we have served in the same zone for all except 3 months of my mission, he goes home in 2 weeks and this was the last of our 5 splits that we have had together