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                                                                      

Too much food

Sziasztok!

  Well here we are at the start of another week, somehow these mondays just come so fast. But basically our week just ended up being us eating a lot of food, which sounds great, but can sometimes be a struggle.

  Tuesday was pretty boring for the most part because we had to spend a whole bunch of time planning for our zone training. At night though we got to go to a YSA activity that the senior couple here was putting on. It was super fun, we basically just got to play games and chat with them and in the end we got a referral and potential investigator out of it, so not bad at all.

  Wednesday we had zone conference in Budapest. It went pretty good, we were takling about giving commitments and then we also got a training from President Szabadkai about the new Christmas initiative. It was a pretty good conference and basically everyone in this zone has to take the same train home, so we got to hang out with everyone on the train too. After we got home we started splits and Elder Surdu and I headed over to Erzsi, where she told us that she is completely done with smoking now!

  Thursday was thanksgiving and so we had a giant lunch at district meeting and did all of the american traditions, it was pretty fun, but we were all way too ridiculously full because we had like 4.5kg of turkey for 8 people plus all the other food. It was super delicious though. We also met with the relief society president's husband that night and they gave us even more food, it was crazy. The lesson went well though and he seems like he's fairly interested, so we'll see what happens there.

  Friday we headed over to a city called Pápa for splits, which is actually the smallest of all the missionary cities. I was with Elder Millett and we had a super fun split together. We took Elder Bradshaw with us and he drove us around to a couple little villages so that we could visit some people that they wouldn't normall be able to get to. We also went to institute there and then Elder Millett made us all burgers, he's such a stud.

  Saturday we finished up our splits in Pápa and then after coming back to Győr we had yet another Thanksgiving dinner, this time put on by the ward here. It was super fun, we had a tonne of people turn up and there was so much food. Also one of the members from Szeged, Peti, came after being in Ireland for the last 4 months or so, so it was pretty cool to get to see him again too.

  Sunday we had church, then we headed straight over to a members house for lunch and from there had to go straight to a service opportunity that we had. Turns out that we were helping people collect food for a food bank, but that was also pretty fun because we got to put on these white bibs and walk around passing out flyers and then collect food at the end. Doesn't sound too interesting but it was a good time.

Well there's this week. Hope you all had a great one too!

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

                                                                                Food collection

Thanksgiving lunch at district meeting

Everyone taking pictures of thanksgiving lunch

Miracles are real...

Szervusztok!

So as a little introduction to what may end up being a bunch of miracle talk, Elder Robinson and I have introduced something into our zone that we call the "Csere Csoda Challenge" (Transfer miracle challenge), where we make everyone write down a miracle that they see every day and then send in their favourite miracle for the week to us and then we pick one and send it out to the entire zone. It's going pretty well and it's getting us pumped for miracles, so now basically everything that happens is a miracle.

  On tuesday we were out tracting and looking people up and we decided to drop in on the relief society president because the senior couple here gave her husband, who is a nonmember, a blessing the other day. She didn't come out when we rung her doorbell but she did later when we were tracting the other side of her street. She said that her husband has been praying ever since he got the blessing and is kind of interested in meeting with us now, so that was a pretty cool miracle.

  Wednesday we spent a lot of the day giving out the over 100 little muffins that we made. It went alright, but the biggest miracle came when we brought them to our investigator Erzsi, she started telling us about how she was so tense and stuff and when we asked why, she said it was because she hasn't smoked in 2 days, which is a crazy huge miracle.

  Thursday we had to head up to Budapest for MLC and then afterward we had splits with the assistants. They also threw their english class on us, so Elder Robinson and I got to teach english to a bunch of random strangers for an hour, which was fun.

  Friday, I was on splits with Elder Gentry, who is basically just a beast of a missionary. At one point we had 2 hours to tract and Elder Gentry and I set a goal to get 2 let-ins in that time. Well, when Elder Gentry sets a goal, he reaches it, so lo and behold we had 2 let-ins within 2 hours, it was crazy. We also went to a really good mexican place for lunch and a member is the owner, so he gave it to us for free. Hard to pick the bigger miracle, haha.

  The rest of the week included a lot of planning, visiting a super cool member family here and having dinner with the senior couple and the bishopric. So I think it went pretty well all-round.

Well that's about it from me this week, have a good one!

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

Back to the splits

Sziasztok!

Well I'm going to be completely honest, this week wasn't all that interesting, but it was still a tonne of fun. I really love it here in Győr and everything is going super well.

  We started the week with splits with the other elders here in Győr. I was with Elder Ballard for the split. He's from Las Vegas and just came from being the missions secretary. Nothing too crazy happened, we did some whiteboarding and tracting. It was good times though.

  Wednesday we finished splits and right after we left the other elders apartment we got a call from the senior couple here that went a little like this:

  Sister Bradshaw: Elder McKim, we're having lunch with some people right now and one of them                                    served his mission with your dad.

  Me: Serious?

  Sister Bradshaw: Yeah, he wants to meet you. Can you come to the boat? (a restaurant here)

  Me: yeah... sure.

It was pretty cool though, it turns out that he is the head of the self reliance program for europe and was here to work with the senior couple who is over self reliance. We all just happened to be in Győr at the same time though, so it was pretty crazy. From there we had to go do some government work, then we met with our new investigator, Daniel, who is mexican. We met in a McDonalds, it was pretty fun. Finally we finished our day, by meeting with our investigators at a member families house for dinner, solid day.

  Thursday was our classic district meeting and english class. But we also met with another new investigator, who is actually from our english class and we met with a member for dinner. (We had a tonne of dinner appointments this week).

  We spent the next two days on splits with the elders from Sopron. It was pretty fun, I spent it with Elder Suggs, we just did some finding, met with some people, got fed again, and whiteboarded a little, nothing too crazy. Elder Robinson and I went back out that night after they left and I lost one of my name tags though, which was kind of sad, but I'll just get another one so it's not that bad.

  Finally our week finished by heading up to Budapest on Sunday for stake conference. It was super cool because I got to see people from all of my cities and missionaries from all over the place. It was a super cool reunion, especially to see people that I haven't really seen for the last year and a bit.

Well that's my week, hope you all have a great one!

- McKim elder

PICS!

                                                                   Dad's old mission companion

                                                                             
                                                                              Trying to take selfies

Old Friend, New Adventures (Round 2)

Köszöntelek!

Well here we are in the beautiful city of Győr after another week of great adventures. It's super nice to be able to go to another companion that I know really well because there's usually a couple days of awkward adjusting to and getting to know each other, but Elder Robinson and I have been able to just hit the ground running this transfer.

  On Tuesday after we got our transfer calls and had P-day, we visited one of my favourite families ever to say goodbye before I left. They started by giving me a gift, which was a hamburger piggy-bank so that I could save up money to come back and visit them and a Christmas stocking full of chocolate, it was super nice. After that they wanted to carve a pumpkin with us because it was halloween and then it was time for us to say our final goodbyes, it was super sad.

  Wednesday morning we headed up to Budapest for transfers, where I said goodbye to Elder Thomas and then left off with Elder Robinson back to Győr. Our train had some sort of problem on the way back which made us stuck on it for almost an hour with it not moving but it was all good because we met this super cool girl on the train who spoke english super well, so it just gave us more time to talk to her. Wednesday was a national holiday here though, so we were kind of struggling for food when we got back because we couldn't shop, but we made it through.

  Thursday we had our district meeting, which was really good. We have 6 elders and a senior couple in our district, so it makes for a really fun time. We also had our english class, which is pretty good here. In Duna the most people we ever had come was 3 (usually only had 1) and we had 6 here and they said that was pretty low compared to usual.

  Friday, we started our day by meeting with a recent convert who is a 12 year old boy named Roli. Then after doing a bunch of planning and making some muffins, we went around to a few members and some investigators to bring them muffins and introduce myself. While we were in the middle of it though, the Tatabánya elders (who are in our district) called us and started with the "We have a situation here". Turns out they had organised this perfomance in a cultural centre for the next day and none of the members could go. So with President's permission, they pulled together a group of about 12 missionaries from a few different cities and wanted us all come up to Tatabánya to sing for a bunch of old people. 

  So saturday we headed out to Tatabánya and with no more than an hours preparation put together a 30 minute performance of about 7 hymns with guitar accompaniment. It went pretty well adn then we got to talk to a bunch of old people afterwards which was also fun. That night we also got to meet with one of our investigators, Eszter, and her daughter, Rebeka, who is a member.

  Sunday was also pretty fun, we had our normal church, then we met with Roli again. After which we got to go to a member family's house here to break our fast. They're a super cool family, everyone here knows the Dad because he's the head of the translation department for the church, which also means that he speaks english perfectly.

Well that was probably a slightly too in depth look at my week, but there you go, enjoy!

Szeretettel,

McKim Elder

Pics

"Haha, good try..."

Tisztelt olvasók,

Well, here we are at the end of another transfer and sadly my time both with Elder Thomas and here in Duna is coming to an end, but that just means that it's time for some incredible new beginnings. For some reason President has decided to keep me as a zone leader, so I'll be heading to Győr to be with Elder Robinson, my MTC companion. This is seriously one of the best calls that I could have gotten, it's almost too perfect. My entire mission I have wanted to serve in Győr and with Elder Robinson and I thought that both of them were never going to happen at this point, but you know, sometimes miracles happen. Győr is absolutely beautiful so hopefully I'll remember to take a bunch of photos.

I had a terrible experience this morning though when I got my call because at approximately 7:05am I got a call from a private number, which 95% of the time is another missionary try to play a joke on you and scare you. So I pick up the phone and say "haha, good try..." then after a short silence I hear the response from the other end (in Hungarian) "I'm President Szabadkai, this is your transfer call, who am I speaking with?" So after a solid couple seconds of trying to work out if this is a joke or not, I realise that it actually is President and I desperately start trying to explain myself, but I think he took it in good stride, well hopefully anyway.

  As for the rest of the week, there wasn't actually really anything too noteworthy. We had our final district meeting on Thursday, where we pretend like it's general conference and all give talks, it was pretty fun. Gyöngyi was in the hospital the last few days so we went and visited here a couple times which was really fun. We also made Palacsintas (Hungarian crepes) and delivered them to some people. Last but not least we got to go to a drawing class that one of the members here held this week. We all drew pictures of Jesus and mine actually came out not too bad. I think I actually learned something from that class, because for those of you who know my drawing capabilities, sometimes I even struggle to draw stick figures, so yeah...

Anyway, that's it for this week, Have a great week and next week I'll send greetings from Győr.

Szeretettel,

McKim elder

PICS!

I ran out of real food on Sunday night, so I deep fried this pickle... not too bad actually

                                                                              My drawing of Jesus

We brought Erzsi palacsintas but we couldn't go inside because there was no male, so she brought us chairs 

so we talk for  a bit outside her apartment

Weeks come and gone

Szerbusztok!

Well welcome to my usual opening statement about how quickly time is going... but seriously it's going so fast it's terrifying. We're going into the last full week of this transfer and so one week from now my time with Elder Thomas will probably be over already. Crazy. Anyway, to clear something else up, for those of you who may have seen me online on facebook this week, yes that is me, but don't fear, I'm not being disobedient, my mission just got facebook pages for all of the cities in the mission and so I have to be on my facebook to keep the page updated and stuff. It's super weird logging in their, but it's pretty fun to take care of the page.

  Our week started out with the elders from Veszprém coming up here to Duna for splits. It was a fun time, honestly, nothing too interesting happened but we really like the Veszprémi elders, so it was fun to just be doing work with them for a day. There were a lot of things that just didn't go to plan throughout the exchange (eg. terrible whiteboarding and lessons getting cancelled) but it was still a good time nonetheless.

  Thursday was our classic district meeting, service and english class. They were all fun times. I assigned Elder Thomas to give us a tip on anything he wanted for district meeting and he ended up making us all go around and compliment every other person in our district, which was pretty uplifting. The sisters also brought this new guy to english class who is from Pakistan and we got to walk home with him and chat about stuff, it was cool.

  Friday started with our cleaning checks, which luckily we passed and got some delicious banana bread as a reward. After that we headed up to Buda to have exchanges with the assistants. I honestly spent most of my time with Elder Gentry just streeting people (and whiteboarding) but it was super fun and crazy successful. We put up the whiteboard with John 10:16 on it about Christ's other sheep and asked people who they thought they were and we got a tonne of really interesting conversations out of it. I also got to see Elder Hughes again while we were up there which was also super fun.

  Sunday was church, we had our correlation meeting and then we got to meet with this couple who called us while we were on the train coming back from Buda. They were asking us some pretty hard questions and basically wanted us to prove God to them, we bore pretty hard testimony, it was actually a pretty cool lesson. We also met with Eszter afterwards which was also great.

  Yesterday was a national holiday here where they remember the 1956 revolution. It's actually a really sad day and the weather really matched the rest of the mood, it was pouring so hard. We had interviews though and they were really great, but the Szabadkais were horrified when they saw us all sopping wet and stuff as we walked into the branch house. The rest of the day was pretty normal, we decided to order some disgusting things for dinner from this pizza place to celebrate the day and so I ate this thing which was basically a pizza folded in half, stuffed with 4 types of cheese with 2 hot dogs stuffed inside of it. It was probably one of the most sickening things I have ever put in my mouth.

Anyway, have a good week. Next week is transfers, so next tuesday we'll know whats happening to me.

Hellósztok!

PICS!

                                                                               My comp, everybody

                                                     
                                                              Elder Biesinger at our post splits lunch

Some may fall but the others will rise...

Üdvözlök!

Well this week was honestly a pretty crazy one, we had a tonne of fun adventures and for the sake of this email being of reasonable length, they're probably not all going to be in here, but it was a super busy and fun week. For all you people too busy/lazy to read the whole thing, yes, Gyöngyi got baptised this week and yes, it was beautiful.

  On monday we were able to meet with this woman named Piroska who we tracted into about a week and a half ago. She used to meet with Jehova's witnesses a while back and so she has a lot of those sorts of religious views but she was super excited to hear what we talked about, so she ended up being our first new investigator for this transfer. We also planned to drop in on our investigator family for like 10 minutes to set up some lessons for the week, but we ended up there for like an entire hour because they're hilarious and wanted to chat with us.

  Tuesday morning we headed out back to my old stomping ground of Kaposvár. We had a bunch of train/phone problems and a great 40 minute history lesson from an old man on the way but after 4 and a half hours we finally made it to my beautiful old home. We went to one of my favourite restaurants there first up and then decided to go whiteboarding all together on the walking street. We were having a great time asking people to write uplifting messages for a while when all of sudden this 17ish year old kid comes speeding down the street on a bike. I guess this didn't really please this one random man on the street because he LITERALLY KICKS THIS KID OFF HIS BIKE. The kid went flying and then landed pretty hard on the ground which was pretty scary because he wasn't wearing a helmet. They ended up having to take him away in an ambulance and the cops came to talk to people about the incident, Elder Thomas was going to make a statement but other people already told them what happened and he figured that they didn't need his view of what happened in sub-par hungarian. It was a super crazy moment.

  Wednesday we came back to Duna, we had some cool conversations with some people on the train but nothing too crazy. We also met with our investigator family again, we sung let it go in hungarian, it was a great time.

  Thursday was pretty classic, just district meeting, service at the disabled peoples home and english class.

  Friday we had to do some prep for the baptism, whiteboarded with the sisters here, had two lessons fall through, played an impromptu game of soccer with some of the young men here for like 15 minutes in which I ripped my pants, then had our last meeting with the investigator family before Gyöngyi's baptism the next day, we sung some songs, their two daughters did a fairly racist patty-cake thing and were all uplifted by eachothers spirits, it was a great time. 

  Saturday was the day that we had been waiting for. Gyöngyi got baptised by her husband. It was a beautiful time. Way more people showed up than we thought were going to which was super nice and she was just so excited. The sisters also had a baptism at the same time which was also pretty cool. There was also a tonne of delicious desserts afterwards.

  On Sunday Gyöngyi got confirmed, which was also a beautiful moment. I'll be honest though I was pretty close to shedding a tear when I looked over and saw her take the sacrament for the first time (she said that she never felt ready for it until she got baptised), it was soooo beautiful. I'm so glad that I've been able to teach them, it's been a crazy huge blessing. We also got to watch a broadcast from Elder Ballard that night, so all round pretty good day.

Well this was way too long...

Viszlát!

-McKim elder

PICS!

The fam all together

Elder Thomas and I with Gyöngyi and her husband, Zoli (feat. one of the members Erzsébet)

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