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)