We're the old ones now...

This week went super fast, it feels like I was just writing my last letter. It has been super packed though, so I don't know why it went so quickly.

We had the new mission president's conference this last week, which means the cafeteria was weird. On the bright side, apostles were all over the place, 6 were at the Tuesday Devo by Elder Christofferson.

Speaking of Devo's on Sunday we had the best devotional ever by Sister Janice Kapp Perry. She wrote a bunch of primary songs and some hymns. We sung songs, and heard the best/worst pick up line ever that her husband used on her - Those lips look like their meant for more than just playing the clarinet. He proceeded to walk/old man dance across the stand and kiss her. The MTC went wild.

The language is still going good. One of our investigators got to 1 Nephi 20 in her Book of Mormon reading and wanted an explanation. I'm sure you can all guess which prophet Nephi was quoting. Anyways, first miracle - I had just read that chapter this morning, second miracle - I got off a decent explanation that actually flowed really well into our lesson.

One part I'm struggling a lot with right now is the accusative t, Hungarian has very little sentence structure so we need to add a 't' onto every direct object so people will know what is going on. Super important and super easy to forget. I'm working on it.

We had another teacher leave us this week, Beaumont Testvér. That was sad,  but he's heading off to Canada to get married and will be in Hungary on his honeymoon and will try to see us at the airport when we arrive, which will be awesome.

We also had all the Finns and Albanians leave on Monday and Tuesday. They were all awesome and it's weird having them gone, but we got 9 new Finnish Elders and 1 Finnish Sister yesterday. It's weird being the experience missionaries, we were the new ones just last month. I still don't know them very well but they seem like a great group.

Anyways, I learned some great spiritual things this week.

How to do Hard Things - By Parkinson Elder

1. Figure out if God wants you to do it. D&C 9:8-9 can help with that. If not, don't do it. If so, then

2. Have faith. See Moroni 7:33. Say a prayer asking for help.

3. Do it. Work hard. If you followed the first 2 steps you can't possibly fail. Again, see Moroni 7:33.

4. Be exactly obedient, emphasis on exact, so you don't get in the way of the blessings. See D&C 82:10.

5. Have gratitude. See D&C 59:21.

6. Watch miracles happen.

I think that's about it. We've started playing soccer more this week for gym, we have lost two games in a row to the Latvians and Malagasi's so we'll need to fix that. Hopefully the new Finns are good. It's been nice hearing from you all, it's hard be believe I have a little over three weeks left.

With Love

Parkinson Elder

With Marcus Corbitt, who was a missionary in Boise

Halfway Done

Happy Father's Day to Dad, I'm glad you finally got yourself some farm animals. I expect them to stil be there when I get back.

I think Saturday will be our official halfway point at the MTC. Yesterday we were thinking back to day one when we couldn't speak a word of Hungarian. It's cool to see how far we have come, but we still have a ways to go.

I came up with a great analogy for learning Hungarian this week. It's like that part in Man of Steel where Superman is trying to learn how to fly and and firsts keeps crashing into stuff but eventually learns to fly and its super awesome. That pretty much sums it up. Everything is going super awesome and then the teachers bring up hogy clauses or something and it like, Ow, I think I just smashed into Timp, but then we get talking and I realize I can actually understand the teachers fairly well and form pretty good sentences and I feel like I'm on the top of the world.

Last Friday we had an awesome lesson with one of our investigators, Monika. We talked about repentance and how she can be forgiven of her sins. She was borderline crying when she said the prayer at the end, the Spirit was super strong.

This Sunday was super cool. It was the Albanians and Finns last week so they sang God be With you Til we Meet Again. The third verse was in English and at first I had no idea what they were saying. It was sad, they are all super awesome. Also, during one of the Finnish Sister's talks I had this super strong feeling that everything she was saying was true, and it was all awesome. It was in Finnish she I have no idea what she was saying, but it was super good. Spirit trumps language.

Also, I was writing a talk on repentance for Sunday (we all write talks and then two people are randomly called on to speak), and I was studying the story of Corianton. Go research him, his story is just as good as his father's but way more common.

We got another Apostle for the Devo on Tuesday. Elder Ballard. That was awesome. He talked about how what the world thinks of us doesn't matter, And how if we focus on the living prophets today we will/can not go wrong.

I think that's about it, missionary life is awesome as ever. I attached a picture of me with some Boise friends. I still need to get our class picture from one of the sisters.

Love

Parkinson Elder

Boise Friends

Week 3

One more down, only 6 more to go. A lot happened this week but I'm really bad at remembering stuff when I write emails so I'll try not to forget a lot.

Friday was the last day for Grossen Tesvér, the greatest teacher on the planet. He spoke to us for over an hour in English on his last day, which was really weird. I am super excited to get out to Hungary, he told us a little about his mission and it sounds awesome. We had all decided to sing "God be with you til we meet again" for him in Hungarian on his last day, which apparently was also the song he heard his last day Sunday in Hungary. Tears were shed when he left.

We had some more great devotionals this week, Quentin L Cook came on Tuesday, yet another apostle. Apparently apostles used to come every fourth week or so, but ever since Easter they've been here almost every week. The work is hastening.

Hungarian is still coming along well, our teachers said that what we are doing now is probably the hardest thing we will learn in the MTC, so it should be all downhill from here. Right? We are putting forth an effort to speak out language more. In class we are now supposed to speak only Hungarian to our teachers, and on Tuesday we had a only speak Hungarian day. That made me realize that while I can teach the gospel okay in Hungarian my vocab of stuff pertaining to everyday life is very small. I guess I'll just spend all my time teaching the gospel.

I got to host new missionaries yesterday, that was a lot of fun. I hosted 4 new elders. When I dropped off the Chinese speaking one in his classroom I became very grateful I am speaking Hungarian. Also, one of them used to home-teach Tom, Elder Jorgenson or something. I'm bad with names.

The Fins and Albanians just started consecration week so they can only speak their languages. That means I now need to learn some basic Finnish and Albanian as well as Hungarian so I can communicate with them.

Also, our Branch President is big on obedience, and on Sunday he said we were doing so well that he challenged us to do a consecration week on obedience this week, and be perfectly obedient in everything. We really haven't had to change much. It's been very helpful though, Obedience -> Spirit.

Sorry I don't have pictures again this week. The sisters are supposed to send me some they took, I'll probably have them by next week. Also, everything is the same so there's not really anything new to take pictures of. Let me know if you have any requests.

Parkinson Elder

MTC Week 2

Not a lot new happened this week. Learn Hungarian. Teach Lessons. Learn the Gospel. Mix in some awesomeness and a bunch of the Spirit and you have my life.

Hungarian is continuing to go well. Somebody actually thought about this before creating the language. Unlike English. There are only 8 or so irregular verbs in the language, and the rules don't really have exceptions.

However, there are some useful words the Hungarians deemed unnecessary.

Fun - It's in the dictionary technically but it is never actually used. I guess the last Hundred years have been harder that I thought.

Have - No one has stuff so they're already all super humble. Right? Instead you say, My dog exists, or my cat doesn't exist. I guess that works.

Brother - There are two words for sister and technically words for brother, but again I guess they aren't used. We use just use sibling instead.

Other MTC things

Gym - Gym is a lot of fun, I always play volleyball, although on Tuesday mornings we play soccer, but my companion hurt his back playing that last week. Also, sports are supposed to be non contact, which means that the most competitive thing on the planet is MTC 4 square. One day I almost got trampled on my way to the volleyball court by an Elder who thought I was going to challenge him in a race to the king square.

Service - For Service we get to take down for devos Sunday night and Tuesday Night. We got to set up week 1, which is the funnest thing ever (we don't have a lot of time, so chairs fly. We have a system) but now we take down. That is a lot of fun too, best exercise I get all week.

Teaching - We finished teaching Ricsi on Wednesday, and now have two more investigators, Peter and Monika. Peter is pretty much a modern day Joseph Smith, he doesn't like any churches and thinks prayer should be more of a conversation between him and God. Monika is married to a member and is looking for how to improve her life. (Just so everyone is clear the investigators are our teachers, but they are like completely different people when we teach them). Teaching is going well, and we are understanding them better, but it gets had as we teach more difficult subjects. My go to explanation of the apostasy is, After Christ and the apostles died the people didn't know what to do. one church ... many church, with explosive hand motions. I can explain Joseph Smith and the restoration well, but the apostasy is difficult. Scriptures and pamphlets are very helpful.

That's about all I can think of that has happened so far. I'm getting used to working hard. Yesterday when we were planning today we had a 2 hour hole in our schedule. I asked Craig Elder what we should do and he suggested we could just relax. My mind had a little difficulty figuring out what that word meant, if someone wants to look it up in a dictionary for me that be great.

I hope your all still doing well, I've been enjoying the letters.

Parkinson Elder