Marriage and the Priesthood

Awesome week this week. It started out with a great Zone Conference in Budapest on Tuesday, one of the Area 70's came down to the mission leadership conference on Saturday and so the training was based on his remarks. We also watched a lot of segmants from the general authorities on keeping the sabbath day holy. Lots of really good stuff.

Best day of the week was probably on Thursday. Which was good because usually Thursdays seem to be low days. We had a great program with the family we met a few weeks ago, they had some health problems over the week and so couldn't read the Book of Mormon, but we read through 3 Nephi 11 with them and talked about it, the Dad asked some really good questions about prophets and said it is all coming together to him why Joseph Smith is important. We talked about how the Lord called Nephi and gave him the authority to baptize, and invited them to both be baptized by the same authority. He said yes, but then the doorbell rang, and so we had to finish the program. He offered to say the closing prayer before we left though, something he has never been willing to do yet, So that was really cool. We then went tracting and had some good success. On one let in we were talking with a women, then her kids got home from school, one of her daughters had just turned 12 and spoke some English so she had us sing Happy Birthday in english as she walked in. I think we suprised her, she walked in, we started singing, and she walked right back out, and wouldn't return until we left. Super funny.

We had a marriage in the branch on Saturday as well, one of our members and a man from another city. Which is awesome for them, and also awesome for us because we now have a man in the ward who has been a member for 18 years. We even had 7 people in priesthood quorum on Sunday, 3 were missionaries, but still a lot better then my first week here when it was me, Elder Egan, and the Elders Quorum President sitting in a circle talking for an hour. Also, shout out to Brother Frew, the lesson was on leadership so I used his biking example, one of the men there was a biker so he loved it.

I'm super excited for General Conference this weekend. As long as we can get it to work, we will be running it and the Bailey's will be out of town for the weekend, so we'll see what happens.

Transfers are next week so I will be emailing on Tuesday.

Love

Parkinson Elder

Hungarian

Our week started off pretty rough, by the end of Tuesday we had had 6 straight programs fall through, but after that it picked up and ended up going really well. We had some new people we met with, one really cool younger couple we met on the streets last week with whom we were able to share the restoration. We also had a family we tracted into a few weeks ago call up a friend and bring invite him to our program, he has met with the missionaries in the past as well, and will be coming to our program with them next week.

We had a couple of new inactives that we were able to get in contact with this week as well. We have been working a lot here with the sisters and the Baileys to go through the branch list and clear it up, it reminds me of Tom taking on the list in Oslo but not as big. We hadn't been having a lot of success, mostly just wrong numbers or adresses or not interested people, but last week we had a 14 year old guy walk up to us on the street and tell us tehy were members, we got his dad's number from him and have been able to meet with them twice already. And another lady that finally returned our calls that we were able to meet with.

We had a pretty intense program on Saturday with one of our investigators, he has really been trying to find the truth about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We taught the Gospel of Christ and focused on the Priesthood, it worked perfectly because we have a member getting married this week so he had a question about church marriages and so we were able to start by talking about temples and the priesthood sealing power. It went good over all, but I hate it when people ask the So my baptism isn't valid question. It went well in the end, he knows it all comes down to the Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon question.

That's about it, we went out to a super pretty little village this morning and did some hiking.

Have a great week!

Parkinson Elder

Eger Branch

The Spirit

This weel went great, we had a lot of people cancel and not show but it still went well. More finding.

Highlight was on Friday. We had a district meeting in the morning on the Spirit's role in conversion, and how to help investigators feel it. It went super well, we then went out tracting, and I was feeling awesome, talking with everyone, full of enthusiasm. I think the Spirit was saying thanks for giving it a shout out in District Meeting. I should do that more. We were able to get numbers from two people on the way, one of whom we met with again this morning to give him a Book of Mormon and he said he would be at church on Sunday. When tracting we had one super cool experience that the Spirit deffinitely led us to. At one door we were waiting, and another man came up and asked if we were looking for the man who lives there.  We said we were missionaries trying to share a message, so he calls up the man who lives there, and we talked briefly over the phone and he said we can possibly come back tommorrow. We then talked with the other man who gave us the phone and set up to go visit him on Wednesday and share a message about our church. It was not by chance that we both showed up to that door at the same time.

We also went on splits with the Zone Leaders again this week, it went great again. We have some awesome missionaries here in Hungary.

We went on a hike this morning to the top of a nearby hill (the Hungarians might call it a mountain, but definetely not), we had to run back part of the way, luckily we made it back in time to get some emailing in.

The branch took a bus out to Miskolc yesterday for district conference, that was a lot of fun. Almost 4 hours of translating for the Baileys, but it was all good stuff, and most of the speakers didn't talk too fast.

It's starting to cool down, fall is here!

Love

Parkinson Elder

Picking Up

This week went well, it feels like we are finally starting to find some people after all the finding we have been doing. We have been getting a lot of people the past couple weeks who have said they would like to meet, but no new investigators from it, either people being busy, dogging, bad numbers, or other stuff. We found a family last week tracting that we taught twice and are going back to on Saturday so that should be sweet. We also met a couple of men yesterday tracting that we gave a Book of Mormon to and who said we could come back, and we have a first program set up for Thursday with a member's father in her home, and ran into an old investigator on the street yesterday who said he had been out of the country but that we can meet this week. So Eger is hopefully looking up. Also, the sisters here are killing it, we finally had a real prieshood lesson in church yesterday, 2 of the 3 people there were their investigators.

Also, we had a beautiful display this week of the right way to act when running into missionaries in a foriegn country (shout out to Jeff and Tracey Hicks).

1. Run into them in the main square of the city and buy them ice cream.

2. Give them the contact information of a family you met there that would be intersted in meeting and hearing a message on the family.

3. Give them some great missionary advice on how the gospel blesses families that pumps them up for the rest of the night.

4. Accidently run into them the next day and take them out to lunch.

We also have started up our English classes again after a break in August. It was pretty small, but hopefully it builds up again.

That's about it, we are off to a member family's house tonight to teach an FHE lesson on the restoration. That should be fun.

Love

Elder Parkinson

Summer over

So this will be quick, we had the new missionary training in Buda yesterday which is why we are emailing today. We don't have much time so it will be quick.

We had branch conferecne on Sunday so a lot of people came down, including the mission president and his wife. And I got to teach sunday school afterwards so that was fun. It went really well, lots of comments. We are also now down to a 2 hour church here, we decided we don't have the people to support a 3 hour schedule.

We also had President and Sister Szabadkai do a devotional thing for us on Saturday night, a lot of people showed up and it went really well, that was a good experience.

We had a lot of stuff to do last week coming into those two things on the weekend, but it all ended up going really smoothly.

Quick companion description on request from the parents- Elder Lawrence, just turned 19, from Arizona, went to ASU for a year before the mission in bio-chem, he's about as tall as I am, speaks very well for being young, and likes talking to people. And he has already been taught how to make Lecsó.

We had a lot more finding as well, that went well again. I'm hoping that with the summer vacation ending we will have an easier time meeting with people and setting up programs. We are also starting up English Class again this week, we took a break in August.

All in all, life is good.

Love

Parkinson Elder