Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Merry Christmas!

Awesome Chirstmas week.
We were able to meet with some great members at Christmas time, we had a solid amount of dinner appointments, the benefits of being in Budapest for the holidays. We have a lot of families in our ward which is great, we need more of those here. Christmas Eve was especially great, we had dinner, watched Joy to the World, and sung christmas carols with them.

We tried to look up as many members as possible before Christmas, most of the active members are in the other Elders area, so we have spent a lot of time trying to look up inactives. We had one family that told us we could come back and so we returned on Saturday and were able to get to know them and share a Christmas message. We also got let in Tuesday on our last look up of the night to a young man, on the list his mom and all his siblings were members, but now it is him and his new wife, he said he stopped coming 4 years ago when his sister died but was thinking about coming back. He said he had been waiting for us to come, because we usually do this time of year. That was a really cool experience, he works a lot too but I think he is sincere about wanting to return. I'm hoping he can come to the New Year's party and the baptism.

We have V.'s baptism planned for Saturday, everything is ready to go for that, he is at the point where it is hard to find stuff to teach him. We were in one teaching last week talking about trials, and I told him there was a good scripture in the doctrine and covenants about it. I took his and opened it, it flipped right open to DC 122 and he already had verses 7-9 highlighted. And he was making really good comments in Sunday School, and the topic was exaltation, which is a bit hard to grasp for all of us. He smoked his last ciggarette on Thursday. He is also sharing the gospel with all his friends now that he can get around well and is no longer sick, he has given out 2 copies of the Book of Mormon already, and a ton of our A Savior is Born cards. He is going up to all his old drinking friends, showing them the changes he has made, and telling them how. He's incredible.
Also, we spend a lot of time ringing into apartment buildings when tracting trying to get in, but aparently there are some of them that require a code to get out us well. We found that out yesterday after finishing a building and trying to leave. So we started knocking on doors again to try to get someone to let us out when some people came down the elevator and we were able to follow them out. All I have to say is fire hazard.

Happy New Year!

Love
Parkinson Elder

Monday, December 21, 2015

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the year...

We actually had a really busy week this week, which is good, its means we are starting to get some more work. We met with V. a ton again, and he was able to make it to the ward Christmas party on Saturday where he also took part in the program on the organ and to church on Sunday. That was super cool, he is now looking pretty healthy. So if he can get off those last couple of cigarettes he should be good to get baptized at the begenning of the year.
We have a mission goal of visiting all the members before Christmas, so we mapped up all the members in our area and hae spent a lot of time going around and looking them up. We have gotten a lot of bad addressess, but hopefully this next week we will have some more success.
We had the Christmas Zone Conference on Friday, that was a blast, we also got special permission to go see the little prince in theaters as a part of it, so that was really cool as well. Good movie. And the large popcorns here are only 650 forint.
We met with a few interseting people, one guy on the street that used to be good friends with Joseph Smith. Then they both died. I guess he is back now. We meet him again on Tuesday. And maybe the Budapest mafia. Or at least a nice lady with mysterious Russian friends that popped in and 10000 kg of tea in her basement possibly imported from Iran. I think tea is a code word.

I cant think of much else that happened, we have a lot of appointments set up with members for this next week, that should be a blast. I cant wait to skype on Friday.
Merry Christmas
Love
Parkinson Elder
PS. Due to keyboard problems I claim lack of responsibility for lack of certain puncuation marks that might make things better English or more exclaimed. Spelling mistakes are still my fault.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Christmas Time is Here!

Dear Family,

Transfers happened. Elder Anderson went home and I got Elder Cannon, really nice guy from Brigham City, he's been out here for one transfer longer then I have, so we're both getting pretty old. Also, all of my sisters from the MTC just went home, we had a great group.
I don't want to sound repetitive, but the main thing that happened this week was V. again. He is now over two weeks clean of alchohol, off of coffee, and slowly taking down smoking. We are hoping that by the time he gets to church on Sunday he will be completely clean. Unfortunetly he still wasn't able to make it to church yesterday because he is still weak, but we went out with him this morning for a practice walk, and he is looking a lot better. The ward has also been a huge help, coming to lessons and giving him a lot of support.
We had a couple of people show up at church yesterday, for I think the first time I have been here. A nice older man that the sisters in Buda just passed over to us, and a less active couple we've been meeting with for a while, only the Dad came, but their active daughter just came back to visit for the Christmas season and so we are hoping she will get them both going and we can keep them coming when she leaves.
I can't think of a lot else that happened, people are starting to say Merry Christmas to us on the streets and when we tract. It's that time of the year again.
Love
Parkinson Elder

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The gospel is so true!

First off, transfer calls! I'll be staying here in Kispest and getting Elder Cannon, I have no idea who he is but have heard a lot of good things about him. We could also be here for a while because due to complications we've been having with the government and stuff it looks like they won't be bouncing us around cities as much as they used to.

Also, Santa came on Saturday! Bonus Christmas!

Besides that, the only thing that really happened this week was V. But that has been incredible. We have met with him at least every day, and he is now 10 days free of alchohol, and has dropped his smoking significantly. It's insane how fast he is picking things up. A lot of times we'll start teaching something and he'll finish our sentences for us. We've also had great success bringing a lot of members to the programs with him and they have been awesome. Today was supposed to be an extra hard day from the alchohol withdrawels, the ward mission leader said he'd run over at 9 and check up on him, and then we'd come over again around noon to make sure he was doing good. We showed up at 12:30 and the two of them were still there talking. Also, it's super cool to see his personality coming out now that other things are affecting him less, he is actually super funny. He is really good with phones and technological stuff, the ward mission leader pulled out his phone during a program and he looked at it and said "who made that phone, I want to pray for them". He than proceeded to compare apple products to the perfectness of God. Also, he showed us a recording of him playing the organ at some place, he played out the first bit of Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (or whatever that hymn is called). He asked if we liked it and Elder Anderson says "that was awesome, I really like that song too". "What, I was improvising". I could go on for a while but lets just say this man in incredible. Such a testimony of the power of the atonement, when we first met with him and were talking about how he can become better I had trouble believing the words I was saying sometimes. We kept telling him he could do it but there was literally nothing we could do to help him. Good thing we have the Savior backing us up.

I really can't think of a lot besides that. We had a couple of other good programs. Got dogged a few times. In English class we tried to teach them about sarcasm. "Okay everyone, you basically lie to their face but it's okay." "Couldn't that be mean?" "We aren't encouraging it, we're just saying it happens." We have a really wierd culture back home.

Elder Beaumont (one of the other Elders here) came up with a great idea last week to get member missionary work going. We're going to try and visit all of the members and share with them a 10 step program we set up for them to share the gospel with their friends, and then follow up with them on it and get that going. The idea is still pretty new, but I think it could do a lot of good. Although Elder Beaumont just got transfered out so that's a bummer.

We'll, I'm excited for this next transfer, stay tooned for next week!
Love
Parkinson Elder 

Monday, December 7, 2015

Testing

I think I've fixed it so Erik's letters will email again.  This is a test.  No need to reply unless I ask you.

KHP

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Don't Drink, Watch Star Wars

Sorry for the late email, our Zone ended up having interviews with President yesterday and so we had to knock emailing over to today. And that'll happen next week as well with transfers.

We had a super awesome week, I can actually think of stuff to write about. We had a baptism on Saturday, one of the other Elders investigators. Cool story, her son met the missioanries in England through a free meet the mormons showing (they then asked him if he wanted to meet the elders. Oh, there's a sequel!) He then got baptized, told his mom to look it up, and then came down to baptize her 6 months after his baptism. Really cool and some great ward turn out, we even had a new investigator show up to it.

The miracle of the week goes to that man trying to quit alchohol. We've been talking to him multiple times a day by phone, but hadn't met for almost a week and a half until we finally did Saturday. He decided again he's going to quit alchohol, and up until know he hasn't drunk anything since then. The first day or two stopping the withdrawals literally almost killed him, but he is doing a little better now, still a bit sick. He also called me up Saturday night with a question about how to get answers to prayers "I prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true and nothing happened. Except for when he Iooked at it I got a really good warm feeling." We were even able to set a baptismal date with him for January 2nd (Happy Birthday Harriet!), and are really hoping he can be all ready to go for that. So if anyone has any doubts about the atonement, I will testify of it's reality.
We had a good little Thanksgiving, we had some Turkey and mashed potatoes. And we each got a piece of pie from one of the senior couples when they came with us to a program the next day. Pumpkin Pie is so good.
We had another investigator that we had been thinking about dropping tell us she had a big miracle in her life, she got a much better work place where she doesn't have to work on weekends, and gets paid a lot more so she can save up to get married. So that was awesome.
Fun tracting story of the week, we are in an apartment building, and it had automatic lights so as we are walking down the stairs the lights above us turned off and so we were in darkness. As we get to the bottom those lights flick on, and Elder Anderson yelps and scatters to the side. I glance over the other way and am also suprised by a huge cardboard cutout of C3P0 in front us. Go Star Wars.
I finally had to get my trenchcoat out this past week. Although today it is a bit warmer.
Have a great week!
Parkinson Elder