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
