Saturday, April 30, 2016

Scripture Power

The work here is hopefully going up, we are already set up to meet with a couple of new investigators this next week, and so hopefully those go through. We've been talking with a ton of people lately, so hopefully it starts paying off.
We got to go down to Szeged on Wednesday for a Zone Training, that is the only Zone that I have never been in on my mission, so it was nice to see it. The training went well too.
The Book of Mormon reading challenge thing is going great. I just finished 1 Nephi, in which I marked about 700 references to Christ already. It is full of them. Also, I assumed that it would be really easy to just read through and know when it was referencing him, but it has been a lot harder then I thought. I have learned a lot already about the Godhead, and just how one they really are. Because some of the times when the scriptures say Lord, or God, or some other thing, it is hard to tell who it is talking about. I think mainly because when God does something he almost always does it through Christ, and when Christ does something it is usually under the commandment of the Father. For example, God created the heavens and the earth. So it's a good activity.

We found a juicer in our apartment cleaning so I juiced up half a litter of fresh apple cider this morning. Super good. I'll have to make that a habit.

Have a great week!
Love
Parkinson Elder

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Life is Good!

Dear Family,

This week was awesome, super busy. We went up to Miskolc for splits, it was nice going back to there, especially because the split went really well and we found some cool people. One lady that we stopped at a bus stop late at night, we started talking and offered her a Book of Mormon, she said she couldn't take it because she is out of work right now and has no money, when we told her it was free she started crying. She gave us her address and phone number, the Elders should start teaching her. Also, God times things out perfectly, her bus came about 15 seconds after we had finished talking and gotten her contact info. Super cool. And a good last impression of Miskolc, up until now I have just remembered it as the city where I got kicked out of the most buildings on my mission.
We had MLC yesterday, that went super well. It's wierd being the oldest person at these things now.
I finished the Old Testament this week. Super good, Everyone exagerates the number of geneologies in there. And it was just in time because I finished the Book of Mormon again this morning, and we just started a mission challenge to read the Book of Mormon marking the references to Christ (see PMG end of ch. 5 for details). So I'm really excited to do that with my last bit of time here.
That's about it, some more great finding, a couple of cool lessons.
Have a great week!
Love
Parkinson Elder

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Transfers!

Transfer calls came in, I'll be staying here in Buda and serving with Elder Paul. He is from Sandy, Utah, and got out here two transfers after I did. For details about him, read the book of Acts. I'm looking forward to this transfer a lot. And Elder Priest went to Pest and is now my Zone Leader, along with another old companion, Elder Martineau.
We had to do a bit of stuff in the office on Monday to get ready for transfers, and then on Tuesday the new missionaries came. We got to go meet them at the airport and then go streeting with them afterwards. I got to spend a couple hours out with two of them, and it was a ton of fun. They were super solid, each gave out a Book of Mormon, and had no fear talking to people. I would just point and shoot. We also got to go out to Buda castle with them at night, it was fun seeing their reactions, Budapest is beautiful.
On Wednesday we had 5 missionaries go home, 2 of them were old companions of mine, Elder Cannon and Elder Gonzalez. We had a good dinner with them and the Szabadkai's the night before, and sent them on their way.
We've been doing a lot of finding like usual. The weather has been beautiful which has helped, and suit coat season just ended so we are now out and about in short sleeves. We have had some good conversations with a lot of people, on Thursday one man that was a neighbor of an inactive told us we can come back on Monday to talk more about the restoration, so hopefully that works out. We also found the Prime Minsister's house.
I feel like a lot of the time one of the hardest things about finding is that people don't really understand what we say. For example, we say, "The church has been restored through a living prophet", and they hear, "The Catholic church is true." At first I just took it as selective hearing, but lately I decided everything is all lined up on a 5 dimensional scale (basically the veil) from Outer Darkness to Kolob and that as we progress in life we move up it, but that we can not understand things higher up on the scale until we have moved there (Alma 12:9-11). Hence, the fact that we are always singing songs like I am a Child of God but only at times do we catch a glimpse of what it really means, and we always are learning new things from the scriptures, and teaching the same lessons again and again in church. Through the power of the spirit truths on this scale can be learned and understood (either in big ah-hah moments or slowly over time), and because of the atonement we can progress through it as we become more and more like God. This paragraph is suddenly kind of long and thoughts like this usually make a lot more sense in my head then in writing, but then main point I was aiming for is that the spirit is important in life and in missionary work.
Have a great week!
Love
Parkinson Elder

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Happy Saturday!!

We went on a long hike today with the ward, it was a lot of fun. Also, we had a szalona sütés halfway through, cooking big chunks of fat over the fire and dripping it on bread, then eating the bread and the fat. Super good, great way to start a fast Sunday.
General Conference was awesome, it's sad to think this will be my last time watching it in Hungarian. It's nice how much easier it is now then it was back when I was in Tatabánya. I especially enjoyed both of President Monson's talks, President Nelson talk on the priesthood, and Elder Holland's talk at the end. Some good advice on personal improvement.

We had some decent success tracting this week, we had one family that let us in for dinner and listened to the restoration (I think that's the second time I've been let in by a family, definitly the first time they've said, "We're having dinner right now, want to join us?"), the spirit was strong as we tried to focus it on families, we were not able to set up a time to go back though, they said they would read the book of mormon and then call. If they don't we'll probably try knocking on their door again in a couple weeks. We also had an older lady we talked with at the door on Monday who said we could come back Friday. We were able to set up to go over there with a member, but when we got there she was sick and couldn't meet.
Here's part of the group we hand today, we had about 30 people come over all, but not all of us could fit on top at a time. Notice the great view of the clouds behind us. You can't see them this well from the ground.

We'll that's about it. Have a great week everyone! Transfers will be next week, so I'll either write normally on Saturday or next Monday if I get transfered (unlikely, but who knows?).
Love
Parkinson Elder



Saturday, April 2, 2016

General Conference!

This week was a little slow, a lot of the people we met with last week we couldn't set up with this week. We are still struggling to find some solid investigators. We are still searching though, so hopefully they will come. And with the improved weather finding has seemed to be going better. The people are happier when it is warm outside, including us, especially those of us from deserts (I can't remember if it's one s or 2, some if there is any confusion look up sivatag on google translate).

We met again with our skype investigator and it went really well. We spent most of it talking about baptism and what it mean's ,he had a lot of questions about what he would have to do afterwards, what the commandments are, and so forth. He is taking it all very seriously, he told us at the end that he would like to take a week and read the whole Book of Mormon and think about it and pray about it, then meet again. He then sent an email asking if we could meet the week after instead (understandable as the book is over 600 pages long).
We went on splits down to Pécs this week, one of the most beautiful cities in Hungary. Soon after we got there the Elder I was with got really sick though, so we stayed home. I was able to map out a lot of inactive members for them to go look up later and do their dishes though, so it all worked out. Also, thanks to the 3 hour train ride each way I got fully caught up on my journal.

The senior couples had a big conference yesterday, and afterwards they had a cultural event they were going to. They had 2 extra tickets so they invited us, it was super fun. Old traditional Hungarian song and dance, the first performers were all from a small village way out in Romania or somewhere, they spoke really old Hungarian, I felt like I was a new missionary all over again trying to put together what they were saying. And Hungarian dance is super cool, look it up. It was also special because at the end they paid tribute to a famous Hungarian who has played a big hand in preserving Hungarian culture, song and dance throughout his life, it was his 90 birthday and at the end he got up and song a duet.

I'm looking forward to General Conference tonight, this will be my last one in Hungary. Which means it should be the one I can understand the easiest as well.

Love
Parkinson Elder