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
