Idahoans in Hungary

Happy Birthday to David on Saturday! We'll be celebrating on Saturday with a baptism, an awesome investigator the other Elders teach. I'm really hoping we can get a lot of our investigators to show up, it would help them a lot.

Big news this week was Stake Conference yesterday. They rearranged the stake presidency, a pretty big deal because that was the first stake presidency in Hungary. They had been there for 8 years and pretty much oversaw the entire church in Hungary. The new Stake President is from Idaho, he was a missionary here but then came back and married a girl from Hungary and has been a Bishop in Budapest for a while. It sounds like he will do a great job. We also got to hear talks from a few British members (I think area 70's or something), it was cool to be able to hear the English and then the translation.

Some good programs this week. We dropped by Erwin again, the old man we gave a Book of Mormon to a few weeks back who won't pray and loves questioning things. He read though, he is on page 160 ..... of the index. Already finished the entire book. That was sweet. He had a lot of complaints about what he read (apparently the fact that Jews were supposed to marry Jews in the Law of Moses is comparable to the Holocaust), and still wont pray (when we asked if we could say a prayer at the end he said yes and then walked out of the room), but he read. The Book of Mormon is so great, if he keeps reading it he will figure it out. He might need some time though. I think we'll try to bring him some General Conference Ensigns next time.

We also have an investigator who we teach English and gospel too, and I'm starting to really appreciate people that learn English. It is a ridiculous language. We were teaching tenses too him, and I'm pretty sure we have at least 6 past tenses (not even counting conditional or imperative). I was struggling to figure out why we use each one, super hard to explain. He's progressing super well in the gospel though, that's the more important part.

We had a great Zone Training on Friday in Győr. I really liked a thought one of the Zone Leaders shared at the end. Whenever you are tempted to slack off or not do your duty, imagine where you would be if Chirst had not done his. Then get back to work. He did everything for us, now it's time for us to do our part. Very applicable to us as missionaries and throughout our lives.

Love you all, enjoy the miracles in life!

Parkinson Elder

The One

Big news of the week, Monika came back to church! She was the women who got baptized my first week here but she went completely inactive a few weeks later, didn't want to meet with us at all. On Sunday she just decided to come back, she told us her life had been going downhill since she left and so she came! When I saw her 7 year old son running up the stairs and then she followed I was so ridiculously happy I can't even describe it. The parable from the Bible about having more joy from the 1 lost sheep that returns then the 99 who stayed makes a lot more sense now. Anyway, we hope that she will continue to do well, we are going over to her place on Wednesday, and hopefully we can start to teach her boyfriend too, who came to church with her and loved it. Long story short, it was awesome.

We had a really great meeting with a less active member on Saturday. We had met them a few times before this but this time it was us, a member, her, her non member husband, and her non member brother, sister, and mom. Her sister had also been in English class a few weeks before so already new us, and we were able to have a great talk with all of them. They also had a rubix cube there and thought it was super cool that I could do one (apparently it was made by a Hungarian so the rubix cube is one of their claims to fame here). Shout out to those old Minnesotan missionaries for teaching me. Anyway, hopefully we can get that member back to church and get her family interested too.

The birthday went well, mostly pretty normal, one of our investigators bought us McDonalds for dinner. Some nice American food. That was a lot of fun, and we had a good chat with her afterwards about commandments and the Book of Mormon. Hopefully she continues to progress.

We also had our quarterly interviews in Budapest this week so we got to go over to the big city for a bit.

Love you all!

Parkinson Elder

PS  Thanks to interviews this week I was able to get the packages and letters on Tuesday, they were awesome, thanks! I'll enjoy that chocolate and peanut butter (and use the toothbrushes too of course). I enjoyed the letters, and all the Hungarian was correct, good work! Thanks again, I love all of you!

Parkinson Elder

He matures

Happy Birthday to the other Elder Parkinson up in Norway! It's hard to believe that it is already November, time is flying fast. It's also getting a lot colder, time for the inner Minnesotan to come out.

First off, Elder Gonzalez broke his leg this week while tracting. Long story, but pretty much he told me his parents read my blog so I thought it would be fun to add a fake story about him breaking his leg. Don't worry, your son's really doing great.

On to serious stuff, while having lunch the other day one of the other Elders asked the classic what if this was all a dream question to get some conversation going. That made me think a bit. That is pretty similar to our message when you think about it. You had a life before this one that you completely forgot. You don't know who you are or why you are here. We are here to remind you and show you what you need to do to get back. Sounds like the plot line of a great movie, but it's just missionary work. That was interesting, gave me a new perspective on why we are here. I've also been thinking more about submitting our will to God's. He knows everything and loves us so has given us this guide to make us happy, the gospel. Commandments and rules aren't barriers we have to stay in, they are a map to the best life possible. It's our choice to follow the map or not.

We've been having a hard time setting up with people recently, everyone is super busy. It's strange thinking of people actually doing stuff, our whole life is just missionary work. Some pretty solid programs though. Zsofi, one of our investigators who wouldn't pray prayed in a program this week. That was sweet. We've also stopped tracting houses and moved on to 5 and 10 story apartments. Warmer and closer to us. The Russians built a ton of them during the cold war, all concrete and exactly the same. They cover Hungary.

Other stuff this week was good, we had a branch pumpkin carving activity for Halloween. Halloween isn't really a Hungarian thing, they celebrate it a little but not a lot. They didn't really get why we carve pumpkins. I don't know either, but it was fun. We also have an investigator who is a wrestler so we got permission to go to one of his matches. He won, now we need to get him to come to church.

Also, I found out that my name is a Hungarian word, érik- he matures/ripens. Usually used in connection with fruit. Pronunciation isn't quite the same put pretty close, I thought that was cool.

Love you all, have a wonderful week!

Parkinson Elder

It's starting to feel like Norway!

First off, not much really happened last week for the holiday. It was a working day for us like normal and I hardly noticed anything, we we're mostly in programs too so we didn't find a lot which might have had something to do with it. We saw some soldiers marching by out the window in English Class but that was about it.

The time change this week was big too, luckily a few members called us to remind us or we would have showed up to church an hour early, we knew it was coming up sometime but had no idea when. It's also getting dark by 5 now, which makes missionary work more difficult because a lot of Hungarians rise and fall with the sun. I wonder what it's like for the other Elder Parkinson up north, I just think of that and stop complaining.

Our church meetings here just got cut to 2 hours, no more Sunday School. We have few enough people that they canceled it. We'll have to work to get those numbers back up, but for now church is only from 9-11, not 9-12. That will be strange.

A couple good stories, we returned to the bácsi I talked about 2 weeks back and he is up to Jacob already in the Book of Mormon. That was awesome, but he's on our growing list of investigators that refuse to pray. He also had some problems with Nephi, first he stole Laban's sword, and then cut off his head with it. I've heard a lot of concerns about the cutting of the head part but never really with the stealing. We'll see what we can do, hopefully he keeps reading.

Also, there is this man, Tibor, he is the one that came up to us on the street my first day in the city. We met with him twice but after that he disappeared, he never answers his phone. Anyway, we ran into him at a pizza place on Elder Gonzalaz's first day here and talked, and he recently starting answering his phone again. We have a program set up with him this week, so hopefully that goes though. I think he's also planning on moving to NYC soon so I'm hoping we could set him up with some friends there.

We had splits this week so I spent a day with Elder Luke who I was in the MTC with, that was a lot of fun. It's also starting to get a bit colder, winter is approaching.

Happy Halloween!

Parkinson Elder

Tovább, Mennyünk Tovább

I'm getting to the point where I never really know what to write about. Whenever I sit down in front of a computer the past week just seems like a blur.

Elder Gonzalez got a little sick this week, luckily he's feeling better now. It was nice to get a long personal study in while he was recovering, especially since I taught investigator Sunday School yesterday on the gathering of Israel. I also got to read through some old General Conference talks from April, I'm still looking forward to that new Liahona.

We got a couple of good new investigators from English Class this week, we had 18 people show up to our class, easily the most I've ever had, and 2 of them are meeting with us outside English class now. One of them met the missionaries a few years back when playing the accordion on the street and has already read all of 1st Nephi. We'll see what happens there.

We have two investigators that we meet with that have a lot of potential but just wont pray. They are still pretty new but it's frustrating. One of them told us she is afraid to pray because then she will be responsible for the answer she gets. We still haven't taught the plan of salvation to her yet so we are hoping that if she can see the bigger picture it will help her. The other doesn't want to pray because she needs to figure out if this is true by herself before she prays. There both good friends too so I'm hoping we can get one to start praying and then they can help the other. We'll see.

Fun story, we were walking home from a program Friday night when a Bácsi on a bike just started talking with us (Bácsi's bike slow and missionaries walk fast so we were going about the same speed). We chatted and he then showed us his garage, he had disco lights and started to sing and play on his piano. He was pretty good, especially for being 80. He isn't really interested in the gospel (said he believes in himself), but it was super funny.

We have a big holiday on Thursday, the 23rd is the anniversary of the 1956 revolution. Flags are already being put up around the city.

Lots of Love,

Parkinson Elder

The Book of Mormon

We had another solid week this week, we did a lot of finding again. We have a decent amount of people we can meet with, but we are having trouble meeting with them as often as we would like. Work schedules in Hungary are weird, a lot of places have 3 8 hour shifts (6-14, 14-22, 22-6) (we use 24 hour time here too) that everyone rotates through, so schedules are never the same. We are trying to get people to meet with us twice a week consistently, most people had been doing once a week or sometimes twice, but the more we meet with them the better they progress.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot this week is the Book of Mormon. It's an incredible book, but no matter how much I try to stress that to our investigators they never seem to get it. There are three ingredients necessary (also, in Hungarian necessary is kell, WAY easier to spell) for investigators, reading, praying, and real intent. All of our investigators problems comes down to lacking one of these three things, not wanting to read, not wanting to pray, or not wanting to change. I read a short article in the Liahona this morning about the last one, not wanting to change. Real intent is important when we pray, because we might not like the answer but need to be willing to act on it anyways. We also had an old bácsi we tracted into recently and taught. He is a very smart man with a ton of deep questions so it is difficult to teach him, he doesn't like talking about the basics. After a long not super productive first lesson I just took a Book of Mormon out of my bag and told him if he reads it and prays about it he'll know what we're saying is true. Hopefully he does.

Not a lot of other stuff really happened this week, the weather got super nice for a couple of days, it had been a little cold but is now warming up. Hopefully it starts getting a little colder again soon because starting Wednesday we have to start wearing suits until April.

After hearing other people's comments on General Conference I'm really excited for the Liahona to come out. There was definitely a lot that I missed. Still super grateful for what I did learn.

Also, pictures are working today!

​Making a big pot of Paprikás Csirke! That pot was almost full by the end.

​Elder Gonzalez and I with Tatabánya behind us. Thanks for the jacket Grandpa!

​Foggy morning on the way to church.

Love you all!

Parkinson Elder

Lots of Learning

This week was great, not as much missionary work as normal due to a zone training on Thursday in Budapest and General Conference, but those were both really good. I learned a lot.

In Zone training we talked a lot about how to become better teachers. Making sure our investigators know that we love them and being persistent. We read some scriptures about persistence and I noticed that whenever missionaries in the scriptures were persistent people usually tried to kill them. But there were still a lot of converts. We obviously have to be respectful, but it's all about doing what Christ wants, not the people. I want to work on that more.

General Conference was really good. The only down sides were we watched the whole thing in Hungarian, and due to the time difference never saw Sunday Afternoon. The rest was really good, I really liked President Monson from Sunday morning and President Uchtdorf and Elder Christofferson from Saturday morning (I think, we watched the sessions in a mixed up order so it was confusing, President Uchtdorf was super good in priesthood too). I was praying a lot beforehand that I would be able to understand, and I could understand a decent amount. It was super hard to stay focused the entire time though, and when I would zone out for a couple seconds I would get completely lost. I can't wait for the  Liahona to come out now.

Outside of that we had some decent work this week. A lot of people dogged or canceled on us, at one point this week we had 7 straight. The programs we did have were good though, and it looks like we have a solid week set up for this week.

Also, at Zone Conference we have a 'missionary store' with a bunch of old clothes missionaries left so I got a decent coat and some good gloves for free! It's starting to get colder so that was a good find.

Remember to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving today.

Love you all!

Parkinson Elder