Holidays and a bunch of spiritual stuff

We had some big holidays this week. First and foremost was Pi Day of course, I knew it was coming but actually forgot about it until partway through English class, and I then explained the significance to the class. I think they sort of got it. We also had Hungarian Independence Day yesterday (also the day Ceaser died right?), we sung the Hungarian National anthem in church. Super pretty, but I had no idea what the words were. I should learn that.

Other big thing from yesterday, the new Hungarian law went into effect about working on Sundays. I'm not sure exactly what it entails, there were still some places open, but for the most part places are shut down. The playground by our apartment was the fullest I've ever seen it.

We had an awesome meeting on Wednesday with President Kearon of the 70, he talked a lot about the little things that we can improve, how to do better at finding and teaching, improving our mornings. I learned a lot that I need to apply to my work, I felt super spiritually pumped up afterwards. We had some really good programs afterwards. 

I have learned a lot this transfer about boldness when teaching, something Elder Depallens does very well. The most important thing is love, because if that is there and the investigator feels it then we can pretty much say anything we want. People only get offended or uncomfortorable if the love isn't there. The second thing is clarity, I think the Norwegian Elder Parkinson said something like that a few months back, how boldness is teaching simply and clearly. I feel like sometimes we try to teach the gospel in a round about way to avoid certain subjects or explain away certain doctrine. In my experience that doesn't work well. Simple clear doctrine will stand by itself, and if we present it with love, the Spirit will bear testimony of it to their hearts. Also, most (if not all) truth can only be really known through the Spirit. I have realized there is a very big difference between "knowing" a truth and having the Spirit make a truth known unto us. It's the difference between someone who knows the church is true and someone who actually lives the gospel. Let's all go for #2.

Well that just turned into a big spiritual thought on a bunch of stuff I've been thinking about, one more thing along those lines. The Book of Mormon. In the conference President Kearon emphasized the importance of explaining on a personal level why the Book of Mormon is important, not just saying it is this cool new scripture. I was thinking about that I realized that every day when I read the Book of Mormon the veil becomes thinner. Heaven becomes closer. Every day I don't read it the veil thickens again. Yeah, the book of Mormon is awesome.

One final quote I loved, I think from President Benson or Monson or some prophet. "True doctrine, understood, will change behavior faster then a study of behavior will change behavior". Very true. If we really understand doctrine, it will bring about change naturally.

Love you all, have a great week! Enjoy the start of spring.

Parkinson Elder

Birthdays!

First off, Happy Birthday to Mom! I hope it went well. It was a week of birthdays this week, Elder Depallens turned 24 (yeah he's old) yesterday. Sunday birthdays are awesome, because we sent out a mass text to everyone telling them it was his birthday and so they should come to church. It worked all right, we had a couple of new people come, including our athiest investigator! We also had a guy from English class randomly show up and stay all 3 hours, he said he'd be interested in meeting this week, hopefully that works out.

Other then that this week was a little slower then usual. My companion's knee was killing him during the week, he had surgery on it a few years back and it was acting up again, so that slowed us down a little. Luckily he's feeling better now, we're thinking it was just the change in the weather, it's getting a lot warmer suddenly.

I did get a lot of good studies this week, I focused a lot on revelation, I found a really good talk by Elder Oaks from Oct 2010 conference, on how revelation comes personally and through the priesthood. Super good talk. I'm super gratefull for all the scriptures we have. With those and the words of modern prophets we can find answers to pretty much any question. It just might take some time.

We have Elder Kearon of the 70 coming down this week for a missionary conference, that should be awesome. He was the one who gave the conference talk a few years back about being stung by a scorpian because he was wearing flip flops instead of shoes. Awesome talk. I'm looking forward to that conference a lot.

Also, little note on member missionary work. We have a member here called M. He is the only member in his family, but now both his parents are meeting with us and have baptism dates for May, his brother and brother's wife now want to meet with us, and his cousin and her family should now be meeting with the missionaries in another city. All because of M's decision to live the gospel and be a great example to his family. Yeah, he's awesome. Every member a missionary!

Have a great week!

Parkinson Elder

Follow the Spirit

We had an awesome week again. For some reason when I write these letters all the seems to come to mind is Saturdays. Either Saturdays are just always extra good or I have a terrible long term memory.

Anyway, some Saturday highlights. In the morning my companion finds a cockroach in our bathroom. He decides to try and kill it with a can of spray deoderant stuff and a lighter. The cockroach was unharmed, our trash can ended up on fire. Cockroach 1, Man 0. Half an hour later while heading to sport nap (soccer with missionaries, investigators and members), my comapnion redeems himself by jumping off the tram and chasing down a man he had just seen get off the stop before. It was a super cool experience to witness, we found him on an empty side street, bag on the ground, half kneeling and crying. Elder Depallens ran up to him and gave him a hug, bore his testimony about God, and asked how we could help. We talked a little, and gave him some Kleenex and our number. Awesome example of following the Spirit to be an instrument in God's hand to help his children. I don't know if we'll ever see him again, but he needed some help, and God led it to him. We then had a baptism! Sos Éva, an older lady who had been meeting with the missionaries for about 6 months. That was super cool, it had been in question if it would go through or not but everything ended up going smoothly. It was an exhausting day.

Other non-Saturday stuff. On Sunday I had the awesome experience of being able to give Éva the gift of the Holy Ghost, I was very nervous before hand, but it went well. Super cool.

On Wednesday we had a member come out with us for the whole day. It was super cool, he is trying to prepare for a mission, and he was a huge help. One program we were talking about getting answers and out of nowhere he turns to the investigator and says "I challenge you to pray everyday for a week". He told him to come to chruch too. I don't think he'll have a problem with being bold enough when he get's out. Awesome guy.

In a program this week we had a man ask us where our calls came from. At the same time Elder Depallens and I say, "ugh, the prophet". The look on his face was priceless. We then gave him a better explanation.

We had another awesome program with that athiest man from last week. I love athiest investigators, I feel like I can understand them super well. We actually got a decent commitment out of him to read all of 1st Nephi and to pray about some personal decisions in his life.

That's about it, I love you all! Go follow the Spirit and help someone out!

Parkinson Elder

Loving the People

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of loving the people lately. My companion has a great perspective on that, when he was investigating he really felt the love of the missionaries, even at the times he was not progressing as well. We have been trying to work on that, and have had some cool experiences with some people we had been trying hard to help even though they hadn't been progressing a ton.

Probably the coolest thing that happened this week was an awesome program we had on Saturday. It was an investigator that we had talked with a bit (he was also then one that went running with us a few weeks back), but he never seemed super interested in the gospel. We met him for a late lunch and had a long talk, he poured out a lot of his life story, which is super similar to my compaions (I think they are spirit twins seperated at birth), super cool. We then met a member at the church and we taught him the restoration. Easily the best restoration program I've been in. When we started talking about prayer he asked us how to pray, and after we explained he said he wanted to try it. He said an awesome prayer right there. He now said he really wants to read the Book of Mormon, he said he felt reborn. Overall it was just a super awesome experience, I can't wait to see where he goes.

We had another great program with our investigator who is athiestish, we have been talking a lot about getting spiritual knowledge. He hadn't seemed as interested in previous programs, mostly just liked talking to us in English, but this week he seemed really engaged. Asked a lot of questions. And he asked us to bring scriptures next time to answer a some of the questions that he had.

We also had a lot of fun last Monday going over to one of our new investigtor's houses, we had lunch with him and his sister, who was already being taught by the other Elders here. It was awesome because he is new but she asked us some religious questions so we got to have a great talk about why we are here and how the gospel helps us. I love it when Elder Depallens pulls the convert card in those situations, it works great.

We got to have interviews again this week with the mission president, it was wierd not having to travel for those, we just ran upstairs after a program, had interviews, and then ran down again for English class.

We got invited over to dinner by members on 4 of 7 nights last week, definetely a record on my mission. It was cool being able to interact with the members a little more. I also gained a lot of respect for my parents after having dinner at a household with 4 young kids.

Sok Szeretettel!

Parkinson Elder

Albanians in Bakeries and Bulgarians with BoMs

First off, Happy Birthday to Hannah and Grandpa Beckham! I love you both!

We had a sweet week this week, lots of programs and lots of cool experiences.

Saturday we had a program cancel, but then ended up meeting with the member who we were bringing, were able to talk a lot and help them a lot with some things, at the end he asked if we could all say a prayer, which we did, super strong spirit and cool experience. Right after that on the way to another program we had a man walk out of a bakery and start talking to us. We chatted for a little about what we do as missionaries and then he had to run. At the end I finally realized why we knew him. He worked at the bakery, I had met him when buying something a week ago, I don't remember why we started talking but he mentioned he is from Albania, so I impressed him with a couple of Albanian words I picked up in the MTC, super cool. Unfortunetly we have no contact info, so pretty much we have to keep going back there and getting huge nutela filled crescants until we find him again.

We also gave away a Bulgarian Book of Mormon this week. On Wednesday we met someone who speaks Bulgarian, and then on Thursday we just happened to stumble across a Bulgarian BoM in the branch house when looking for an English one in a program, so we were able to hand that out later in the day.

I also met Ricsi, a man one of my MTC teachers taught and the investigator we pretended to teach my first week in the MTC. He is our bishop's son and the ward mission leader in Pest, I was super excited when I figured out that he was the same person.

We had Zone Training on Friday, it was wierd because our Zone is basically just the people in Budapest, super small geographically.

I started teaching past tense to our beginner English class, Hungarian has one past tense, English has 6. At least. Another reason to love Hungarian. It goes pretty well though, I just try to say as little false doctrine as possible, especially as I have no idea why English works.

Lots of Love,

Elder Parkinson

More Work in the Big City

Another good week this week, I feel like I'm getting the city down finally so I don't feel as lost anymore. We also got to see a baptism this week from 2 of the other Elders, those are always incredible, and a lot of ward members showed up as well.

We had a lot of good programs this week, a couple of people we teach are really close to baptism. We had one awesome family we teach accept baptism dates which was super cool. The son got baptized a few months back, and we have been teaching his parents. And when they said yes they told us that we would have to do something else too, we needed to get these two friends of theirs baptiized as well! Pleasent little suprise, hopefully we can meet and start teaching them soon as well.

The one thing about having a lot of programs is that we don't have the big blocks of finding that I had in my past cities. It's awesome, that's how it should be, but I need to now get better at using the small chunks of time we have more productively, talking to more people on the street while traveling, people on trams, etc. 

Elder Depallens and I have started going running in the morning, we went three times last week, we ran up Gellert's hegy, the hill where Hungary was dedicated for missionary work, super good view of the city. We also had an investigator come with us on one of the days which was cool, and then he showed up at church yesterday as well, super awesome.

We had dinner at the Stake President's yesterday which was awesome. He is from Idaho, his wife is Hungarian, and they have 3 boys that speak fluent Hunglish, they interchange English and Hungarian words all the time when talking. Super funny.

Scripture of the week that I really enjoyed - Alma 56:8. The people of Ammon saw the trials of the Nephites and wanted to help, it only seemed right. But following our commitment to God is always the correct choice. No matter what the worldy situaition looks like. We will never be worse off for following God. God's ways are above our ways, he knows what is right. And what was God's way in this situation - the Army of Helaman. I'd say it worked out pretty well.

Have a great week all of you, every member a missionary!

Love,

Parkinson Elder

Budapest!

I made it down to Budapest. It was sad leaving Miskolc behind but this is a good place. I have a lot I still need to learn though. First off, Budapest is big. I feel like my sense of direction is better than it used to be (which is good because in America it was awful), but it will take some time to figure out where everything is. I like being here though, it feels a lot more alive than my other cities.

We have a big list of investigators here, most of whom I still do not know. That will be fun meeting and working with all of them, by the end of the week I should have a better idea of what's going on. The people we do meet with are awesome though. We have one super cool member we meet with who lived in America for a long time and had a pretty rough life. He is now working super hard to turn his life around and serve a mission. He's inspiring. Also, that non-smoking program the church has is super good, if you know anyone that wants to quit let them know.

I've been loving serving with Elder Depallens, unfortunetely he's been a bit sick so we haven't been able to work as much but what we have been able to do has gone great. He's a convert to the church which is awesome because his testimony is real and powerful. He knows the change the gospel can bring. He was also a succesful buisnessman when younger, meaning he is very much a people person, good for me to learn from because I am a bit quieter in nature. Should be a fun transfer.

It was nice being in a ward on Sunday, actually having a lot of people. I have missed the little kid messing around in sacrament meeting sound. It will take a lot more time than my last areas to get to know the members, but I look forward to it.

We got a little bit of snow this week, it melted after a day but I got to see Budapest in the snow which I had been hoping for. Super pretty. I think one of the nicest things about this city is the architecture, and by that I mean not everything is 10 stories tall and concrete. It's nice for a change.

We have an investigator that works at the theater here who got us free Shakespeare tickets that we got permission to go to today, so that should be fun.

Have a nice week!

Parkinson Elder