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

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

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

Hallelujah!

The weeks are flying by. I keep feeling like I just barely wrote. We had a good week, we got invited over by members 3 times already this week and are off to some more tonight, so that has been a ton of fun. The perks of serving in a ward, working with members is always tons of fun. Give your local missionaries a chocolate easter bunny.

We got a really cool new investigator this week that we teach over skype. He got referred to the church by some member on an internet forum, and the secretaries sent him a Book of Mormon and some other stuff. He lives in a little town a good distance from any missionaries, so we skyped him. He was super legit, I love it when people really have a desire to learn, it makes our job so much easier. He would ask all the right questions and even asked us for a homework assignment he could do before the next time we talk. Super cool. It reminds me of last time I was here in Buda the Elder's were skype teaching a guy in Noway that Tom knew.

Easter should be awesome tomorrow. I started reading through the New Testament accounts of the Easter story this morning augmented by some Talmage commentary to prepare. It was super good.

I have been reading a bit in Jeremiah as well lately, and despite the reputation the Old Testament has for being dry it is actually super good. All about the scattering and gathering of Israel. I like reading through it as a missionary, because it talks about the work we are doing know, and reading about Jeremiah's life makes missionary work here seem really easy.

Happy Easter!

Parkinson Elder

Happy Holidays!

It's finally springtime here in Hungary. The weather is beautiful, despite the fact that there was apparently a blizzard in the hills on Tuesday (Elder Priest was on splits so I wasn't there, but he's also from Arizona so I'm not sure if I believe him). I do believe that he is a runner though, we have started going on some early morning runs, and he is fast.

We finally got our area mapped out and all of the members put up on it this week, and so we were able to put that into work a bit. We spent a bit of time looking up some members and tracting and streeting in their areas.

We spent a lot more time finding, we have a couple of potential investigators that we weren't able to meet with this week but hopefully will next week, and our one investigator canceled our teaching appointment. I have been working a lot to apply what we learned in the conferences, specifically to have a solid finding approach. There was one man that we stopped on the street on Wednesday with whom we were able to set up a time to go to his house on Friday, but when we went his doorbell ringer didn't work and nobody else would let us in the building, one said she there wasn't anyone of that name there that lived there. So we don't know if it was a bad address or just bad luck. He had been to church before so hopefully he will show up and we will be able to talk to him there.

Also, Elder Priest is playing the piano for an easter musical number tomorrow, so I got roped into singing a duet. Life lesson, take piano lessons.

We also had a national holiday on March 15th, so everyone was celebrating. The nice thing about missions is we get twice as many holidays to celebrate. For the rest of our lives.

I can't think of much else to write. Have a great week!

Love

Elder Parkinson

Line upon Line

First off, congrats to Hannah!

This week was awesome, we started it out with splits on Tuesday with the Miskolc Zone Leaders who are super awesome, we had a great day and found a couple of people we can hopefully go back to. There was one cool younger guy who let us in and we talked about the Book of Mormon, it went well, but I didn't think it was going great. We then asked if we could say a prayer before we left, and he asked if he could say it. He then said an incredible prayer, saying God, you sent these two boys to my door with a book and a lot of faith, and you know I have been open to this kind of thing lately, I'm interested to see where this goes. So we will hopefully go back to him on Monday and see what happens.

 We then had our mission tour with Elder Leimer of the 70, that took almost all of our time Wednesday through Friday, it was super good. All of the Zone Conferences went well, the first two were very similar, but the third one ended up being very different, it was really cool to see Elder Leimer adapt what he taught based off of the needs of the missionaries and the spirit. It was a bit draining, I was really tired by the end, but it was awesome.

That took up almost all of our time and made me forget about basically everything else, so that's all. Have a wonderful week!

Love

Parkinson Elder

Another Busy Week in Budapest!

The work here is still going fairly slow, but we had a couple of people that we were able to find who will hopefully start investigating. We were on splits on Tuesday and after a full day of finding Elder Martindale and I streeted a guy at night near a metro station. He had headphones in, and so at first he didn't hear and kept going, but then realized we were trying to talk to him, turned around, and we were able to talk. We weren't able to say a lot on the street but are set up to meet with him on Tuesday, so that's exciting. Also, headphone technology is really annoying as a missionary. And what is worse is when we think they are just listening to music and start talking to them and then realizing they are actually on a phone call. Technology these days is crazy. But I guess we need it to do our family history work. Anyway, the same day the other Elders also ran into a girl that Elder Priest had given a Book of Mormon to last transfer on the street, she has been reading it and taking notes, and now wants to meet. 

We will be having a mission tour next week by a member of the 70 so that should be awesome. We will be having 3 different Zone conferences and an MLC, so it will be busy.

We were able to go meet with a Serbian member family that I knew from when I was here last year, that was a lot of fun. When we were sharing the spiritual thought we had them read aloud a scripture in Serbian, and then we talked about it in Hunglish. They all speak 5 languages, it's crazy.

I honestly can't think of much else to write, but Elder Priest looks like he's writing a big long letter so if your still following him he might have more interesting stuff to say.

Also, it's strange that now when I introduce myself and talk about my family I can no longer say that half of my siblings on on missions as well. Maybe if they lower the age again David can get out before I come home. Or I could extend for 3 years...

Love

Parkinson Elder