The Sound of Music

First off, Happy Birthday David! I hope you had a good one.

We had a great week, a lot of it was full with our investigator who is trying to quit alchohol. We met with him almost every day, he gave me a call on Wednesday and told me he had quit, but that only lasted a few days. He is doing better now then he was though. Also, one program we went to the branch house and showed him around before the lesson, he asked us if he could play the organ.So we let him go for it, it turns out he is and incredible organ player. We sung a hymn to start our lesson and at the end he went and played it on the organ with no practice. And he is self taught and was a little drunk at the time.

We also had stake conference yesterday, over half the country was there, it was awesome to see members, missionaries, even some old investigators that showed up. We also had two seventies come and give great talks, and the stake president was incredible as usual. We were all kind of hoping that the seventies would announce a second stake, or build a temple, or something else really big, but I guess great doctrinal instruction will have to cut it.

We also had another great Zone Training on Wednesday, it was about leadership, and about how we are all leaders. I have learned a lot about that on my mission, how the leadership structure of his church is perfectly established, and so if we all do our part, and lift where we stand, his will will get done. And if we don't do our part then his will will get done anyway but we won't get the spiritual growth and added conversion that comes from helping in it. Also, we made a lot of analogies to Captain Moroni and his army, and so we made another title of liberty. We were wondering what President Szabadkai's reaction would be when Elder Anderson ripped his shirt off, he smiled and took a picture. Love that man.

Also, we should be having a baptism next week, a lady the other Elders are teaching. Her son will be coming down from England to baptize her as well, so it should be awesome.

I can't think of much wlse, although I know a lot of stuff happened. We cut some more wood for a lady in the ward. It finally got cold.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love

Parkinson Elder

Captain Moroni

Dear Family,

This was a long week, I'll try to remember it all. We had a couple of good programs with members at the beginning of the week, one of them was 1.5 hours out by bus and we missed our stop but we made it eventually and they both went great. We were able to share a great thought with them, I highly reccomend it for any missionaries going to a place with kids, especially if they might be going home soon and have extra shirts (Elder Anderson goes back in a few weeks). We read about Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty, and as I read Elder Anderson ripped his shirt off (he had another underneath), wrote out the Title of Liberty on it, and tied it to a broomsitck. All the kids loved it. 2 shirts down.

We also had another great MLC on leadership, we watched the Bible video on John 21 as part of it, I liked it a lot, especially thinking of Elder Hollands talk on the subject. I think he gave that talk right when they changed the mission age. I think we are all like Peter in some ways, where we want to stick with our old ways and just go fishing. Christ gives a very simple alternative. Follow thou me.

We had a sweet program yesterday, a family we tracted into last week, the 7 year old cousin was over, his dad is athiest, and so the kid said at the begenning that God doesn't exist. Then Elder Anderson basically had a conversation with him that was almost word for word Ammon and King Lamoni, the kid was so cute, he loved it. And his dad came over at the end, he asked if we came there every week and said he'd bring his kid back next time we're there. And the lesson with the rest of the family went super well too.

We were able to meet again with the man we met with the big drinking and smoking problems. And we talked with him on the phone a lot. He has almost finished the Book of Mormon, loves it, but is still very addicted and the doctors say he could die anytime if he doesn't quit.

Also, word on the street is Hungary just beat Norway twice in a row in soccer to qualify for the world cup. We saw some Norwegians in viking hats last night on the way to the match.

Love

Parkinson Elder

PS  Finally some pictures for you:

​Elder Lawrence and I about a month ago, we went up to little village on P-day.

Thanks for the cake!

​Just in case Hungarian wasn't hard enough, we have old Hungarian. If anyone can correctly translate it I'll be very impressed (yes, that was a challange).

Long Week

Dear Family,

This might have been the week on my mission we the least amount of
actual teaching going on. All of our old investigators (not that we
had a lot) seemed to be not answering their phones or busy, and all of
our new potentials dogged us. We did have an awesome let in yesterday
with a family that we set up with again for next Sunday so if that
goes through it will make up for all of it.

We also got to go on splits with the Érd Elders, I was with Elder
Santander, I think he is the first missionary to ever come to Hungary
from South America, he is from Chile. It was incredible to see his
example, working to learn Hungarian from English, which he is still
working on learning as well. So no more excuses for me to compain
about the language.

We also had the Primary Program this week in chruch. It went super
well, we have a lot of kids here and they were all super cute. Some of
the little talks and testimonies were awesome. One of the little 3
year old girls had a little cheat sheet for her talk, it had four
pictures, Jesus, scriptures, Joseph Smith, and the church. It was a
great talk.

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

Love
Parkinson Elder

PS  A quick note I thought the bird lovers might enjoy. My birthday
morning we found a pigeon flopping around on our balcony. It looked
like it was freezing to death, possibly had a broken wing. We decided
to try and rescue it (because pigeons are just a subspecies of doves
which represent the Holy Ghost and we had just talked about trying to
follow the spirit better so this seemed symbolic). So we put it in a
box inside with water and some bread. By the time we started comp
study it was dead. We think it snapped it's neck flying into our
window. And according to the pigeon expert in the mission that we
called up he might have been dead the whole time. Pigeons flap around
after death. Which I guess is good because we aren't alowed to have
pets.

Love
Elder Parkinson

Humility and Happy Birthday!

Dear Family,

This was a long week, at the beginning all of our programs with investigators kept canceling, which was a little frustrating, but it worked out in the end. We did have a couple of good programs with a recent convert women and a les active man. One of them worked out especially well, the women has a 2 year old daughter and we brought a member who had two daughters that he brought with him. So they were able to play in the corner while we were able to focus on the lesson (mostly, the two year old has a lot of energy). 

We also had one really cool program yesterday. Sunday after church we got a call from a man we had met streeting a week ago. It had been right after the Halloween party here and we only had 45 minutes before 9 and that late at night we didn't expect much, but we met a man named Victor who said he would be interested, he didn't know his phone number by memory so we gave him ours and hoped he would call. I had given up hope by Sunday (people rarely call us), but Sunday he called and we went and met him at a bus stop. We taught him about the restoration, he has searched many different churches in his life, but never found his place, and right now he is at a very low place in life, he told us he's out of money, addicted to alchohol and smoking. Really wants to change. We have a long way to go with him but he said he believes what we say and wants to get baptized. It reminded be a lot of Alma 32, being in humble circumstances and ready to hear the word.

We also got to go on splits with Pest, I was with Elder Stanley who is now in his second transfer, it was a lot of fun, and I got to see a new side of the city.

Also, I don't think I've mentioned yet but it's really nice having a companion who can cook. Now that it was bad living off of potatoes and pasta, but some variety is nice. I'll have to steal some of Elder Anderson's recipies and make you all some nice Hungarian food when I get back. Keep planting paprika. And buy a pig we can slaughter.

Well I didn't think I had much to say but that ended up being pretty long. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. And Happy birthday to Tom up in Norway!

Love

Parkinson Elder

Happy Halloween!

It was a very busy week last week, we had a lot of stuff going on. On Wednesday we had Zone Training which went really well, and then we went on splits with the Buda Elders, I was with Elder Lee (old companion from Kaposvár), so that was a lot of fun. We were able to find a cool new investigator tracting too, an older man, before I even finished saying my name he told us to come in. "I don't know who you are or what you want but I'm sure I'll find out." When we told him we were missionaries he said he was athiest, but was open to the idea that that could change. The hardest thing was trying to stay focused, he had so many questions. I kept having to use the we'll talk about that later card. But we'll head back tomorrow to continue.

Some other fun tracting things. A dog that was at least 200 pounds. He could have eaten Splash. I think it was half wolf and half elephant. We also got let in by a nice lady soon after that - blessings for not being scared away. We also had a young guy open the door in a robe (not bathrobe, think old Christian monk). We interrupted a feast to the Celtic gods. But we got his number and he said we can come back.

We also got to do some service chopping wood for one of the other Elder's investigators. That was a nice little workout.

We had a ward halloween party on Saturday. Halloween is not Hungarian, but they are picking it up, especially in the church because all the missioanries love it. And we had it a week early because Buda is having one next week. That was fun, we had a good show up and some investigators showed up. We also got to take part in the pumpkin carving contest.

That's about it, life is great. I've been thinking a lot about how God helps us in this work. It's interesting, because as he directs us it's not neccesarily just to spread the gospel. It's about building us. God is perfectly capaple of spreading the gospel (see Mosiah 27 for details), but he is helping us to become the best we can. And while we're at it we get the blessing of being able to help others. That's really what the whole church is about.

Thanks for the letters! And once again have a wonderful week!

Love

Parkinson Elder

Tracting and Stuff

So I feel like my subjest line is really lame because both my siblings have awesome identical Nephi quote's in theirs. Anyone else notice that? It'll have to do.

This was busy but good. I guess those two are usually related. On Wednesday we got to run over to the other side of the river for Mission Leadership Conference, it was my first time at one of those so that was pretty cool. We also went on splits with the AP's right after that, so I had an oppourtunity to be back in Buda for a day. A lot of fun and I learned a lot as well. We now need to plan out Zone Training for next week, this will be the first time I've taught one of those. We have a really sweet Zone though, I have 3 old companions here (Elders Craig, Martineau, and Lee), which is half of my old companions that are still out here.

This week went really well, we ended up with more programs then we expected, mostly from some good success tracting. One interesting one last night, two Jehovah's Witnesses (they were still very open though) who had been drinking (not too much, but a little) and their athiest communist roommate. We ended up giving the 2 a Book of Mormon and they said we can come back, the third is not interested and moving soon anyway.

We also got a suprise new baptism date.He has been meeting with the missionaries for a while and we actually both knew him from Buda, but he called us up and we met, basically we asked him why he hasn't been baptized, he didn't feel ready, we talked about it and he said the spirit struck him and that he wants to get baptized as soon as possible. So we set a date for November 7th, but he didn't come to church so we'll see. That was a really cool program though. Whenever an investigator tells you the spirit just told them to get baptized it's a good day.

We also went and tried to meet all of our neighbors (advice for President Szabadkai), so we went and knocked on all their doors and introduced ourselves and made some no bake cookies. It was really wierd for both of us knocking on doors and trying to be normal people. I'm definetly going to be an awkward RM when I get back. It went pretty good, most of the people didn't really say a lot, but one couple might have us over for dinner at some point.

Have a great week! Enjoy daylight savings!

Parkinson Elder

Big City Life

So I'm back in Budapest, my area is the south half of Pest, but we get the main part of the city as well, so our area has about a million people. Which is about 15 times bigger then Eger. I like it a lot, I enjoy big city life, all of the people on the streets, having more then just concrete Russian buildings to tract. Although I'll be honest, I've come to love those concrete Russian 10 stories. It's super cool having a ward here too, I had my fisrt mission correlation meeting in 3 months, and we had a lot of people in church, with the sacrament being passed by all young men. And we have a ton of little kids in this ward to, it was so loud in sacrament meeting, I love it.

We also got to see the last session of general conference, they played it at church for the 2nd and third hours. All the talks were really good, I feel bad for the guy that had to translate ponderizing. That was a really good talk, and I also liked Elder Bednars. It's wierd thinking how many apostles have died during my life time. It's also wierd thinking that President Monson has been around since before Mom and Dad's lifetimes. So many great people.

So I'm serving here with Elder Anderson, this is his last transfer before he heads back home. We have pretty similar lives, he was born in the big city (Vegas), moved to Nebraska when 1, and then moved to Idaho about the same time we did. Except for he lives in Burley. Isn't that Grimsey's home town? Anyway, he's a great missionary and we should have a great transfer.

Also, there are four of us here in Kispest, us and Elder Beaumont who is training Elder Stephens, the one Tom mentioned in his letter a few weeks ago with a twin in Norway. So it's a small world.

We don't have a lot of investigators here, so we are hoping to get that up. I like finding here though. The only down side is that we have to spend a bit of time travelling to get to the main city where we do a lot of our work. Back to public transport. Unlike Eger where we could walk anywhere in 30 minutes or less. Also, it's definetly starting to get colder. Luckily suit coat season starts in 3 days.

Love

Elder Parkinson