Monday 27 June 2016

Hey!

Hi!

A week has passed in Pécs. On Monday I gave away my first Book of Mormon and this week we gave away five of them. On Tuesday we went to Budapest for zone conference. It was about how to be like Jesus. For lunch we ate Subway sandwiches like the ones Miguel makes in Toronto, hahaha. By the way, on the way there I found a 2000 forint bill on the street. :) Miguel sent me a list of people he knows in Pécs and
we met Niki and Lili (investigators) on Wednesday. They were nice and even gave us chocolate biscuits. Along the way, I saw a minaret in Pécs. I am not sure if one can go up. We went to the Zsolnay quarter and it was very nice.

Thursday was very hot: 40 degrees Celsius. Aunt Gizi (in Hungary the older ladies are called "nénik" or aunts) invited us for lunch of fruit soup and pizza.
We read to her a talk from the Liahona and she said that next Sunday she will come to church. We also met János, the chorister of the branch. We felt sorry for him because he is quite sick, but still played the drums and read the Book of Mormon with us. We taught English classes and it went well. On Friday, we had a meeting and President Makkai, our branch president, read to all the missionaries the Facebook message Miguel sent him about me hahaha. The people here in Pécs are really very nice.

Tuesday 21 June 2016

Greetings from Pécs

A lot of things happened in the last week:
 
Friday: This was my last trip to the temple. Since Hungary does not have a temple, it won't be until 2018 when I will have the chance to go again.

Saturday: My last day of classes at the MTC.


Sunday: Last day
at the MTCAt sacrament meeting I gave a talk on faith and the atonement, my last formal talk at church in English for the next two years. I also taught the priesthood class.

Monday: I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and got on the bus at 5:00. My companion and my MTC friends came to say goodbye. Then we took a train and a bus to the Salt Lake City airport.
From there we flew to Minneapolis, then to Amsterdam, and finally to Budapest. Before the flights, I was able to call home which was great. On the flight to Amsterdam all of us missionaries sat together and the time passed quickly. I did not sleep much but I did not get sick either. :)

Friday 10 June 2016

Last Week in the MTC

Hello everyone!

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIGUEL!!!

I'm doing great here in the MTC. Hopefully all the photos and videos went through OK. A lot has happened here over the past week.

Time is flying by so fast. Every day this week has seemed so quick. For TRC we are teaching Patricia. She's an amazing lady and a golden investigator, so to say. She reads all the pamphlets and scriptures we give her plus way more. Patricia is super easy to talk to and we have great discussions. It's pretty cool because in addition to the regular lessons, we got into deeper questions like science vs religion, how God has shown glimpses of truth to people all over the world (eg. Buddha, Mohammed), why the apostasy was so long and what happened to the good people then, and near-death experiences. Thanks so much Mama for all our discussions late at night! They helped a lot with answering her questions.

During our first lesson, we were planning to talk about the Restoration, but because Patricia was talking a lot about life after death, we did lesson 2: The Plan of Salvation on the spot instead. It was really cool teaching on the fly, with no pamphlets. But it went really well and the message really comforted her. When we talked about the spirit world, we renamed spirit prison spirit school 'cause it's a place of learning, not a prison! We're also teaching Samson and he's a great guy. It's super cool how sometimes we go over something in class, such as role playing invitations to go to church, and then talking about that during TRC lessons. Also, Patricia and Samson were invited to be baptized, and they said that if they get answers from God that our teachings are true, then they will accept, which is awesome! Even though I'm teaching in English, not Hungarian, it's still good because I get to learn tons of teaching skills. I'm pretty comfortable teaching lessons now and TRC is one of the highlights of my day.

Friday 3 June 2016

MTC Week 1

Hello everyone!

First off I'm gonna write about what I did this week before answering questions y'all wrote.

This week sure has gone by fast. Lots of classes and teaching. I sent a schedule, so that you could have an idea of how much time I spend where. Basically a ton of classes and study and a little bit of time for everything else. I'm no a tie tying pro and each week in the MTC I use a different tie. I can iron too now, so all's good in the hood. I can get around the MTC easily now. It's really quite small, but every building looks the same.

On Sunday we watched a talk called “Character of Christ” by Elder Bednar which was super good. It's about how in hard times we would normally turn inwards and complain, but Christ would turn outwards and help others. It was a great talk and it made me want to be more like Christ. I'm also in the MTC choir and we are practicing a new song called “One by One” by Elder Bednar. Next week he's gonna come which is gonna be awesome! On Tuesday night there was a devotional with Elder Bennett of the Seventy. I was in the choir and you can probably see me singing "Sweet Hour of Prayer" if that devotional is available online. I looked at the camera a bit and smiled haha.

We have something called TRC where we teach investigators. Some of them are legit, but a lot are members. They all get paid, so it's not too realistic, but still it's a good experience. We have Austin, who is a Baptist and I think is legit. Our very first lesson was kinda shaky as we talked about the Restoration, but the 2nd time we had a more low-key, Bible study sort of discussion where we read 2 Nephi 31 together. It went really well and the next lesson we taught him the plan of salvation. He was kinda surprised by all the Biblical references of the plan of salvation we gave him. So it's going really well with him. I'm pretty sure our other investigator, Catherine, is a member by the way she answers questions. Still it's a good experience and we've taught her the first two lessons already. My teaching is improving a lot and sometimes words just come into my mouth as I talk. They have cameras in the room so our instructors are watching us haha. One time I'm gonna give the camera a thumbs up and a wink. We gave them both Book of Mormons, so now my count is at 3.

My teachers are Sister Bain and Sister Allred. They're great. We read 1 Nephi 2 together and discussed how Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem for the wilderness is kinda like missionaries leaving their homes for two years to serve the Lord. I can basically substitute Nephi's name with mine in 1 Nephi 2:16.