Hello!! This week has been so great!!!!
I was finally able to watch General Conference!!! YAY!!! We had to schedule time in to do it during the week, but we were able to watch all of the sessions throughout the week (although this included a conference marathon on Sunday... 4 1/2 hours straight!) and it was SO worth it! I hope all of you were able to listen to the guidance from our living prophets and apostles! I know that I came away from conference spiritually rejuvenated and rededicated to be a better person! I enjoyed the entire thing (it was seriously SO GOOD), but some favorite moments included:
-M. Russell Ballard's talk on families (I loved that families were such a theme in this conference.)
-"Our missionary experiences have to be current." -David F. Evans
-Jeffrey R. Holland's amazing talk about mercy
-Dieter F. Uchtdorf's amazing talk (also about mercy): "Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." "The Savior can forgive who he pleases; of us, it is required that we forgive all men. Including ourselves!"
I didn't have time last week to really give you all a great overview of Szeged or the missionaries here (also, I actually didn't know all that much still... I hadn't even been here for a week when I last wrote). So, here are some quick summaries:
Szeged
-Beautiful little city in southern Hungary. Actually, my last week's description (comparing it to Disneyland) is not half bad :P I invite you to refer to that :D And maybe Google or Wikipedia it if you're really curious :P
Missionaries
-Sister Papritz. Seriously super super cool. She is 24, going home in two transfers. She is from Oregon. Graduated from nursing school when she was 21 and has been working as a trauma nurse ever since. She never wanted to serve a mission, but when she was praying about whether or not to go to grad school, she thought she might as well throw "mission" in as an option (fully expecting a "no" from Heavenly Father). However, she recieved the answer that she should serve a mission (she was horrified at first), but arranged everything in her life to come. She and three of her siblings ended up serving missions at the same time. She says now that the mission is the best thing she has ever done in her entire life :D We were basically insta-friends and we have been having so much fun while working here together!
-The elders. Beaumont Elder and Moffett Elder. They are the Zone Leaders for South-Eastern Hungary. They are way cool. From Canada and Idaho Falls respectively. We have had a lot of fun with them on our P-Days together. P-Day adventures from the past couple of weeks include shopping (our whole district loves fashion :D), hamburgers, playing at a park (with a crowd of Hungarian boys who spun us around on this satellite shaped toy), roller-skating (we rented roller skates and went zooming around Szeged and then around this cool speed-skating track), whipping on the Tisza (where this random Hungarian guy popped out of the woods and proceeded to put on a crazy awesome whipping show, including whipping behind his back and jumping over the whip), a giant sajt night (a Hungarian mission tradition that basically entails making homemade mozzarella sticks and then dipping them in various sauces (example, bbq sauce, thousand island dressing, pesto, etc.) and eating them. Even though it is "tradition", I had never actually participated in before (my trainer was lactose intolerant, so it makes sense), so I have been going my whole mission with the misconception that sajt night (which rhymes- shite night, and means cheese night) was just plain slices of cheese grilled or something. Thankfully I was wrong :P), and many more to come. We also had an amazing district meeting with them and the Adamses, where we had some training and talked about goals for the transfer. We talked about the transforming power of faith and I had a thought that I would like to share: Faith doesn't change your circumstances, it changes YOU! And then you can go and change your circumstances! (And find immense joy in that journey of change!)
-The Adamses. They are a senior couple, sent here in August to open a young adult center for members and investigators. I actually met their youngest son in the MTC, as he was preparing for a mission to Texas (small world!). Sister Adams asked me to make sure that I told my mom that I had a proper Easter dinner (hosted by them this past Sunday... ham, potatoes, the whole shebang :D).
Ward (well, actually it is a still a branch. ALMOST a ward, though!):
There are about 55 active members. We have a super strong young population, due to this being a college town. It is so cool to see young Hungarians standing for what they believe.
Investigators
Sister Papritz and I are actually building up the investigator pool again, after she dropped a lot of investigators the week before I came. It is a switch from Kispest, where I had just finished building up a super strong investigator pool (meaning we met with a lot of people every week), but I don't mind! We actually have a zone consecration week this week, which basically just means that, as a zone, we have a goal of each companionship trying to initiate a gospel conversation with three hundred people this week! It is the perfect goal to push our companionship to really talk to a lot of people about our message and hopefully find some that are interested! The investigators that carried over from before, though, are way cool. We have quite a few college-aged investigators (probably about half of our investigators), which is so sweet!
Anyways, I hope that all gives you a slightly better picture of my life here in Szeged! There are probably about a million other things I could write about, but I'll leave it at that for this week :) I will try to send pictures next week (out of time for now, sorry!)
Love you all!
McKenna aka Kramer Nővér
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