Another good week bites the dust. Tomorrow I hit my 6 month mark! It's been quite an interesting ride so far, but I'm excited to see what opportunities the next year and a half bring.

The weather is cooling down which is an incredible blessing. It's not too fun to go out and tract when it's 100+ degrees outside and very humid, so I'm very excited about the weather cooling down!

We were able to offer a few priesthood blessings this week, which is always incredible. I'm so grateful for the great gift of the priesthood. We visited an old English man named Edward Penn. He's been homebound for years and lives with a Hungarian caretaker. He doesn't speak much, or any, Hungarian so he and his caretaker can hardly communicate. His wife died years ago and he's been in this state for quite some time. I imagine he gets awfully lonely, so it's always great to be able to go and visit him. We went with an American member in the ward and brought a spiritual message and left him with a prayer and a blessing. It was a beautiful experience and I'm grateful to have been able to go.

We also visited Brother Hughes this week. He's full of wisdom and a lot of great insights. He's an inactive member who joined the church a few years ago. He used to be a world class boxing judge but now he teaches English from his apartment here in Pest. He's going in for a surgery and we offered to give him a priesthood blessing for comfort and peace. He happily agreed and told us that he needed all the help he could get. I had the privilege of offering the blessing and it was a great experience.

Never before have I felt or seen any manifestation of power so great as I have through the use of the priesthood in my life. I remember on several occasions, asking my dad to lay his hands on my head to give me blessings of healing and comfort and I'm so grateful for those memories and experiences. I'll never forget when I was given the Melchizedek priesthood. I felt the love of my Heavenly Father pour into my body as those worthy men, each one a good friend of mine, laid their hands on my head and bestowed this great gift to me. I simply cannot deny the power that I felt that day. I'll never forget the first blessings I was able to give. I remember being terrified, walking into the bathroom to offer up a silent prayer for help. I felt peace and comfort as I laid my hands on the heads of my family members and spoke words of comfort to them. In no way am I trying to get praise through sharing these experiences, but rather I want to focus your attention on our loving Heavenly Father. He has given us this great gift, the priesthood, which when used righteously can bless our lives in ways that nothing else can. What a wonderful gift is the priesthood!

In other news, we were able to attend a fireside where some returned missionaries who served here 30 years ago when the country officially opened up for missionaries came and spoke to us. It was really cool to hear of their experiences and stories. Back then, they couldn't wear name tags, there were only 100 members or so, and they met in the apartment of the Elders!

This Sunday was pretty interesting. None of the members of the bishopric were able to attend, so the High Priest group leader conducted and presided. It was pretty interesting and I've never seen it happen before!

We also tracted into a house which said "Bomb Detection KFT" on the bell. When we rang, a few seconds later, the gate unlocked and opened, but nobody was there. A few seconds after that, a small man came out and started spouting Russian at us. Somehow, we gathered that he wasn't too happy to see us, nor was he interested in our message. It was really strange, but we laughed pretty hard about it.

We also accidentally locked our keys in the church building when nobody else was around. We were on our way home from tracting and I really had to use the bathroom (this seems to be a recurring theme of my mission...) and so we stopped in the church building to use it. I was in such a hurry to get to the bathroom that I threw my bag and the keys onto a table in the hallway. On our way out, I grabbed my bag... but it wasn't until we got all the way back to our apartment that I realized that I had left the keys on the table. Luckily, there was a light on in the building when we got back! A member, Tibor, had stopped in to grab some paperwork after we had left for home, and he happily let us in. It was a cool little tender mercy to see!

That's about all that I can think of for this week. It was a good one! I hope you all have a fantastic week as well. Remember to have faith, have hope, live like His Son, and help others on their way!

Sok szeretettel,

Burnett Elder

Hungarian word of the week is "űrhajo" which means "spaceship". "Űr" can mean void and "hajo" can  be ship or boat, so when I first read it I thought that they called them voidboats.