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Alaska Fighting Palm Trees: Round 3

Hey everyone this was a pretty good week!!

First off, transfers happened and I am going to kick it up here in Cluj for yet another transfer, but this time with an old buddy of mine. If you have been following my past emails, you would know that Alaska Fighting Palm Trees was a thing with my good friend Elder Kemeny. Well, we are going at it again for a 3rd transfer and this time it's gonna be even better!!!

I also want to apologize to everyone for the lack of an email last week. We actually had MLC up in Budapest yesterday and was not able to email anyone until today, so here we are!!!

We made sure to not let Easter take the most of us and we still worked hard to get the work going. Probably the biggest success was with Robert. It took great planning, prayer to God, and in depth study to know what we needed to do with him to help him get on the path towards baptism. Now, because of all that, he has a baptismal date for May 25th and Elder Kemeny and I are super excited to work hard with him to get him baptized on that date. There will be struggles for sure, he has his problems and concerns, and we definitely need to help him be prepared even more than he is now; but he has a great desire to be baptized and really wants to follow God and even with his concerns, he is on the right path and it's exciting! He's a great guy and I think he will be the baptism that sparks the flame here in the west!!

We did a lot of member work this week, including active members and returning members. We met with Emil again and we shared with him the talk from Elder Holland about the importance of the sacrament. We're really trying to make the sacrament an important feature in his life and he's starting to really understand that. He went to Arad this week to visit some friends and he went to church over there which made us pretty happy. Now we really want to focus on setting weekly goals for him to continue to improve on a weekly basis, not just a once in a while basis. We also had a missionary meeting with Vasile and talked about what we could do to improve the missionary work here in Cluj and we had some good discussions. We still want to continue to meet at a more consistent basis with him to help him feel more involved in the branch and in the work. He's another one of those members we want to have a weekly plan for to continue the growth process at a weekly basis. It should be good in the future as we try better to have weekly goals for our members, just like we do with the people we are teaching.

I have recently been loving the verse Moroni 8:16..."Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man can do for perfect love casteth out all fear." We should not be afraid of what man can do to us, because we are stronger than the natural man if we turn to Christ and look unto Him. If we do so, we will doubt not and we will fear not. I know God loves us and He wants us to overcome the adversary, that's why he gave us the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the fullness of truth. It is our part to use that to our advantage and to destroy the adversary as a lion devours beasts of the fields. So let us wield the sword of the Spirit and vanquish the foe! I love you all and I hope that this week is a great one!!

Va iubesc,
Elder Bowen



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