Iowa to Romania

Hey y'all what's cookin?? This was a really good week over here! I know I say that basically every week, but I really do mean it. I just came out of the week feeling really accomplished and that we have a lot going for us this next week. We've been trying hard to have as many lessons possible and we had this really great lesson with Robert. He's struggling with understanding the Book of Mormon and how to be on the right path. This lead to a very inspired lesson all about Moroni 7. We read with him and had him ask questions after verses that didn't make that much sense. So we went through and he was asking questions and we were answering them with the upcoming verses in the chapter. It was super great and the spirit was super strong and he left feeling very refreshed and excited to read the Book of Mormon again. We also have been trying from the Area Book and found this guy named Bobi, who met with the missionaries years ago. He's a young guy studying medicin...

Hey guys, this was a killer week over here in the great country of Romania! This was a pretty good week! It felt super short because I wasn't in Cluj the entire week, but it was good overall. We have been really focusing on strengthening our investigators by following up and keeping daily contact with them. It's been extremely evident with Gabriel how it's impacted him. He just entered into the Book of Enos now and he came to church once again! This time he wore a suit and button up shirt and that was super awesome to see. He's struggling, however, with his trust in God and believing that God truly loves him. Because of that, he has been distancing himself from us and that's been kind of rough to handle. But we will still pray for him and continue to look for opportunities to serve him. The daily contact has also been huge for Robert. He is reading in 2 Nephi and even though he doesn't understand everything, he knows he needs to read and pray to receive an a...

Hey everyone!! This was a great week for us here in Cluj-Napoca! For starters, transfers happened and Elder Stark and I are staying for another transfer together! I'm super stoked and we are going to get even more work done than we did this transfer so I'm pumped!!! Also found out that Elder Kemeny will be coming to be my Zone Leader buddy so it'll be a great reunion for us!!! Well this week was a huge bounce-back week for us here in Cluj. We came in with an end-of-the-transfer, get work done feeling and it went great! We hit the finding grind hard to begin the week and that resulted in some great lessons at the end of the week, which led to us finally getting someone to church. Everything just seemed to go right this week with people and it was awesome! I have no words to describe the joy I felt when Gabriel not only came to church, but also played the missionary role and is bringing his mother and grandmother to church with him next time. I have no words to describe o...

Hey everyone this was a pretty great week here in Cluj! Romaniacs! This was a really good week here in Cluj. We had lot of opportunities to work with people and have lessons and to interact with other missionaries in the process. So we have been continually working with Gabriel and this week we had a really big focus on the commandments, especially keeping the Sabbath Day and the Word of Wisdom. And he was really into everything and he wanted to keep them and once again he promised to come to church. And to make sure he came to church, we went to his house on Saturday and had a lesson with him there. All went great and we thought he was coming to church. But out of the blue on Sunday, he told us he needed a break and that he didn't want us to call or text him anymore and that he will initiate the conversation if he wanted to meet. So that was a really hard way to end the week, but that is how it goes. We have tried our 100% best to help him and if it's not the right time,...

Elders Dahl, Stark, Bowen, Landon Hey everyone!! This was one of those awesome weeks for us here in Cluj-Napoca! We were able to have many lessons with people and when we didn't have lessons, we had great finding activities and that led to finding more and more friends. Probably the best part of this week was that we had a lesson with a great guy named Alexandru. We met him while walking on the street and doing contacting by the way towards the church. We stopped him and he expressed how he loved singing at church so we invited him to church. Unfortunately, he was out of town but we eventually set up a lesson with him and it was super awesome! We were teaching the Restoration and that led to a super spiritual discussion with him. He discussed how he got on the path towards God and everything he was sharing was something that related to our lives and we shared our experiences with the Gospel blessing us and helping us know of God's love for us. That brought the Spirit...

This week was a really interesting, but great week. For me, it was spent mostly outside of Cluj, but we still did great work wherever we were. We've still been working hard to work with Gabriel, our man on baptismal date, and it's been good/bad. He is continuing to read the Book of Mormon and a Gospel Principles book and is really liking it, but he has been pretty flaky as well. He's been making excuses to not come to lessons or to church and when we asked him if we could visit him at his place, he was very against the idea. We hope that this week is better and that we can sit down with him and reset our expectations, especially with coming to church. He has good desires, but I don't know if he is looking for the eternal perspective. We also are working with Robert, the miracle man. He is a very open person, and he is willing to pray to find the truth. We hope that this week we can continue to help grow his faith and trust in God. Other than that, we haven'...

Hey everyone this was an AWESOME week!!!!!!!! Splits in Sibiu! Even with some lessons falling through, we worked hard and we were able to see the fruits of our labors and those fruits were the greatest things I have ever tasted. What was great was that we continued our hot streak of talking to people and yet again, we didn't have a single day under 10 conversations. We just talked with everyone and we were persistent as well with these people. That lead to us finding 7 new friends this week, and at least one new person every single day. Needless to say, the Spirit was strong with us and that led to so many miracles and fire moments for us. I would like to share a few of those with you. The first that I want to share is about a man named Robert. I met Robert on Friday on our exchange with Sibiu while we were walking to the church building. I saw him in the distance and felt a strong prompting to talk to him. So I did and we starting having a really good conversation. He was ...