Iowa to Romania

Hey everyone!!! It was a pretty great week!!!! We had an awesome lesson this week with Szabolcs again and he's really moving along quite well. We met and he shared that he had read the first 11 chapters in the Book of Mormon already and we spent the lesson following up and answering his questions. He has a lot of questions of understanding and because of that, he has a desire to continue to read which has been awesome to see. He really wants to come to church, but is afraid because it is in Romanian and he is Hungarian. But once we reassured him that there are other members that speak Hungarian, he said he has no problem coming then. I hope we can get him to church and continue to teach him, hopefully about the Plan of Salvation next because that's where his questions have been leading him, but I have a great hope for the future. We are still focusing on working with members to find new people and helping them come to church and it's been really great. We are still ...

Hello all you happy people!!!! This was a really great week over here in Cluj. A lot of things have been happening for us as we are teaching our friends, finding new friends, helping our returning members come back, and helping fellow missionaries out on exchanges. We had a great opportunity to teach a guy named Szabolcs this week. He's from Romania, but his parents are Hungarian and he speaks Hungarian better than Romania. We had a good first lesson with him about the Restoration and he was asking great questions from the soul about many other aspects of the gospel, like the plan of salvation and the commandments. He was really open to learn and when we gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it, he gladly took it and wanted to read it. He has a busy schedule because he is a doctor, but we've been keeping good contact and it's been really great! We hope to keep meeting with him as much as possible and get him to church so his progression can continue. ...

Hey everyone!! This was a great week so listen up!! A photo from a kind couple who was visiting Cluj for a work conference. We are really trying to increase our teaching pool and to get the people we are already working with to progress more. Because of that we enjoyed having a few lessons and finding some really great people who are truly interested in our message. We have really been working hard with our man Robert as he is on the path towards baptism. We had a really important lesson about feasting upon the words of Christ and how doing so will help him quench the fiery darts and the mighty storm of the adversary. We focused on this because he was losing the spiritual refresh he always received in lessons and he wanted to have a way to retain that refresh he obtains in our lessons. So we taught him that studying the scriptures, prayer to Heavenly Father, and partaking of the sacrament are critical points in having the Spirit to be with us all the time. Unfortunately, he didn...

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 t...

Hey everyone, this was a great week and I hope you all enjoyed Easter!! Sadly I didn't, but I will this upcoming week (we celebrate it on Orthodox Easter, which is next week...) But that doesn't mean that this week wasn't awesome!! This was a super week for us in Cluj. It felt like a super slow week with finding people, but we were able to have some great lessons with people and saw the progression in many people. We succeeded in having a great Easter lesson with a guy named Catalin, the same guy that was in McDonald's the week before. He was so into the message and he really wanted to share the message with his friends. He's still trying to find a person to share it with, but it's super cool to see that he actually wants to share it with people. And he wants to meet as well this week so I'm excited to see his progression moving forward. We also had a great lesson with a guy named Tudor. He came to church a few weeks ago and we finally had our schedules ...

This was a great week for me. In a nutshell, the week can be described as one word: Always. Always be ready to share your testimony, always be positive and cheerful, always have a prayer in your heart, always see the good in the world, let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly (always), always be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I saw this week as I did these things, miracles happened and many great and marvelous things came to pass. One of the great ones was our English student Bogdan. He expressed a desire to learn more about our church so we met with him after English Tuesday. We taught a short Restoration with a focus on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It wasn't anything complicated, but we testified that it will bless his life and help him find purpose as well. He loved it, accepted a Book of Mormon and then proceeded to come to church on Sunday. He really enjoyed it and now we have a good relationship. We then had a couple miracles on Saturday while doing our regular missio...

Hey everybody, awesome week, full week, happy Elder Bowen :) We have had some great lessons and moments while helping our friends come closer to Christ. Gabriel is back on his high point and watched General Conference even though he was sick and he absolutely loved it. He watched the Sunday Morning Session when President Nelson spoke and he absolutely was touched. He truly felt the Spirit and we let him know that those good, peaceful feelings were from the Spirit. He has a testimony of the prophet and I think this will be a stable part of his progression and his desire to be baptized. But we really want to let him know that he must be in this for the long haul, not just to say he was baptized. That will really be the kicker and we will see how that goes when we meet with him this week. We also had another great General Conference experience with Robert. We had a lesson actually today and we watched President Nelson's talk as well and it was so perfect for him. He is starting to...