Third of the way....(eek!)

What is up everybody!!  It was a super crazy and good week for us this last week.  We were able to get our transfer calls this morning and I am staying in Győr and will be getting Elder Smith as my next companion!  He was in my zone my 1st transfer so I know him a bit (we were always on the same trains together) but I do not know a ton about him.  I just know he is a genius and that he likes football so I think that we are going to get  along just fine.  I am sad to not be able to serve with Elder Ure anymore but after 8 months in Győr he was ready to go somewhere else.  He will be going to Pest with his old MTC companion and he is really excited. I am excited to do some more work in Győr this transfer, the work here has really been picking up.

We were able to get 7 new investigators this last week and were able to meet with a lot of the investigators we got the last few weeks. We have started to meet with a guy that the sisters found about 4 months ago ( I think while streeting)  and for the last 4 months he has been coming to church on a consistent basis,  My first transfer I thought he was the sisters investigator but apparently he was not even meeting with them.  One day I decided to talk to him and just asked him straight up if he wanted to be baptized because he comes to church so much.  He said he was not ready to be baptized but that he actually lives in our area and wanted to start meeting with us.  We had a really solid teaching with him a few days ago.  The bible and Jesus are a huge part in his life.  He loves how he feels in church and he is reading what we assign him in the Book of Mormon.  We are going to try to get him on a baptism date this week and hope to be able to get him baptized in the next little bit.  We were also able to find two really cool families this last week and each of them want to come to church this next week which would be really amazing!   We also are going to start meeting with this guy that is from Nigeria that actually is neighbors in the same apartment building as our investigator Aziz from Ethiopia ( so we are really excited to meet with him).  The work here is definitely moving forward and I am so excited for two more months of work here.

We were also able to go on splits this last week in Budapest with the assistants.  That was so cool being able to do some work in that really cool city.  I was able to work with Elder Heaps and it went super well.  We were able to get let in two times in a matter of like 20 minutes and almost got let in a 3rd time (I started to walk in the house and apparently, they did not want me to do that, haha).  I love going on splits as a zone leader because you get to learn so much from other missionaries.  I love you all so much, have a great week!!!! 

Gentry Elder

Great trainer and companionship!

Roland Baptism

It was really amazing being able to baptize Roland this week and give him the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was so cool and almost unreal at the same time; it is an experience that I will never forget. It was a really great baptismal service and hopefully it was able to strengthen Roland's testimony and we're excited to see him grow in the gospel. It was an amazing feeling knowing that this young boy was making a covenant with God, and that because of his decision to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized he will be able to make it back to return to live with Him someday. I am so excited to be able to give this opportunity to other people and to other families as well and it just makes me want to work harder to find and teach all those people that the Lord is preparing for us on a daily basis. We are going to keep on trying to get Roland's mom involved the best we can and hope that in the near future she will also want to enter the waters of baptism so that she can also receive eternal life. This is such an amazing work that we are involved in and it brings so much joy!  The confirmation the next day also went really well and a member from the Stake was actually there so that was a bit scary, haha.  

We were also able to meet with many of our other investigators as well this week. We were able to meet with a new investigator named János and our teaching with him went incredible. He actually found us on the internet and had seen us talking to people on the street and was very curious as to who we were and what we were doing. He did some research and actually called Elder Ure and asked when we could meet! We were able to speak about the Restoration of the Gospel and he is very curious and wants to meet more! We were also able to get 3 other new investigators this week and one them in particular is truly amazing. His name is Aziz and he is from Ethiopia.  He lives and works here in Hungary (he is actually a refugee) and is Muslim (but does not really practice). Both of his parents were killed and he has had a really hard life but is still so happy (when I was talking to him, I realized how blessed I am in my life and how much I take stuff for granted). We were able to testify about life after death and about God's Plan for us. We were able to give him a Book of Mormon in the Arabic language (he actually read from it to us and it was so cool) and he was so excited to read from it! We are going to keep meeting with him and I am excited to see his knowledge about Jesus Christ grow and become stronger.

We were also able to go on splits this last week in Tatabánya.  I was with Elder Willes from California.  We also had interviews this last week and it was really great being able to speak with President and hear his advice for how I can improve and be better.  

It was a really cool week and I am so grateful for Roland and his desire to follow Christ!  Now let’s do it some more!  ​

It was sooooooo cold!!!

It was a good week for us this last week.  Like I said in the title of my email, it was very, very cold and we actually were able to get a little bit of snow.  Just flurries in the air that you could barely see, but it was still snow, haha.  It was a little bit hard for us as we tried to call a lot of people to try to set up with them, and many of them did not answer.  Some did answer, however, and we were able to set up with them for this week.  We were able to meet with a couple of RCLAs this past week (one of which I had not met before) and the lessons went well.  Last Sunday one of the less actives we had been working with was actually able to come to church which was a really amazing thing to see.  We were also able to meet with a couple of our other investigators as well.

We were able to meet with Roland a couple of times this last week and he is doing really well in his progression toward baptism.  He was able to come to church yesterday and we were able to talk more about his baptism and how that is going to work.  I am really honored and excited because he asked me if I would be the one to baptize him and confirm him.  I am super-excited and a little nervous for the confirmation (Hungarian in front of the whole ward) but I know the spirit will help me and I am really excited for this super amazing opportunity!  He is very excited and I have the faith that he is going to stay and is going to make a great member here in Győr.

We were able to go on splits this last week with the assistants and the Elders from Tatabanya.  Both went very well and I was able to learn a lot.  I was able to serve with Elder Miller and it was really great learning from him and being able to incorporate the things that he does into my own work.  I was also able to work with Elder Leavitt this last week and was able to learn a lot from him.  I always love going on splits with him and talking about the good ol’ days in the MTC, good times, good times….It was super cool, so the other assistant, Elder Heaps is from Cache Valley.  He is a huge Utah State guy and knows some of the people that we do, like Dad’s coach that took us around in my visit for football and his stud son who plays basketball at USU (Jimmy & Jalen Moore).  Anyway, we found out that his great-grandpa, Marlo Woodward, was best friends with President Benson when they were kids and that they used to ride horses together to school (thought that was super-ironic that both of our great grandpas were buddies, haha).

We were able to give some service this past week at the old person home and also at this handicap home that the wife our bishop works at.  Both were super fun and at the handicap home, they all gave us their stuffed animals as a thank you for coming and hanging out with them, it was neat and a fun experience (when they heard that I played American football they all freaked out and started cheering, haha).  Last Pday we were able to go and learn how to cook stuffed cabbage at a member’s house and it was super fun.  It was funny because I was asked to give the closing prayer and the words together and each other are pretty close in Hungarian and I sometimes get them mixed up and I do not know why, but anyway I said that I was grateful that we could all eat each other for dinner and after the prayer the member was like we do not practice cannibalism here, it was pretty funny!  I also accidently dropped a bad word at the old person home because I was trying to say that Colorado was very dry, but the word dry is very close to another word derogatory for poop…and I said it and Elder Ure and Roland totally flipped out and started dying, so funny!  I felt bad, the old people were probably in shock, haha.  I corrected myself though.

We had a really amazing experience this last week.  We had just finished looking up some of the people that told us to come back in a building we were tracting a few weeks-ago.  No one was really interested and as we were taking our bikes off the lock outside of the apartment building, these two teenage boys started walking towards us.  I decided to start talking to them and started to have a really great conversation.  They are from Romania and they now live in a village outside of Győr.  They explained how their family used to be Orthodox Christians, I believe, but that now they do not practice that because they do not have a church like that where they live.  We were able to explain to them who we were and what we believed in and right then and there one of the teenage boys asked if he could join our church.  I was in total shock as well as was my companion.  We explained that we usually meet with people and explained what we believed and stuff like that.  They are so excited to meet with us and told us that their parents will also be interested as well.  They promised that they would come to church and I am really looking forward to be able to meet with them and give them the opportunity to accept the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I know the Lord is preparing people but we just have to open our mouths and be willing to find them.  I love being a missionary (oh, their names are Mark and David, been a while since I have heard those names together, haha).

Love you all, have a great week!!!

January 23

I do not have a ton of time but I will write as much as I can, here we go:

I gave my 1st zone training this week and I thought it went super well!  Elder Ure and I taught on the importance of repentance and how as missionaries we need to cleanse the inner vessel (ETB) and then once we have done that we need to constantly preach repentance to the world!  The coolest part about zone trainings and stuff like that is that the teacher is the one that learns the most and when I prepare for these things it gives me a really good chance to learn a ton!

Right after zone training we went to Sopron for splits.  I was with Elder Lowe from Washington.  He is in his 2nd transfer and is a total stud who literally speaks perfect Hungarian, it is crazy!  He is a hard-working, diligent missionary that I would love to serve with in the future.  Then we came back and had a good Thursday.  We kind of got dropped by a couple of investigators which was poopy but what can you do?  Our invitation is for people to find out for themselves if our message is true but they can only do so if they want to find out and if they make the effort.  They said they would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so I am hoping that they actually do that and that they can come to know that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth again!  Then we went we went on splits in Győr with the Szombathély elders (Elder Graham and Elder Fuchs). I was with Elder Fuchs who is a 1st transfer from North Germany that was called to serve in Russia but was reassigned to Hungary because they closed down the missions in Russia.  He is a really great missionary that speaks really great English, it was fun serving with him for a little bit. 

We met with Roland a couple times last week and he is doing well. His baptismal interview is going to be this Wednesday and we are really excited for that.  Elder Leavitt will be giving him that!  His testimony has really been growing and I am excited to see him keep progressing and growing in the gospel. We also were able to get a really great new investigator this week. One night we were tracting and we decided to do this one last building before going back to our apartment. We started to csengő (ring the bell) and nobody was interested and everyone was actually being quite rude to us, but we just kept going. Then this one lady stuck her head out of the window and told us that nobody was going to be interested in the apartment because she said she knew everybody and absolutely nobody would want to be bothered by us. We kindly told her that we were not trying to bother anyone and we kept on csengőing. Then this man came outside to go on a walk and told us that he would have loved to let us in the building but on his way down 3 different people told him that he should not let us in, so we kept csengőing. Elder Ure felt like he should switch the order of the csengőing so instead of going backwards, go forwards starting at 1. We did that for a few doors and finally these couple of ladies that were getting home let us into the apartment. We had 3 doors remaining (6,7,8) and we decided to go in and try them out. Number 6 did not answer but them number 7 did and it was actually someone that we had met before and who had actually come to English class. He let us in, we taught him about the Book of Mormon and Heavenly Father's love for us, and set up with him to go back tonight. He is really curious and wants to learn more. I am so glad we kept going and did not stop when the world told us that no one would be interested in what we were doing. It reminded me a lot of the great and spacious building in Lehi's dream and how everyone was thinking that what we were doing was silly and of no worth, but we knew what we were doing and why we were doing it, and we were able to be lead to someone that our Heavenly Father had prepared for us to teach. I know those people are always going to be out there and if we have the faith and the diligence then we will always be able to be lead to them. I love this work and I love being a missionary! 

I am excited for this upcoming week and for the opportunity I will have to keep finding those being prepared, I love you all so much!!! 

 A little fun on the ice!

Elder Gentry