Well it was a crazy week but I absolutely love it!

Well like the title of the email says it was a bit of a crazy week but I absolutely love it here in Buda.  I would compare this week to the first time I played varsity in football or basketball.  At first everything felt super-fast and I felt so overwhelmed but with time it got easier and I was able to manage it.  Let’s just say the first few days here were absolutely bonkers but things are starting to slow down a little bit now (but not really, haha).  

I got the transfer call on Tuesday that I would be going assistant in Buda.  So last Tuesday I packed a lot and prepared to head out by printing off pics that I wanted to give to members in the ward and writing notes, etc, we were also able to go to the boat for lunch which was nagyon finom (google it, haha – Google Translate was Very Fine).  It was so cool though because something absolutely amazing happened last Tuesday.  The family, the Dercséniék were nice enough to give us dinner before I was going to head out. So we eat dinner and it was super good, one of my Hungarian favorites, and after it the mom pulls us aside and tells us that her husband wants to start taking the lessons!  He had been talking with one of the members of the ward in secret and he had been giving him scriptures to read and stuff and he really wants to start to make a concentrated effort to meet with the missionaries.  We were able to have a really amazing lesson on Alma 32 and having the faith to believe, it was one of the coolest lessons hands down of my mission! He is so excited to keep meeting with the missionaries and there is no doubt in my mind that in the near future he is going to be getting baptized!  Then after that we were able to go and say good-bye to Roli.  It was pretty hard to say good-bye to the little rascal, but I told him that I would be back for sure and that I would bring you all to come and see him in the near future.  He is a pretty special kid and he truly changed my life and the course of my mission.

Then we were able to leave the apartment early on Wednesday morning.  On the train it was snowing, it was so crazy!  Then when we got there it was like a mix of heavy rain and snow! I got to the office and it was right to work, literally like right to it.  We planned out our day and got right into planning the presentation we would be giving to the new missionaries and their trainers the next hour.  We gave the presentation and it went super well.  We were able to finish that and then we were able to and help a couple of the sisters off to the train station with all of their bags.  Then after that we ran home, unpacked and ran back to the mission home to go and have dinner with all of the missionaries that were to be going home.  Then that night we were able to go up to a super cool look out in Budapest with all of the departing missionaries.  Then we were able to go back and spend the night with Elder Heaps ( a former AP who I looked up to a ton, then the next morning we were able to see him off at 4 am, haha).  Then on Thursday, we were able to prepare for our training that we would be giving the next day in the missionary leadership council on heading to the promptings of the spirit (we used Elder Rasband's talk from conference and I think it turned out super well!).  Then we were able to have a meeting with stake member and president Szabadkai and it went good and then we had our english class and then we had a lesson with a recent convert named Zsuzsa (she was really sad that the old assistant left, haha).  Then the next day, we had the MLC, went well and then we were able to do a lot of other stuff (like finally go to the store and do some finding, found lots of cool people).  Saturday was also super good!  On Sunday I bore my testimony in church and everyone really liked it and I was also able to translate for some visitors a little bit.  This member wanted to bear her testimony to this woman from America and so I translated for her and the American woman started to cry, it was so powerful. 

I really love it here and am so happy to serve the Lord in this assignment!! 

Love you all,

Elder Gentry 

Győr to Buda

Well it was a really good week this last week! It was a really good Easter season and we were able to give out a lot of Easter cards and tell them about the church's new video entitled Prince of Peace!  We were able to find a lot of people from our efforts and were able to get 5 new investigators!  It has been a really amazing transfer and I am so honored for the chance that I had to serve here in Győr again for a total of 6 months. It is such an awesome place and I am so excited for the chance that I will have to take you all back here after the mission. 

We were able to go on two exchanges this past week and both of them were with Elders from my group (Elder Leavitt and Elder Fisher).  They are both such studs and I think that I was able to learn more from them than they learned from me!  It is always so cool going on exchanges with Elders from my MTC group just to see how much everyone has changed and what great skills I can learn from them,

We able to meet with Richard and we were able to the Alma 42 reading with him and it went super well. We were able to discuss how this life now is the time to repent and how we cannot procrastinate the day of our repentance.  The spirit was super strong and I can definitely see that his faith is growing.  We gave him a commitment to give himself a baptismal date and he agreed, we will plan to follow up on it in our next meeting.  We were also able to meet with one of our other progressing investigators named Laszlo this last week who has been reading from the Book of Mormon every day and believes it is true!  We are hoping to be able to meet with him on a more consistent basis, however, the problem is that he lives in Slovakia, he is doing well though!  Mark is also doing well and Elder smith said that when they met him on exchanges, they were able to discuss authority for baptism and he took it well.

I am so honored to have served in Győr and absolutely love this city.  The Lord will honor those that are willing to work and he honored us more than we could have even imagined.  We had our transfer calls this morning and I thought that I might be staying but I did not know.  President Szabadkai called me early and told me that I would be serving as assistant in Budapest with Elder Fitzgerald.  I am so honored to have gotten this assignment and am going to serve as hard as I possibly can!  This church is so true and I am so honored to be my Lord's full time servant in the Budapest Hungary mission!

Great Week!!!

This is going to be short because I do not have a ton of time, but in short it was a GREAT WEEK!

We were able to have two exchanges this week and one of which was in budapest with the assistants.  I was able to work with Elder Fitzgereld who I really look up to a lot and was actually my zone leader my 1st two transfers! 

The work in Győr is moving forward and is doing well!  We were able to meet with Richard only once this last week (and I actually was not able to as it was Elder Jensen and Elder Smith when they went on exchanges), however, he is doing well.  I think that he has more faith that he gives himself credit for and I truly believe that it is growing and that he is slowly but surely starting to see that growth.  He was able to come to church again and is quite far along in his Book of Mormon reading (I believe that he is on page 400 or around there).  We are going to try to get him on a concrete date for baptism that he can work for this next week and are going to continue to do our best to get him to recognize the feelings of the spirit and how he can come to know that this Gospel is true and that God is our loving Heavenly Father.

We were also able to have another investigator, Mark, in church this week.  He really enjoyed it and he is progressing well. He said that he would be baptized and we are going to go over a baptismal calendar with him in our next visit, so that we can get him working toward a specific date.  In our most recent lesson we were able to discuss the gospel of Jesus Christ and the first part of the Plan of Salvation and he really loved and took it well.

We also had another great teaching this last week where we were able to discuss baptism with our investigator Gabor.  We were able to discuss how the Lord will honor those that honor him and that one of the things that the Lord requires of us is baptism and that if we do that, he will honor us with more than we can even imagine.  Gabor is a former investigator and he used to come to church every single week and has read the entire Book of Mormon.  We are going to get him on the habit of doing those things once again and hopefully (prayerfully) get him on a baptismal date this week when he can enter the waters of baptism.

We have many new investigators and many potentials including some families.  We have a really great week lined up for us this week and we are very excited to see the people that the Lord will place in our path!  I will keep serving as hard as I can and will keep giving it my all every single day!  I love this work and I love serving my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  My love of him has grown so much and my desire to share this great news with the world just keeps growing stronger and stronger.  I love you all so much and hope that you too also have a great week!! 

 Our building in Győr

Armor of God lesson - I made the cutout...

The Brethren are inspired men, that is for sure!

Wasn't conference just so awesome!?!?  It is just so cool to go in with stuff on your mind and things that need to be answered and then receive answers almost instantaneously from the words of our prophet and apostles, I sure do love this gospel!  It was a bit of a hard week for us this last week but I am starting to appreciate the hard weeks more and more because those are the ones that I can learn from the most.  I really enjoyed conference this last weekend!  I found answers to a lot of the things that had been on my mind, and it is just always a testimony to me that the those that lead this church are truly called of God and that if we listen to their words with full purpose of heart then we can receive those things that we stand in need of.

Like I said, it was not the easiest of weeks for us.  The hardest part of the week was with regard to our investigators (who we had each had on a baptismal date).  We are really trying hard to get the first investigator to feel and recognize the spirit as he reads from the Book of Mormon.  He continues to come to church but is saying that he isn’t recognizing the spirit.  We continue to teach and have him read and pray and know that the answer will come to him.

Our next investigator told us that we wouldn’t be able to teach him anymore...we were devastated.  We will continue to try and reach out to him and hope that this is a temporary roadblock.  

Other than those things, there was some pretty amazing stuff that happened this last week.  One of which was a street meeting with a person that I had actually met my first transfer.  I had met this person on the street and he informed me that he had a incurable disease and that his life had been super hard and that he was an atheist.  He was not really interested to meet but I felt like I should give him a Book of Mormon and assigned him a chapter to read.  The other day we were in the park trying to street some families and the person that I had met nearly 6 months earlier walks up to me and told asked me if I remembered him, I said yes, and he told me that he had read the chapter and would want to meet sometime in the future.  Then we were also able to get a really amazing let in to this teenage boy and his grandma (his sister and mother live there too but were not home at the time).  We taught the Restoration and it went well and they were very excited for us to come back and teach some more.  We were able to have one of the people we have not been able to set up with for a while come to conference, and there were able to set up with him for this upcoming week!  We were also able to speak to many families this last week, and were able to get contact information for many of them so that we can set up for this week.  

It is not always the easiest thing in the world to be a full time missionary but I would sure as heck not trade it for anything else!  I am the happiest that I have ever been in my life and the things that I get to learn (especially from the hard weeks) I will apply for the rest of my life!  I sure do love you all and pray for you constantly! 

3-27 Good and Busy Week

Well like the title says it was a good and busy week!  On Tuesday we had our zone training in Budapest!  It went really great and the spirit helped us a lot!  We were able to give a training on our purpose as missionaries, the sacredness of our call, and how the world needs the gospel (or good news).  We discussed a lot about the Ricciardi Letter (not sure if you all have heard of it before but it is absolutely incredible and makes me want to be the type of missionary Elder Ricciardi was) and discussed how we need to be bold because the world needs the gospel, it went well!  Then we went on exchanges in Szombathely and they went great! 

It was a bit of a hard week in relation to one of our investigators.  We had planned to have his baptismal interview this last Saturday, however it did not end up happening.  The day before the interview we were able to discuss some of the questions that Elder Leavitt would be asking him, and after asking about God and the Restoration, he informed us that in all reality he was unsure and that he did not know where he stood on his relationship with knowing that God is truly our Father in Heaven.  He told us that he was unsure about if he thought that the Book of Mormon was true and that he had not felt the Spirit's confirmation that what we had been going over with him was true, it was pretty hard to hear that from him.  The hardest part is the fact that he has been coming to church, he has been reading almost every day, and has been praying to know if it is true or not.  He has been keeping commitments and has been experimenting on the word but yet he has not received the witness yet that it is all true. We kept on assuring him that if he continuously pursues this course of action then he would indeed get an answer and that he would know of a surety that God is there and that he is indeed his loving Heavenly Father.  I have the faith that he can get to that point of wanting to be baptized and I have the faith that it can happen quickly.  I know the spirit can confirm to him that it is all true and I know that if he keeps on keeping commitments and coming to church then he can get his answer.  I know that one day he can become a great member of the church.

We were also able to meet with some other really great new investigators this last week.  One of which was one of the sister’s old investigators. We were also able to meet with someone that we spoke with on the train back from Szombathely.  I felt like I should speak with him and he turned out to be really interested as well as his girlfriend, we are going back there next Wednesday.  We have a lot of really great potentials right now, including a couple of families.  God keeps on placing people in our path and keeps honoring us from day to day.  We have been really trying to have daily contact with all of our investigators and it seems to be helping a lot.  I got a text back from one of our investigators today, and he told us how much he loved reading about the Christ's visit to the Americas, it was really great to hear.  The work here is definitely moving forward and I am honored to be serving the Lord in this amazing country!   I love you all so much and I hope that you all have a great week!!!  

 Caught in the rain

 Elders Gentry and Smith

 Kids like to steal their mission tags at church

 Moldy orange

Zone Training