Elder Kearon is Amazing! May 15th

Ok so I am a little short on time so I am going to quickly go over the highlights of the week, however, there were a lot of them.  It was so amazing seeing everyone on Skype and speaking with you!

To start, Elder Kearon was here from Tuesday night until Friday morning and it was absolutely incredible.  So how it worked was that on Wednesday was the Budapest and Southeast Zones and then on the next day it was all of the other 3 zones. We were able to go to both of them (I was able to conduct the one on Thursday) and they were amazing.  The biggest thing that I took away from it was that in order to touch the hearts of the children of men through the message of the restored gospel, we need to first become he message ourselves and present it in a way that will give people something that they want in their lives. I came to the realization this last week that when I do not worry so much about how I am sounding, what I am going to say, or if I am doing this work 100% correctly, but when I just approach everyone with a huge smile on my face and tell them with a calm assurance the things that the spirit wants me to say, everything goes so much better and I enjoy the work 10 times more (I don't know if that is possibly because I have always loved it more than words can express).  I also really took from it that as missionaries and from day to day we DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY SO MUCH, BUT JUST WORK HARD!  I love that so much and I am really trying to incorporate it into my work on a day to day basis (the Lord will always provide a way if we do our absolute best).  

OK so this story is so crazy awesome.  So in the Thursday zone conference, we had this really cool part when we were talking about how investigators feel when they are meeting with the missionaries and how the missionaries feel when they are in lessons.  Basically, what it came down to is the feelings are indescribable (see I think Philippians 4:7, I could be wrong, it is one of those that talks about that).  Right then Elder Kearon (who has a view of the front door leading into the branch house) exclaims "there is someone at the door, if he needs teaching give him teaching, go to it elders"!  Just then Elder Fitzgerald and myself shot out of our seats (along with 2 other missionaries) to go and see who this person was.  Come to find out it was our super cool investigator that had happened to show up to the branch house 1 1/2 hours before his teaching (there are no coincidences in the gospel, however).  We tell him to come back in just a bit and walk back into the conference.  Just then Elder Kearon goes, "well is he coming in?" and we said he is coming back later, then he said "just go bring him in now".  So we run back outside and tell him to come back in.  Our investigator speaks pretty good English but it is a little bit broken and he kept on saying, “very big privilege this is.” We take him in and he introduces himself to everyone (like 65 missionaries and Elder Kearon) and we sit down.  A few minutes go by and Elder Kearon asks him how he feels when he meets with us.  Our investigator literally said word for word what we had been describing that this feeling is indescribable and that it cannot be found in the catholic church!  It was so cool.  We met with him after and he is doing well, he just needs to fully accept the Book of Mormon and a living prophet and he will be all good! After that I was able to have an amazing interview with Elder Kearon and that is something I will not soon forget! Then on Friday we were able to have our missionary leadership council with Elder Kearon and that was also spectacular! 

One of the biggest miracles for us actually occurred yesterday during church. A few days ago we were traveling out to this teaching and were doing our best to speak to as many people as we possibly could on public transport. We were able to get on this bus and right when we got on, Elder Fitzgerald said that we needed to move to the back of the bus, and right when we did so, I had a prompting that I needed to speak to this man in his 30s standing right by us. It was a very quick conversation, but we told him who we were and that we had a message about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was very enthusiastic to meet and told us that he and his family would also maybe like to hear it. We also told him about church and he told us that he would want to come this week. On Sunday morning, I sent him a text message and asked him if he still would want to come to church. He told me that he was going to come but that he would be a little bit late. He eventually showed up at the end of the 2nd hour and he brought his mom and his 4 month old baby. He told us that over the previous week he had been doing quite a bit of research about us and that he absolutely loves what he has seen. He told us that the night before he watched the entire film "Meet the Mormons" and that he absolutely loved it. He told us that he has been looking for an environment where he could raise his child on great principles and he felt like this is the place he was looking for. We were able to teach him about the Restoration and he absolutely loved it. He told us that he felt like we needed to talk to him on the bus and that it was absolutely no coincidence that we met and that this is where he should be. We asked him if he would be baptized if he found these things to be true and he told us that he has already made up his mind that he would like to be very shortly (in 3-4 weeks). We set up to go to his home this Tuesday and we are excited to teach him more!
Our baptismal commit came to church which was great to see. She told us that her work place is going to be closing and that because of that she should also have more time to come to church. We have the confidence that she can be ready for baptism by the 10th of June and that the Lord is going to keep making it possible for her. We are going to try to start meeting with her on a more consistent basis and are going to do our best to help her gain a very strong witness that these things are very true.
It was a really great week and the work here is definitely moving forward. This is the Lord's work and I am so honored to be his servant here in this country!  I know I am on the Lord's errand and there is no better feeling!  

Love you all so much and it was amazing to see you all on skype!  Happy Mother's Day mom!! 

 Gentry Elder