June 3, 2012
Servus Zusammen!

So we got transfer calls this week. First of all Elder Field is being transferred to Ashford, England (home). What's actually cool is in his home ward the missionaries brought an investigator family to church who hardly speaks English, but they can speak German and Swiss German. Elder Field served 14 months in Switzerland so he can understand the dialect very well. He will be able to continue missionary work as soon as he gets back. I will definitely miss him though, it has been a great 12 weeks with him.

As for the part relating to me, I will be the senior companion here in Rosenheim and my next companion is Elder Young. Elder Young came into the MTC on the same day as me but knew good enough German before so he was only there for 3 weeks instead of 9 so one more transfer out in the field than me. He has served in Ludwigsburg up until now which is right next to Stuttgart. Elder Stapleton trained him for his first training transfer before Tyler transfered from Ludwigsburg to Vienna as Zone Leader. As President Miles told me on the phone, we are both really young field experience wise so it will be a hard working transfer where we will have to really work together to figure things out, but he believes we can do it. I will meet him on Thursday in Munich train station and then we will get straight to work.

As for the mission work, things are going really well. Familie Bobi has made leaps and bounds with cutting off smoking. We are going to start the non smoking program next week at Familie Lederers house with them but it's so great to see how much progress they've made already just on their own. They continue to take the discussion very well and you can really see how much joy they find in the gospel. The Lord has prepared them to hear his word and it's so amazing to see how much peace and happiness the gospel of Jesus Christ can bring to people such as their family as they change and live a life with Christ in the center. We had 8 investigators and 6 less active members come to church yesterday. We were so blessed to have so many people come. Our mission was fasting this Sunday to find people to bring to church this month and we saw our prayers really answered. Elder Field had never had such high numbers for both categories on any given Sunday in his mission until now. A great way to have his last Sunday in Germany. The Lord is really leading the work here in Rosenheim and it's a wonderful privilege to be a part of it.

This last week a lady in our ward was really sick and asked if we could come give her a priesthood blessing. When she heard I had never given one in German she said that I could give it. I was really nervous at first, but as is every priesthood blessing, it was led by Heavenly Father and I was simple the mouth piece. It taught me something. Although I do not know a lot of German the Lord was able to give the blessing he wanted to give Sister Damm and tell her what he wanted to say, but fit it to as much as I knew with the language. I didn't use any words I didn't know but rather I was able to remember words that I had learned previously and be able to use the principles of grammar I had learned perfectly. It goes back to the parable of the talents. The Lord gave his servants talents and asked him to go multiply them and bring back more. The Lord will be able to use all the talents that we have in order to bring forth his righteous works, and for that, especially as a Missionary, I am so grateful. It also means though they have the assignment to always increase our talents. Besides being a spiritual experience in which we were able to serve Heavenly Father to help Sister Damm, it also gave me a renewed motivation to work even harder with my German so that I could develop my talents as much I could so that the Lord would be able to use me more freely for as many great miracles as he pleases.

I am running out of time before we need to take our train, but I just thought I'd also tell you before I go that for P-Day today we are going to Kehlsteinhaus with our district which was Hitler's summer home on top of a mountain in the south-east corner of Germany. It should be a lot of fun. Thank you all for all of you support. I could not do this work without all of your prayers to the Lord. I know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and that Jesus Christ is our Savior and by him we can have everlasting joy.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs wiedersehen