August 24 Postcard: This is Chiemsee. We were in a really good place this week called Traunstein which was next to the lake.  I  also got word on the "Advil package"this week.  The package with the( advil I asked you to send me after I was hit on my bike  by a car ) is in Frankfurt because apparently you can't bring medicine into Germany without a doctor and legal permission even though the post office cleared it for you.  The package might be coming back sometime to you guys! The SD video that you couldn't open was of me introducing Elder Young.Sorry, the piano singing video didn't go through so well, so I had to delete it.  

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Transfer calls came last Friday! Aug. 27, 2012

Transfer calls came last Friday!.
August 27, 2012

Well transfer calls came last Friday. Let's just say when President Miles calls it means something interesting.

 First of all, Elder Young will be staying in Rosenheim. He will no longer be District Leader, but he is going to be a trainer now instead. He will find out who his companion is on Wednesday at the Trainer/Trainee dinner.

As for me I will be going to Sankt Pölten, Österreich (St. Poelten, Austria) to be a District Leader and to finish training Elder Root. Elder Root has been trained already for one transfer by an Elder Volz, but for some reason or another President Miles is having him transferred and I'll continue his second transfer of training. I haven't met Elder Root yet, but I've heard about him a lot because he is best friends with Elder Gubler from my MTC group and he got his call while we were in the MTC. The rest that I know of him is that he is from Santa Clara, Utah, is 6'6'' (my companions are all taller than me and keep getting bigger and bigger), and played Football. As for St. Pölten it is about 45 minutes west of Vienna, along with Rosenheim one of the 6 bike areas in the mission (out of 69 areas so that you get an idea of how rare they are), and the best part is it is in Austria. It is part of the Vienna Zone, so had I been there one transfer earlier Elder Stapleton would have been my Zone Leader, but Elder Stapleton is going to a place called Bruck an der Mar in Vienna Zone to train as well, so we will be able to see each other at Zone Conference finally. My district is St. Pölten, the Vienna Senior Couple, and a few missionaries from Vienna. It should be a lot of fun.

I will really miss Rosenheim and Elder Young though. Elder Root sounds like a great guy so I got lucky, but I was expecting that I might have a weird companion this transfer because up till now I have been blessed with amazing companions. Elder Young has been a prime example of that. We have had so much fun these last two transfers. Up to now he has been my longest companion because my first transfer with Elder Field was a week shorter than normal transfers. Elder Young and I had the goal to have an adventure a day in our work and we accomplished that. We are going to miss each other, but the good news is, is that we will still have our whole mission to be in the same district again and we will go home together, and then because he is going to BYU we will be able to hang out a lot after the Mission. He is going to be a really good trainer and see great success.

I am also going to really miss Rosenheim. Four transfers is not an abnormally long time in an area, but apparently I've been in Rosenheim longer than any other Missionary for the last 5 years or so. I got to give a short talk yesterday and then say farewell to the ward. We ended up getting invited by members to a lunch and dinner appointment that day and for every day the rest of the week until Wednesday. The ward here has been absolutely amazing to me. They have been so nice in being patient with me until I got the language down and then to support all of the work we've done. Elder Young loves his Ludwigsburg ward a lot too, but he says that Rosenheim just has something special and the members just absolutely love their missionaries. It's true and I really hope things continue to go well for them.

Family Bobi also got back this week from Serbia. Before they left we gave them a blessing of comfort because apparently Serbia is quite a rough place. They said that they had no problems at all this time they visited (which has never happened for them) and there were quite a few miracles that took place when a huge storm came through. They started introducing their family in Serbia to the Book of Mormon and his brother and his family now have their own copy. They really gained a strong testimony of the Priesthood through this experience and they asked that before the transfer that we give them a blessing to help them with this last stretch of quitting the smoking. I will not be here for their baptism, but I am so glad I had the opportunity to find them, to watch them grow spiritually, and just learn how much faith they have and how loved they are by God.

Amber I am so happy for you. No, I didn't forget about your wedding in the midst of Transfer calls. I am so excited for you and Rolf and I hope you know I love you and that I'll be supporting you guys in spirit. I hope I get to see pictures sometime in the future.Tell Grandma and Grandpa Crow that their friend's grandson, Trevor Hemsley was trained by Elder Field (the one who trained me), so I've heard a lot about him.  

Here is my new address for Austria:

Kirche Jesu Christ, HLT

Elder Bodily

Trauson Str. 16/4

3100 St. Pölten

Österreich

I love you all and I hope all is going well. I really appreciate all you do for me. Thank you so much.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs wiedersehen

August 20, 2012

Servuß!

Well after about 45 minutes of trying to get this computer fixed, I can finally get my email going, but it means it will unfortunately be a shorter email again. Next week though, we have nothing planned for P-Day and it's just a free day so if I have to spend the whole day to tell you everything in my next email, so be it. But I'll get what I can today.

First of all, transfer calls are this Friday (the 24th) and then the transfer will take place the Thursday after (the 30th) where I have been in Rosenheim for almost 6 months now and the fact that I got a call from the secretaries asking about my visa information it is more than likely I will get transferred. You never know though, we will see. However, any packages or letters you might send are best off going to the Mission Home. Speaking of packages and letters I am sending a postcard with answers to some of your questions mom and I have a package that I will be sending off this week that should get there in 2-3 weeks.

This week, if Rosenheim is like my house in Orem, then Munich was like the Pearce's home (speaking of which, Happy Birthday tomorrow Sean) and we know how much time I spent there. On Monday we went and had a BBQ and played soccer and frisbee with our district in a park there. Then from Tuesday at 10:30 till Thursday at 3:30 I was there because of district meeting and then austausches. Because Elder Young is district leader he has to do austausches (or exchanges; I just realized you might not know that word) with all the members of our district (besides sisters) and the Zone Leaders (who happen to be in our district) and this week was the best for them all. After district meeting we did a tausch with Munich 1st ward (they have a threesome companionship) and Elder Von Niederhausern went with E. Young to Rosenheim and I stayed with E.'s Tauche and Stokes. It was an interesting companionship of an American, a German, and an Australian who are all completely different from each, but we had a lot of fun. We were supposed to go street contacting, but one of the responsibilities of these Austausches is to make sure the other Elders' apartments are clean and so I made them clean the apartment for about 2 and a half hours before we went and taught English class. Mom you'd have been very proud of me. At English class which is in the church, Elder Covertson, who is the husband in the senior couple in our district, was there and asked if I could give him blessing for his surgery that was to take place that week regarding a hernia. Later in English class, a drunk guy showed up and Elder Covertson and I had to help escort him out. He was threatening to attack us and even swung a few punches, but he was way too unbalanced to do anything. Then next we all met at the train station with the Munich 3rd ward Elders (Zone leaders) and did a tausch where Munich 1 was all back together and I was with Elder Melville in Munich and Elder Hansen in Rosenheim. Fortunately, the Zone Leaders apartment did not need any cleaning. I had a really good austausch with Elder Melville and learned a lot. On Friday we had Zone conference which was in Munich the whole day. Saturday we went and helped the Munich Elders with a family whose basement had flooded and that lasted a good part of the day. All in all, I felt like a Munich Elder this week.

Well our train is almost here. We are going to Augsburg today to go bowling and do some other things with the Elders there. One of the Elders there is Elder Hyatt who was Elder Stapleton's companion for the last three transfers. We became really good friends with him at zone conference and we all wanted to do something together.

I love you all a lot and I hope you have a great week. I am always praying for you all.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs wiedersehen

August 13, 2012

Wow, it rained like crazy!

Well I'd like to start off with apologizing about how I missed emails last week. We went to Neuschwanstein as a district and it started raining like crazy. Because of the rain it caused an accident that prevented the buses from getting to us for over two hours so we couldn't get back to the train station until much later and then it threw off our Train schedule and we didn't get home until much later because we had to go to Munich first to drop off the other district members because they were riding on our ticket. It was a mess so sorry about that.

However, a lot has happened on your end. First of all, congratulations Amber on becoming engaged! That is really wonderful news and I am so happy for you. Rolf sounds like a great guy and perfect for you. That really just makes me happy to hear. I wanted to ask, what are his kids names?

Happy Birthday to Dad and Jake this week. It sounds like you had a very fun birthday Dad and Jake it sounds like you gave a great farewell talk. You are going to be a fantastic missionary helping people in Brazil and I am excited for what is going to come for you. The mission truly is the best thing ever.

Thank you Bekah and Buddy for you card with the picture of Rocky. I really enjoyed it and I am glad you love your new puppy. He will be way fun to have around. Speaking of dogs, good job Jovi for making it through the surgery.

I really feel bad because I missed last week and I have to keep this week short, but next week I am pretty free on P-Day and so I promise I will write a lot more. However, a couple of things that happened this week that were interesting: First Elder Field randomly showed up in Rosenheim again. He was on his way to the Young Single Adults convention in Vienna and he stopped by Rosenheim and had dinner with us at the Jentzsh's. It was really good to see him again and we had a lot of fun. Second I got to give my second talk here in Rosenheim (and neither Elder Field or Elder Young had/has given one yet). It was a really cool experience though because I wrote my talk beforehand and I had planned on going with it, but then when I got up to the pulpit the spirit prompted me to not use it so I didn't. Whether it was a good talk or not it was nonetheless a really good experience for me because one it allowed me to see how far my German has come along and that I was able to give a talk on whatever came to my mind without having to prepare it beforehand and two it was just a really great twenty minute experience to be led by the spirit as to what to say. I had been praying hard to learn how to become more reliant on the Holy Ghost and that was the best experience for it as that was what I was able to switch my topic to and what better way than to learn by example. I was very grateful for that opportunity and I was also really proud because I never looked at the clock, and by the time I finished and we had sung and prayed it was12 o' clock exactly, right when we needed to end.

I am so grateful for all of your support and everything that you have all done for me. I am so grateful for this wonderful opportunity to serve the Lord and I have had such wonderful testimony building experiences. I love you all and wish you all a wonderful week.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs wiedersehen

Postcard arrived:  Hope this gets to you around your Birthday Dad.  I'm sure glad you were born and all that you do for me, both of you.  This is Tegernsee. We had a referral that we needed to contact. The train stops at one end of the lake, but the referral lived at the other end of the lake.  So we got to take our bikes and ride around the coast.  Thank you again for all of the packages you send me They mean a lot and they are much appreciated.  I got a call from the mission office today asking for visa information; which means it is almost certain that I'm getting transferred after this transfer.  Thanks again for all you do.  I wish you a very Happy Birthday Dad.   Love y'all.  Elder Bodily

(No email this week, but we still have pictures).  Dirtiest I have ever been working in a yard.  You can't tell due to the light.  This was a service project, but great when you are working with Elder Young.

Another Toblerone picture. 

I suggested that Elder Young get some Lederhosens.  When we wear them on P-Day there are lots of tourists that want to take pictures of us.

This is our great attempt at French Toast Pizza!