It will probably remain as one of my most meaningful Christmas memories.

December 30, 2013

Alles Gute Zum Silvester!

I hope you all enjoyed the rest of your Christmas and that everything goes well for New Years. This week was mostly spent with the members during the Christmas break. Wien has been my longest area and I feel like I have built a pretty good friendship with the members here and so it was really great to spend so much time with them. We were with 7 different families over the last week and had a great time sharing Christmas with all of them. This week had a very special feel to it especially since I am about to come home, it made it very meaningful to me to have such a wonderful experience here in Austria before I come home.

On Christmas Eve night I had a very special experience for me concerning my mission. On Christmas Eve night we were with one family and the other two Elders were with another because the second family told the other two elders that all four of us could come for Christmas Eve and the other elders said we could come before they remembered we already had a CE invitation.  So we did the best thing we thought and just split to go to both families instead of all of us going to just one. We started coming home a little after 11 (don't worry we had permission from President Miles to come home a little later during Christmas time if we were celebrating with families). When we got to the apartment I realized that I had left my keys to the apartment in another bag of mine.  It was a new side bag that I bought just the day before and hadn't transferred everything over into yet. We called the other elders and they said they wouldn't be back for about 45 minutes to an hour. So we decided to take a walk around Wien to pass time. There was a very special Christmas feeling to everything and for some reason it just all felt really joyful. We decided to walk to the Schönbrunn palace since it wasn't too far and visit there. When we got there we thought the gates were locked up, but we found a side gate that was opened and we walked in. Everything was lit up around the palace including the giant Christmas tree right in front of it. We were the only ones in the palace grounds. We walked up to the tree and it was then that it became a very spiritual experience for me that was very joyful and a reverent feeling. I had very strong feelings of the Savior's love and the spirit of Christmas came over me. Also, at that moment I felt a really strong feeling that the Lord was satisfied with me as a missionary and the effort that I had given. It was a confirmation to me that Christ had accepted my mission and that I could feel at peace with what I had done as a missionary. It wasn't something I was expecting going into the grounds, but it was something personally very meaningful to me. It will probably remain as one of my most meaningful Christmas memories.

We got to emails a little later today so I am going to have to wrap up now, but I love you all lots and I hope you all have a fantastic New Years!

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Allowed to go to the movie theaters to see the movie "Silent Night".

December 23, 2013

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Well I hope you will all have a fantastic Christmas! I am way excited to skype home tomorrow, even though I will see you all in about two weeks anyways.

So around this time of year the missionary work kind of slows down because Christmas time is very serious in Austria and Austrians don't like to be bothered when it's time for them to spend with their families and just have some peace, understandably. So the emphasis during this time is to spend as much time as possible with members and get involved in Christmas traditions. Our ward has close to 100 active members and we have been able to spend a good amount of time with quite a few families which will continue into this week as well. It has been a lot of fun and has been great for me to enjoy the Christmas season here with the members I love before I start getting ready to go home.

We did get a chance to meet with Axxxx towards the beginning of the week and the appointment went well. She thinks she will get baptized sometime in March, but she still wants to learn a little bit more because she doesn't feel completely comfortable until she spends more time with the church.

On Saturday the Wien 4 Elders had a baptism in the ward; not for their ward, but Elder Abbott taught a man in his last area who was originally from Wien and his two favorite missionaries (Elder Abbott and one named Elder Jones) are both serving in Wien right now so he decided to come and get baptized and confirmed by them. In preparing the baptism they asked if I would give the talks for it so I was able to take part on the baptism a little. It was a very spiritual baptism, one of the strongest spirits I had felt. After wards the man treated us all to Schnitzel.

We also had a Christmas conference with our zone and President and Sister Miles on Thursday that went really well. It was kind of like a zone conference, but dedicated more to having fun with Christmas activities and a Christmas devotional.

So President Miles has this philosophy about the importance of missionaries being involved with Christmas traditions with member families when they are with them for the holidays. He allowed us to get involved with some activities that aren't normal for missionaries and one of them is there is this movie that I believe is also in America called "Silent Night". It was directed by an Austrian who is a member of the church about the story behind the song Silent Night. We were given permission that if we go with members we were allowed to go to the movie theaters to see this movie. We went with a few of the YSA after Christmas Conference and it was really good. It was really weird being in a movie theater though and one of the fun parts was the previews at the beginning.

On Sunday a lady from my ward and I were able to do a piano duet together for Sacrament meeting. We pulled it together last week and it came rather quickly. It was an arrangement of the First Noel and it went really well.

I love you all and I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and that you remember the reason for the holidays.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

She said that she knows the Book of Mormon is true

December 16, 2013

Servus!

We had a very productive week. Although we are not able to meet with a lot of people right now because of the holiday season, we are making a lot of progress with the ones we are able to keep in touch with.

We met with Cxxxx again this week. She is doing super well and we went over one of the lessons and baptism with her. She has been keeping all of her commitments perfectly. I am sure she has a testimony of the church, she just needs that realization though its coming very steadily. She mentioned a few very spiritual experiences she had this last week and some of the members invited her to go caroling and to bring her son which ended up being a very special experience for her. I think if we had a little more time to meet with her, she would really recognize that she has a strong testimony and that she is ready to be baptized. Unfortunately, our joint teach had to go for another commitment, but she is still doing well. The problem is she is away for the holidays and so we won't be able to meet with her until after New Years. I probably will only be able to meet with her one more time, so hopefully it will be a really good appointment.

We were finally able to meet with Axxxx again. She is the older lady from Hungary who made a lot of progress when we taught her, but then she got sick and was in the hospital for a month or more. She took time to recover and then she made an appointment with us for last week. It was very spiritual. Elder Fletcher and I were to hand her over to the other elders because of the way we divided our area.  However, all four of us were at the appointment because she asked if it was possible if all four of us could meet with her if we weren't too busy to work it out. During the appointment she said that she knows the Book of Mormon is true and that this is the true church. However, she mentioned she felt scared of the baptism because she felt she had to keep learning more. We then talked about faith a lot and by the end the spirit was really strong and she asked for a blessing. Then she told us she wanted a little more time to think it over and then let us know on Wednesday when we meet again.

We have a less active we have been working with named Zxxxx who is doing really well. He came to church yesterday with his wife and wants us to start teaching her and his father in law. On Sunday the bishop gave a very spiritual talk and after the meetings Zoran mentioned he felt really at peace with things and wants to keep working on coming to church more often.

Our investigator Bxxxxt, who was doing very well with a program he was in and wanted to get baptized after it was done in a couple months. Well he found out this last week that he was doing so well that he will be done this week and so on Wednesday he will be moving back to Linz where he is from, and so the elders there will continue to teach him. It's good that he is making a lot of progress.

We had our Christmas party this week. Unfortunately, the guitar piece with Bxxxx didn't work out. He started feeling scared to play in front of an audience and was having a rougher day and his grandma and I felt it was best not to push him. We will keep in contact though and help  him however we can. Instead at the Christmas party I played one of my piano pieces and it appeared to go fine. In fact, they asked if I could do another musical number for this week in Sacrament meeting, so hopefully that goes well.

Well that is about it for this week. I hope all is good back at home. I love you lots. I hope the Book of Mormon reading is going well.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Cool experience doing a musical number together at the Christmas party!

December 9, 2013

Servus!  I hope you all had a fantastic week!

So a couple of things that went on this week is we have a new investigator that we are working with named Bxxx right now. Apparently Elder Fletcher had taught him while he was in his first area, but he has now moved here to Wien for the time. He has already taken all the lessons, but we are meeting with him now once a week to help give him spiritual strength He is coming to church and already keeps his commitments and is doing overall really well. He has a sincere desire to be baptized and that will probably take place after a couple months. He is very nice though and is really genuine in his love for the Saviour and his desire to keep the commandments.

Cxxxxxx is doing really well still from what I get from talking to her on Sundays. She has been really busy as of late, but she has time to meet this week and so it will hopefully be a very good appointment.

As of late it has become harder to hold appointments with any investigators or potentials because of the holiday season and so the focus has become more and more on members and less actives. This last week we had another huge split with the four of us missionaries and our ward mission team to go out and visit as many less actives in that night. I went with our ward mission leader again and we ran into two at first that weren't really welcoming to us, but the third was very excited and thrilled by the visit. She wants to come to the ward Christmas party and is working to start coming regularly to church if she can.

We have another less active member that we are working with pretty regularly now named Zxxxx from Sxxxxx. He was offended by a couple of members a year ago or so, but is working to overcome that. He is doing well and he is hoping that soon his wife and father-in-law will start meeting with us.

This last week I had the chance liked I mentioned last week to play guitar with the grandson of one of the members who he himself isn't a member. His name is Bxxxx and his mother used to be a member, but pulled her records out of the church before he was born. It was a really cool experience because he seemed really intrigued by the idea of us doing a musical number together at the Christmas party. He is about twenty years old and has had a harder time in his life and hasn't had too many good influences for friends and it has been hard on him. For some reason though this guitar idea sparked a lot of interest in him and he has taken it to heart to really prepare well for it and you can tell he is very excited. I believe it will be really good for him to have that chance to play for others and get a lot of praise. Tonight we are going to practice together again to finish up the final touches of the song we are putting together. The cool part of it too is that a few months ago the ward council gave us the name of a man that had had a baby blessing in the ward, but was never baptized and that he could potentially have interest and so we should go by on him and visit him. When we went to the address we found out he had moved, but we weren't sure where to and we didn't know how to get in contact with him. Well I found out this last week when I figured out his last name that Bxxxxx was this referral, so it was meant that we were to get in contact with him eventually. Apparently he had just moved out to live with his grandparents. It was a really cool connection.

I hope you all have a fantastic week. I love you lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Elder Bodily at Wein Conference in November 2013.

Missionaries in Wien come together for Thanksgiving at our YSA center.

December 2, 2013

Servus!

I hope you all had a wonderful week and Thanksgiving! Last Monday for P day we had all the Missionaries in Wien plus a few from outside cities come together for Thanksgiving at our YSA center. I also had the chance to go back to St Pölten because the Bxxx family had invited me back when we had Stake conference. President Miles said it was ok because the nonmember dad had invited me and he said it would be a good missionary opportunity. We celebrated Thanksgiving with them (they don't have it in Austria, but the Bxxxx wanted to celebrate it anyways and so did the St. Pölten Elders.  It was way fun and really good to see my old city again.

Cxxxx is doing just as well as ever. She is really busy right now and it's hard for her to meet, but because of the new policy in our mission we are allowed to stay in contact with investigators through email now and send them links from Mormon messages and lds.org.  So we sent her one of the new Bible videos during the week and she told me on Sunday she went through later and watched almost all of the New Testament videos and really enjoyed them. If she doesn't get baptized before I go home I feel it won't be long after that.

On Sunday we also had an investigator, Axxx, who we had been teaching a lot, but she had gone to the hospital for awhile and wanted to take some time to recooperate. Well, she showed up at church yesterday for Sacrament Meeting and she really enjoyed it. We will meet with her later in the week, but it was really good to see she was doing well and still excited to learn.

We have the new elders in our ward all settled in now, too. Elder Mohn and Elder Talbert are doing well and it will be great to have them in the ward. Their first night here we had a meeting with our ward mission leader to figure out how best to divide up the area and investigators. It has also been nice because Elder Fletcher has still been getting pretty sick now and again, so if needed we can do exchanges and still get work in our area taken care of.

We had a cool experience with a family in our ward this week. We ate with this family called the Sxxxxx which is an older couple and they have family that are not members. They have a grandson that lives with them who doesn't tend to like to come out when guests are around and has been having some struggles as of late concerning depression. On Saturday we were invited over and the grandson, about 20 years of age,  was asked to help prepare lunch. I got to talk to him a little and then I noticed as I passed his room that he had a guitar, and so I asked him about that. Apparently he loves playing guitar and I was able to talk with him about that and about some bands that he really liked. Then we got to play together a little bit. Then his grandmother had the idea that we should do a guitar number for our ward Christmas party and the grandson said that he wouldn't mind depending on whether he has time with work or not. So later this week we are going to head back over and put together an arrangement of a Christmas piece to see if we can do it for the ward Christmas party.

This Christmas I imagine will be a lot different than last year. A number of members came up to me after church and said they wanted to make sure they had me over for Christmas before I go home and so we already have 5 invites for families to visit and spend time with between the few days around Christmas. It was really touching and I am way excited for it.

Something I have been doing this last week which has been a really spiritual experience is that I have been reading through my journal and taking notes of the more spiritual experiences. When I am done I am going to buy another journal and rewrite some of these experiences (because some of them span over days or weeks or months) into good solid entries and make them my very own small plates.

I hope those involved with the Book of Mormon challenge are doing well. I will be done by the end of this week, but you still have 38 days left as Elder Mohn consistently reminds me, (he keeps track of how much time I have left.  I believe he is trunky for me).

I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

District Wien 2:  Bodily, Jimenez, Evans, Eaker, Mohn, Halverson, Robins, Botcherby and Mickelson.

Elder Fletcher (left) and Elder Bodily (right) sending off Elder Meilacher off on his mission to Leeds.

November 25, 2013

Servus!

Well we got transfer calls this week and I am going to be staying another transfer with Elder Fletcher. This will make Wien my longest area with 5 transfers. This is my last transfer - hard enough to believe. It's crazy that it has already gotten to this point. However, they are also going to bring in two more Elders into our ward. Elder Mohn and Elder Talbert are the two elders who will be working with us. They are moving into our apartment and they are making Elder Abbott and Elder Reading move into another apartment in Wien. I am going to miss the two for sure, especially Elder Abbott who has become one of my best friends out here. We will still be able to see each other at zone trainings and what not. In other news Elder Moon is going to Stuttgart as Zone Leader and I am really happy for him.

We had zone conference this last week and what they do at the end is they have all of the missionaries who this is their first and their last zone conference bare their testimonies. Elder Eaker from my district and I were the only two who would be gone before the next zone conference and so we were able to bare our testimonies. It was a very touching experience and very spiritually uplifting. It kind of puts a stamp on saying that I will be heading home soon; so make the most of what is left.

The work is going very well. Cxxx is making a lot of progress. She loves church and prays every day. I feel like she will get baptized before I go home (in any case I am glad to be able to work with her before I go home). In our Sunday School class the topic was about missionary work and we discussed the reasons why we do it and she raised her hand and made the comment that it helps people like her find peace in their lives when there is a lot of confusion and things in the world to stress about. She is too busy to meet this week, but I really feel she is so ready. She has a testimony more than she knows and when she recognizes this it will mean the world to her. I think she will then be baptized and confirmed. Fxxx, her cousin who is a member, has been really good about talking about the gospel with her casually throughout the week and answering a lot of questions.

We found a new investigator who we believe has a lot of potential to make a lot of progress. She is from Columbia and has only been here for a short time, but she wanted to meet and we got talking and realized that there was a language barrier, and especially with gospel terms and trying to explain them. However, the good news is we have a number of Spanish speaking families and so that won't be a problem and we were able to get a hold of Fxxxx during our meeting and he was able to talk to her on the phone a lot about the restoration. We have another appointment this week and I have a really good feeling about it all.

On Monday we had Family Home evening with the Nussbaumer family. They are a younger couple who remind me a lot of Brittney and Brandon with their behaviors and mannerisms and so they are way cool. They have already invited us to Christmas Eve with them (which is the bigger holiday here), so I will probably be skyping at their house for Christmas. The details on that will come later, but the crazy thing is that after I call home on Christmas I will see you all two weeks later.

I hope all is well and that you all have a wonderful week. Enjoy your thanksgiving!

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Pictures around the Schonbrun Palace.

We live not too far away from Schonbrun Palace and when it isn't too cold....in the mornings....

we would run to it and up the hill.

Moving completed in about two hours.

November 18, 2013

Servus!

Sorry this email is going to have to be pretty short again, I am sorry about that. As for what happened this week... to be honest not a whole lot happened. We had referrals to contact and potentials to go by, but no one seemed to be home. Elder Fletcher was still sick for the first half of the week. I did get to help one of our members move apartments within our ward boundaries which we completed in two hours or so. I have no idea how it went so quickly to help him pack everything in the truck and then unload it at the new apartment. It was weird, not very many people seemed to be reachable or at home this week, and the same with members because they seemed to all be sick. So we couldn't do much with the missionary member program we have been leading out.

Something that did happen that was very cool is in Wien every Tuesday and Thursday the missionaries teach English or German classes at our YSA center. The student that I have been working with personally, has been taught by the missionaries in another ward for the last month and a half or so and he was baptized on Saturday. That was something way cool to see.

This week we have transfer calls as well as Zone Conference. We also have a lot of appointments filled out that should make this week exciting.

I hope all is well and that everyone is healthy. Love you lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

District:  Elders Nielsen, Smith, Hancy, Jiminez, Eaker, Sonsellar, Riser, Bodily being held and Mickelson underneath

Elder Mielacher headed off to England.

Elder Bodily and Elder Abbott's birthday cake - 21 candles for Bodily and 19 for Abbott.

Cool to work with with youth who are going on missions.

November 11, 2013

Servus!

I hope you all had a really good week. This week was kind of interesting, of the 18 missionaries in the city of Wien, 11 of them got sick. The good thing is I am still going strong. Two of them that got sick, however were Elder Fletcher and Elder Reading, and so Elder Abbott and I just did a big long austausch for the majority of the week. It was super fun and we had great time and we had to cover both areas so we kept pretty busy. The Wein 4 Elders have a lot going for them right now, so it was really cool to work with a number of their investigators and do activities in their ward with their youth who are going on missions. We were able to meet with some of the people we are working with as well, but the highlight of the week was an appointment with a dear lady named xxx. She is the cousin of a member in our ward who has been coming to church for the last little bit. We were able to finally meet with her on Thursday and the appointment went super well. She was very open and absolutely loved everything. She told us how when she goes to church she feels a peace that helps her make it through the rest of the week and she feels it has a great impact on her son as well. We met in xxx home and it was possibly the most spiritual appointment I have had in a long time. We talked about the Restoration with her and she swallowed it all up and was super excited to read the Book of Mormon (she has already come along pretty far). We felt we should invite her to set a date for baptism then and she told us she would not like to set one quite yet until she is completely confident about it being true, but that she would let us know when she gets her answer because she would like to be baptized into the church. She has a really sincere heart and I think it's going to go really well for her.

Unfortunately I do have to go already because of weird time scheduling with meeting up with our district, but I hope you all have a great week. For those doing the Book of Mormon challenge, I am not sure where you should be exactly because I am a little ahead, but I have 59 days left so just keep with it wherever you are at so that you can finish before I am home. I love you all.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Moving pianos!

November 4, 2013

Servus!

So this was kind of a different week than normal. The 1st and the 2nd of November are holidays here and for whatever reason there were a bunch of people who needed to move and they all decided to put their moving day on those two days so that they could have others help support. There was at least one move in every ward in Wien. We had two in ours; the one was just moving from one part of the city to another, but another was the Zickbauer family who is moving to a town called Neumarkt close to Salzburg. They were one of my favorite families here and helped me a lot while I was sick and when I didn't really have a companion two transfers ago. He will be in Elder Young's ward and told me he will make sure to invite him to dinner each week until he goes home. Besides the two in our ward, we helped our roommates and missionaries in our district's ward with moving people in their wards families. All I can say is I am never buying a true piano until I buy a house that I plan on living in for awhile. People seem to think that the big guy should be involved with lifting the heavy stuff. It was a good work out.

We are going through a finding period right now and we had a number of dropped out appointments, but we did have a really huge success this week. A few months ago a member from our ward named Fernando moved into our ward and at the same time his cousin Cecilia started coming to church. All of us thought that Cecilia was a member because she seemed to know a lot. However, in October she went to Germany and Italy for a the whole month and Fernando was called as a ward missionary at this time and told us during a meeting that he believes his cousin was ready to be taught when she got back. We were all surprised that she wasn't a member, but yesterday was her first Sunday back and I was able to talk with her. Before I even completed asking if she would like to meet, she asked if it were possible that she could learn more about the church because she really likes it here. We have an appointment for Thursday and I really expect great things to happen from this. Fernando and his family was baptized about two years ago in Italy and they have been hoping to have the rest of their family join the church. I believe we will have a great experience at the appointment on Thursday.

Something fun we were able to do this week is we had a "young men preparing-for-their-mission activity" with the Wien 4 ward (E. Abbott and Readings ward) that their bishop invited us to go to as well. The point was to talk with the youth about missions and get them excited for them and then we went and played basketball with them for awhile. The 4th ward is the international ward and is mostly made up of Filippinos, Africans, and Americans and so they were a lot better than your typical European at basketball - which made it a lot of fun.

I hope you all have a great week, love you lots!

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

We're trying to get President Monson's call of combined missionary and member efforts really going in our ward.

October 28, 2013

Servus!

This was a pretty good week. We had interviews with President on Saturday and they went really well. They were the last interviews I will have with him until I am departing home. We also had Stake Conference this weekend which was a special blessing for me in that I was able to see members from St. Pölten again. When we went to the Saturday afternoon session, I came in looking for some of them and couldn't find them. As I went to go find a seat, I recognized a man named Mr. Brunnsteiner. He was the husband and father of one of my favorite families in St. Pölten but he himself was not a member. However, during my time there I had built a pretty good relationship with him. He recognized me instantly as well and we were really excited to see each other and visit again. I ended up sitting with him that evening and he had pointed out that the ward in St Pölten had made up the choir in front. It was really great to see them and what was especially cool was to see that a couple of the less active members that I and previous missionaries had worked with were involved with the choir and as I found later, were actively attending church. It was really cool to see them.  Afterwards as I got to visit with the whole Brunnsteiner family, the husband himself asked if my companion and I would be allowed to come have dinner with them one evening in the next week. President Miles was there at the conference so I went over and explained the situation to him and he said it could be a great missionary appointment and that I could go once. So, either this Friday or the next week sometime I get to go visit St. Pölten and have dinner with the Brunnsteiners. That made me really excited and also to see that the ward was doing really well.

Also this week we were able to give Sister Jelineks neighbor a blessing before she went in for her operation and while she was there, her granddaughter Denise who we have been taking to a number of YSA activities came to general conference which was her first time to church. She said she really enjoyed it and would like to come more regularly in the future. I think little by little she is feeling more and more of the spirit and I believe soon we will be able to start teaching her pretty regularly.

This week we also able to get in contact with an investigator that Elder Smith and I had found back in June named Jan. He was someone we felt had a lot of potential, but we lost contact with him. We found out as we met that he had been going through a more difficult time with work and had been bouncing back and forth between here and Poland. Our lesson with him was very spiritual and uplifting and afterwards he said that this week he would be in Poland, but he wants to come to church on Sunday and after that he will be staying frequently in Wien. You could tell he had really felt the spirit.

Right now our ward mission program, that our ward mission team and us put together is working very well. We visited the Bishop this week and he's a big fan, and now we'll try to meet with all the members in the weeks to come. We're trying to get President Monson's call of combined missionary and member efforts really going in our ward.

I hope all is well, I love you lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Not sure what to call the calling..."Whatchamacallit!"

October 21, 2013

Servus!

I hope you are all having a great week! Things are going well right now. We have a member in our ward named Sister Jelinek who has neighbors that she would invite over to Family Home evening once a month. These neighbors are a lady named Helga and her granddaughter who lives with her named Denise who is young single adult age. Sister Jelinek would invite us to these family home evenings as well and over the course of the time that I have been here I have been able to teach a couple of the lessons to them as part of the spiritual thought for the evening. They always seemed to really like what we shared, but were not sure yet about investigating further into the church. However, we have been able to take Denise to a couple of YSA activities that she has really enjoyed. However, this last Saturday Sister Jelinek invited them and they both came to a ward talent show activity. They really enjoyed it and they said although they wouldn't be able to make it tomorrow, they would love to come to church sometime. Helga is supposed to have a small operation on Tuesday and we offered her a blessing and she agreed to the idea. We will be going over tonight and offering that to her. While she is in the hospital, Denise mentioned that she would like to come to church this Sunday with Sister Jelinek. Things are starting to really fall in place for the two of them.

Rebecca is also still doing very well. She received a calling a week or so ago to be in charge of the Relief Society blog/scrapbooking/journaling/news letter thing. I am not really sure what to call it. Her eye was having problems again from the surgery that took place, so we were able to give her a blessing and she is doing very well again. She is still attending institute every week and coming to a lot of YSA activities.

On Saturday we were able to have a district finding day where we took our area books and organized and called as many people as possible from them to set up appointments. We have multiple area books that are all really big so we are still in the process of organizing them and making a number of these calls, but at least the books are in a lot better stage than they were before. I made a small notebook that has all the former investigators organized by the section of the city that they live in as well as the streets that are in alphabetical order. This book is super easy to carry around and rather than having a number of records to carry around or having to look up people beforehand and searching through the area book to find them, we can now just pull out the book and find anyone that lives close to where we currently are in the city. This will come in handy if we have weeks like this last week where most of our appointments fell through as we got there. So we can look up people to go by who are in the area since we are already there. It should hopefully save a lot of time and I made a spot to put details so that future missionaries don't keep going to the same person over and over again with this book.

We both have interviews with President Miles this week as well as Stake Conference. They should both be good and it will be great to see some members from my St Pölten ward at Stake Conference again.

I hope you all have a fantastic week. I love you all. Take care.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Kind of a weird thought.

October 7, 2013

Servus!

I hope you all had a fantastic week! We had transfer calls this week and I will be staying another 6 weeks with Elder Fletcher. Our roommates Elder Reading and Elder Abbott will also be staying. I am down to my last two transfers which was where Elder Field was at when he trained me, kind of a weird thought.

I don't have a whole lot of time because we are going to a district P day soon for all the missionaries leaving Wien, but we had a pretty good week. We did back to back austausches with the Wien 5th ward Elders, Elders Eaker and Hancy, from Tuesday to Thursday. I worked with Elder Hancy in his area and then switched the next day to work with E. Eaker in mine. It was nice because I haven't had a formal exchange since the third week of my first transfer here. The coolest part was that only a small portion of their area is actually in Wien so we got to venture out into the suburbs, which I have not been out into the jungles of the city in a long time.

We finally got reintouch with our investigator Ambrol. He was investigating another religous direction for the last couple weeks and they had him cut off ties with us, but he has moved on from them and on his own came to church yesterday. We will be meeting with him later this week. We also have a new investigator named Markus that we found who is really prepared. He is very accepting of the gospel and has the desire to be baptized. The trouble is staying in contact with him because he loses his phone a lot. He seems very genuine about his interest in the gospel and we will continue to work with him.

I hope all is going well, I love ya'll lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Kristy and Tristan DeMille with Elder Bodily in (Vienna) Wien, Austria.

Tristan, Kristy and Elder Bodily with Wiener Schnitzel at Schnitzel House. Elder Bodily wrote, "Kristy is a Bodily. She kicked Tristan's butt when it came to eating the giant Cordon Bleu at the restaurant we went to."

Elder Bodily, Elder Jimenez and Tristan DeMille selecting their favorite Italian gelato flavor. Not sure who was more excited, Tristan or the elders for the Italian icecream.

Elder Jimenez, Elder Bodily, Kristy DeMille and Elder Abbott enjoying Italian gelatos.

Elder Abbott, Jimenez, and Bodily leaving and walking down the street  in Wien.

General conference is super awesome on a mission and I particularly loved this one!

October 7, 2013

Servus!

I hope you all had a very wonderful general conference this week. I found the messages very powerful and enjoyable. We were able to watch all of the sessions except for the Sunday afternoon session. General conference is super awesome on a mission and I particularly loved this one.

Real quick, for the family Book of Mormon reading, if you finish Alma 53 tonight you are perfectly on track. More than half way.

I wanted to thank everyone for all of the awesome birthday wishes. This week was when I got almost all of the postcards that were sent off, I think about 20 of them came on Monday. It was great to hear from you all and I appreciated all of the love and support. It was of the coolest birthday wishes I´ve ever had.

Yes as you already know mom and dad, it worked out that I was able to meet up with Kristy and Tristan. It was fantastic to see them and made my P day. It was kind of a complicated exchange situation to make possible that we could meet up, but the Mission President said I needed to make sure that I met up with them so that I got the medicine. I am not complaining at all. We went to a Schnitzel House for dinner and afterwards we got Tristan some Italian ice cream that he was really looking forward too.

On Wednesday we sent off Elder Mielacher to England. He took a train into Munich and then they flew him out to the Preston MTC. It was sad to see him go, but he is going to be a fantastic missionary there in England. I am just glad I got to be his companion before he left.

Ana Maria was in the hospital this week and so it will be a little bit before we meet up with her,  but the good news is that she is doing well and healthy. We are currently going through a finding stage with the work which is a little easier than normal being in a big city like Wien where there is plenty to do. Hopefully we will be able to have some good appointments this week with some potential and former investigators that we got in contact with.

I hope you all have a fantastic week. I love you all a lot! Take care.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Thank you all for all of the birthday wishes!

September 30, 2013

Servus!

I have to keep this a little short today because we are in a hurry, but we were able to meet with Ana Maria this week and she is doing well as usual. She however went to Hungary on Wednesday and won't be back until later this week so we were only able to meet once, but she is still progressing very well.

This week, pretty much our whole zone got attacked with the flu and our apartment had it for most of the week. When did I get it? Friday to Sunday for my birthday. However it was still a good day for what we could make out of it. We were to have a mission wide apartment deep clean day that Saturday so fortunately we didn't need to go outside and we could rest while some of us cleaned and then switched.

By the way thank you all for all of the birthday wishes from this last week. They meant a lot to me and I really appreciated them. Thanks again.

We had our ward council-visit with many less actives from our ward on Tuesday activity (I don't know what else to call it) and it went very well. My ward mission leader and I were able to get in contact with two different members who had kind of fallen under the radar, and one we were able to give another Book of Mormon to since she had misplaced it a few years ago and the other agreed to come to church in the next couple weeks.

I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful conference weekend. Take care and have a great time. Oh and by the way Elder Mielacher will be leaving on Thursday to England. It will just be Elder Fletcher and I now. I will definitely miss E. Mielacher. He has been great to have around and he will be a great missionary in Leeds.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen