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

I never thought I would enjoy service like that so much!

September 23, 2014

Servus!

            I hope you are all having a great week. This week we were able to meet a couple of times with Ana Maria and she is doing fantastically. She always has tons of questions that the Book of Mormon answers really well and she said that she will be baptized when she knows for certain that it's true, however, she really wants it to be true. She really wants it to be the true church because she has found a great amount of comfort already from what she has heard and felt as she studies the Book of Mormon and prays about what she has learned. We are continuing to help her recognize and answer and continue with the rest of the discussions, but I think when she will be able to make it to church she will get that confirmation that it is true. She wanted to come yesterday, but she had a surgery a couple months ago and the night before Sunday things started acting up and so she had to go into the hospital for them to take care of her health, but she is doing a lot better now and was only in the hospital on Sunday.

            As far as the rest of the work, we are really concentrating on unifying the mission work between the ward and us and it is working really well. This week we are going in teams of two with the members of our ward council on Tuesday to visit a number of less actives that we prayed about and have assigned to specific teams based on which members or missionaries would be good to contact them. In addition to that we are also contacting a lot of referrals that ward members are bringing in out of their excitement. So far we have found a girl named Denise who is a friend of one of the members who seems to have a lot of potential. We have already taught the first two lessons with her. She wants to take it slow for right now, but she wanted to go to institute with the young single adults and she will be attending that this week.

            This week we attended a funeral for a ward member who passed away. The cemetary we went to was the largest in Europe and we got lost a little bit, but we were able to find our way to the right spot. We also had the opportunity to help with a number of big moving projects. I never thought I would enjoy service like that so much until I came on my mission. 

            I hope everything is going well at home. I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week.

Elder Bodily

This is the closest I have ever worked with a ward...

September 16, 2013

Servus!

     Well this was a really good week. We had an investigator that Elder Smith and I found back in June named Axx Mxx She is from Hungary, but has lived in Austria most of her life. She is about 55 years old. When Elder Smith and I found her we weren't able to meet with her because she had to go to Hungary for some family reasons and wouldn't be back until sometime in September. Well about a week and a half ago she got back and we had contact with her again and we came to find out that she is completely golden. While she was away in Hungary she read the entire Book of Mormon and is reading it again a second time to really soak in everything and learn as much as possible. She really loves it and believes it to be true scripture. We met with her and she told us that she had been a catholic her whole life, but felt like something was missing. She had been investigating other churches to find that missing piece, but until she ran into the Book of Mormon she hadn't felt like she was right on track yet. We met with her three times this last week and you can see how the spirit really confirms everything that is being taught. Her catholic priest had recommended that she start taking a course to be a Nun and she had considered it for a time, but she then told her Priest that she would start the course in 6 months if she didn't find a better church before then. She really likes the gospel and is hoping to get a confirmation in this time. She was really sick on Sunday and so she wasn't able to make it to church, but she feels good about everything she has prayed about and has read and wants to come to church and thinks that that will be a sealing decision. She also understands everything being taught extremely well and wants to continue to discuss deeper into the lessons.

     This week Rxxx was in the hospital because she had to have something removed from her eye that got caught in it, but other than that she is doing fantastic. She is as happy as ever and she is coming to institute every week now. 

     Right now I feel really good about how much work is going on between us and the ward in unison for missionary work. This last Wednesday we had one of the most effective meetings with our Ward Mission leader and mission team where we came up with a plan that we will be using to help each family in the ward develop a family mission plan that we can follow up on and every week we will have a day where we will do splits with our ward mission leader and ward missionaries to visit some of these families and present this plan to them. In our ward council this last week we put together this huge plan where next week all the members of gemeinde rat plus their presidency members and us will go in teams of two on a certain day to visit a certain number of less active members that were prayed about and assigned to specific teams. When we visit them we are going to share a special message with them and invite them to church and we hope to visit as many of these people as possible. I will be working with our ward mission leader, Bruder Teply, himself and we have a number of people to visit. One in particular is a man who is young adult age who had a child's blessing, but never got baptized and we have a strong feeling that we can help him make progress. In addition to that our ward in general in the last few weeks has gotten really excited about mission work and we have been able to work with them rather well. This is the closest I have ever worked with a ward while being on my mission and it's keeping us really busy as well as feeling super productive.

     So, the missionary who was supposed to be my companion, is going to be able to come back to Austria. He has to go back to the original city he served in for a couple weeks, Linz, to sort out all the technical stuff, but he should be able to stay here now. In fact, they are flying him straight into Wien airport and so Elder Fletcher, Elder Mielacher, and I have been asked to pick him up on Tuesday and get him on the right train back to Linz.

     Well that is about all from this week. I hope you have a fantastic week. Love you all.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

The hope is that through our friendship ...

September 9, 2013

Servus,

      I hope you all had a fantastic, rain filled week.  It was fine here until today and now it is starting to rain pretty hard.

     We had two great success stories with less actives this week.  The first, her name was Amelia.  She is the one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago who , to keep her story short, we ran into a couple of days before she was supposed to have an operation.  We offered her a blessing of comfort since she was really nervous for the surgery and wasn't sure what would come out of it.  She had also only had one other blessing her whole life since she had been in the church and the thought hadn't crossed her mind, but it sounded wonderful to her.  I had the opportunity to give the blessing and it was a very powerful and specific blessing and afterwards she was completely moved by the spirit and wanted to come back to church after she was out of the hospital and had gotten back from a family reunion.  She kept her promise and she was there yesterday and loved it.  The members were also very good to her and we will be visiting her again tonight and she plans on coming to church each Sunday from now on.  She told us she really wants to start putting her life back in order and prioritize her faith so that it plays a more prominent role in her life.

     The other success was with the Ward Mission leader's son.  He is 16 and had been inactive for a long time.  The Ward Mission leader was able to finally get his son to come to the ward family home evening last Friday and Elder Fletcher, Elder Mielacher and I started building a strong friendship with him as we played soccer together.  He told Elder Mielacher that he would come to church to see him before he left to England and to our surprise actually came yesterday.  We talked to him for awhile after church and we invited him to come play soccer with us on P-Days and he loved that idea, but then he asked if we could teach him English once a week or so.  After all that he even said he would come next week to church as well and asked his parents if we could come to dinner on Saturday (which we will be).  The hope is that through our friendship with him he can begin to see how important the gospel really is and how much it can help him.  It was cool to see both of them there at church and to see the spirit work with them.

     Elder Fetcher came this week and has already been a huge help.  We both have similar ideas about mission work and what we wanted to accomplish here in the ward.  We both have the attitude of wanting to do a lot of member work as well less active work and make that the major focus of our time together.  We came up with a good plan for helping members with making their own family mission plans as well as meeting with our Ward mission leader and going over all of the less actives in our ward to find out about all them, put together a list of them and try to work with as many less actives as possible.  So our vision for this transfer is really a focus on members, whether active or not, and accomplishing the work through them.

     Mom you would be really proud of me.  We were asked to do as much of the training program with Elder Melacher as possible before he leaves to England and so we have the typical extra hour of comp study each day that trainers and trainees have.  Because it is kind of weird for 2 trainers to do the program with Elder Mielacher, what we have worked out is that Elder Fletcher does the program since he hasn't had the opportunity to train yet and I spend that hour to make sure the apartment is in order since with 5 people it can get out of hand easily.  With remaining time I work on our area book.   Remember how hard it was for me just to make my bed?  I have learned something since I have been gone mom.

      For the Book of Mormon challenge, we should be finishing Alma 35 tomorrow.  I hope you are still enjoying it.  Love you all lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Elder Bodily being spotlighted for his birthday at conference, and one of the things his mission companion said , "Oh and I like that he cooks really well".

Elder Bodily's companion, Elder Mielacher from Austria, waiting for visa to serve a mission in Leeds, England.

These pictures were posted by Sister Miles on the Alpine Mission site and this one had  the comment:  Elder Bodily is still in! (Houston explained that Sister Miles had an apartment cleaning contest and Houston was still in because he and Elder Reading had made their beds everyday.)

Yesterday was Rebecca's confirmation.

September 2, 2013

Servus!

So we had transfer calls this week. As expected I am staying and so is Elder Mielacher since he leaves part way through the transfer to England, but we will be getting another companion who can finish the transfer with me when Elder Mielacher leaves. His name is Elder Fletcher. He is from Eagle Mountain and he came into the mission with Elder Chapman who I trained so I have another younger companion. He also served at one point in Linz where E. Mielacher is from and so they already know each other. He will be here on Thursday. We spent some time this week getting a new desk and rearranging rooms so that the apartment could accommodate 5 elders. Luckily it is the biggest apartment I have been in so far so it's been easy to work with.

As for the Wien 4 Elders, Elder Martin will be going back to Switzerland to a city called Zollikofen where the Elders live across the street from the Swiss temple. Elder Reading is staying and getting a young companion named Elder Abbott who is also from Orem, but went to Mountain View. 

Yesterday was Rebecca's confirmation. I had the privilege to perform the blessing and it was very special moment for us all. What I felt prompted to say in the blessing related a lot to her having a very influential future where she would have a big and great impact on helping and encouraging others. It was incredible to see how happy and touched she was afterwards.

I have to start wrapping things up, its Elder Martin's last P Day here and we have plans that we need to get to, but I hope everything is well.

Elder Bodily