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