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| District Wien 2: Bodily, Jimenez, Evans, Eaker, Mohn, Halverson, Robins, Botcherby and Mickelson. |
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| Elder Fletcher (left) and Elder Bodily (right) sending off Elder Meilacher off on his mission to Leeds. |
Monday, November 25, 2013
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
Monday, November 18, 2013
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
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
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
Monday, November 4, 2013
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
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