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
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