November 5, 2012 Grußdi Miteinand
First of
all, sorry about the very short letter last week. There were some scheduling
conflicts and it made it very difficult to get to emails last Monday. We
went to Wien to help the senior couple in our district to move into a different
apartment because their old one had some issues. We went and did emails at the
YSA building at Wien. The problem was us, because Elder Moon and Bassett, and
Sister Reid and Stewart also do their emails there as well. I took the last
shift and by that time I only had about twenty minutes left before we had to
go.
I hope everything is going all right in New
York. We had heard that there was a storm in New York from some of the members,
but we didn't know how big it was. That sounds like a huge mess. I hope Sean is
doing all right and being able to help out over there. Let me know if anything
more happens with that.
I really appreciated your emails
this week. I enjoyed reading what was going on at home and the spiritual
thoughts you included. This week was a rather good week here in St. Pölten. As
a district we are starting something new where instead of having district
meeting every week in Wien we are going to switch off between Wien and St.
Pölten each week and after district meeting we will then work as a district
together in the city where the meeting is held for 6 hours to focus on finding.
This week we did that here in St. Pölten. We broke it off into 3 sections of
two hours each where the first I would work with Elder Chapman and then the
second with Elder Moon and the third with Elder Basset. When I was with Elder
Moon we got to work and had probably the most success I have seen in St.
Pölten. We found a number of potential investigators and were able to find a
lot who were either interested in a Book of Mormon to read or visiting the
church sometime in the future. After that day it kept going well. We were able
to give out a few more Books of Mormons, but more importantly found some who
had interest in learning about our church. All of them seemed to have different
interest points whether it was they liked our church's emphasis on the family,
the fact that we have prophets today, or simply that we lived our religion in a
country that is rather unreligious even though most are associated with a
church. There wasn't anything too different from this week and previous weeks
as to how we worked only that I think the Lord really understood how willing we
were to work. It seems to come down to attitude and trying to strengthen our
desires to work harder. With the potential investigators that we found the way
it stands right now, about half we decided that they actually don't want to
learn at the moment. But we still have a good number who we are very hopeful
about. We have been working to schedule times to meet with them and hopefully
things will go through this week or at least next. We are still trying to work
a lot through members to get the work going as well; for example in December we
are having an invite month where the ward members will focus on bringing their
friends to church and this month we are meeting with them and trying to get
them excited for it and to be thinking who they could invite.
Thank you for the spiritual thoughts
you both sent and for the poem you sent of Bishop Rifes I found them both very
nice and very uplifting. Dad I wanted to ask you if there is any way possible
that I could get a copy of some of the notes you made at the back of your
mission Bible? That's something I want to be better with because there are a
lot of people here who won't believe anything if it doesn't come from the
bible.
I also had an austausch with Elder
Sievers, one of the Zone Leaders, this week. He is German and although he can
speak pretty good English we just spoke the whole time in German. He told me
that I had picked up the language rather fast for someone who has been out as
long as I have. It was a really nice compliment from a native who probably has
to be pretty patient with the rest of us who are still working on the language.
Granted, he only said my German was doing all right; Austrian German can
sometimes be a little difficult to understand. But it makes it an adventure.
This last Sunday I got to teach the lesson in Priesthood meeting and because we
don't have too many members, the High Priest/Elders Quorum leader decided to
have me teach every third week because most priesthood holders have had a lot
of teaching opportunities.
Mom this last week we had Austrian
Holidays on Thursday and Friday where they don't deliver mail, and they don't
deliver it on Saturday and Sundays either so today is the first day that
I can get the package so we will see when we get home.
Speaking of packages I found out
what happened to the package in Frankfurt with the Advil. I got a phone call
this last week from the office Elders saying apparently a letter came to me
this last week in Rosenheim notifying me that because I hadn't reclaimed my
package in the timeline that they had set, that they had taken the liberty of
destroying the Advil pills and disposing of the package and I had to pay a fee
within 7 days for it or it would double. Fortunately the current Rosenheim
Elders got the letter to Munich and they took the money out of my account ($35)
for the fee and got everything squared away so that there were no problems.
Lesson learned. Don't send Advil in packages to Germany (even though I had
asked for them after the bike accident and the US post office cleared it).
Thank you again both for all of the
love and support you have both shown me and for helping me out by sending me
packages and lots of help. I really appreciate all you keep doing for me and
all that I keep learning from you both. You are really the best parents.
I love you guys a lot. I hope
everything is going well for you both. Thanks again for everything.
Well I am going to have to leave it
at that and get back to you next week. I am really excited for all of you who
should be getting your mission calls in the next few weeks or so. You are truly
in for a life changing experience. Let me know how it goes.
I love you all and I hope all is
well
Elder Bodily
Gott sei mit euch bis aufs
wiedersehen
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