New Years here is crazy!

January 7, 2013

Guten Morgen!

Well, first, that's really interesting with the ward changes this last week. It will be good to have some of these people from the 3rd ward back in our ward, but I will definitely miss a lot of people. It's sad they won't be in our ward after this. I plan on visiting a lot of them after my mission. It's so weird to think that my ward will have different people when I get back. It still hasn't registered to me that I have a new bishopric or anything.

In other news Stuttgart is great! I had no idea how cool and pretty the city was. It's probably already my favorite big city I've seen in my mission so far. The city itself is built on just lots of hills with one really huge hill at the southern end where our apartment is. There is a really cool overview about 6 minutes walk from our apartment where you can overlook the whole city. My new address is:

Kirche Jesu Christi, HLT

Elder Bodily

Weidachstr. 19

70597Stuttgart

Deutschland

I loved Austria, but it was really great to get back in Germany because that's where I started in my mission so everything felt familiar and felt like going home in a sense. Our ward is by far the biggest I've served in so far. In Rosenheim we had about 65 active members, in St. Pölten we had 25, and here in Stuttgart we have 170. There are two wards in Stuttgart: one is the German speaking ward and the other is the English speaking ward because there are a ton of US military bases in the area and so the members there plus the immigrants who speak English better than German go there. However, E. Zimmerman and I are the missionaries for the German speaking ward. Ironically, native Germans are the missionaries for the English ward. Working with E. Zimmerman is great. He is a hard worker but really good at staying relaxed and calm and gets along well with others. His Texas accent comes out every now and again which is great. I am still getting to know the members and people we are working with. 

It's already been really fun being a Zone Leader. We get to work with other missionaries a lot more often and have various events to plan for and we get to work more with President Miles. This week we are going to Munich on Thursday until Friday for a meeting for all of the Zone Leaders (14 of us, companionships in Vienna 2nd ward, Munich 3rd ward, Salzburg, Stuttgart, Zürich, Bern, and St. Gallen) that takes place at the beginning of each month. I'll get to see Elder Young again since he is the Zone Leader in Munich. We also meet every third week with the Stake President to discuss missionary work in the zone. We get to do austausches with all of the district leaders and trainers in our zone as well, so I will get to work with Elder Root again for a little bit.

Before I reached Stuttgart I had a great week in St. Pölten. The members invited us to dinner basically every night. We spent New Years with the Brunnsteiners. New Years here is crazy, it feels like the city is getting bombed when they get fireworks going. I will miss the ward members there a lot.

We have to get me registered today so I have to go now, but I'll make sure to explain more of what is going on next week. I love you all and Happy New Year!

Elder Bodily