Rootbeer and Creme Soda from the secret store!

July 8, 2013

Servus!

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July. Our 4th of July consisted of us buying a lot of Rootbeer and Creme Soda from the secret store that no one knows about at Vienna's train station that sells some American products and getting some Ben & Jerry's and making Rootbeer/Creme Soda Freezes. Even our British roommate couldn't help but be grateful to celebrate America's Independence Day.

Well this Wednesday marks a month since the Book of Mormon reading challenge started that we all agreed to. If we are on tract we should be at 2 Ne 9 if you count in the extra 2 chapters we would need to read each month. I hope you are all enjoying it. (Just so you know I am beginning Mosiah right now :)

We were able to meet with Rxxx this week and she is doing well. We talked about tithing and fasting and she accepted everything very well. That is one of the lessons that you can truly tell how dedicated someone is to the gospel if they accept right away or at least say it makes sense and they will act in faith and hope everything works out. On Friday Rxxx asked if we could give her a blessing for the sick at church, but because of an unexpected family issue she wasn't able to make it. However, we are meeting tomorrow with her and hopefully giving her the blessing there. Her baptismal date is August 11th and she will be more than ready for that day I believe.

We had some troubles this week with getting appointments to work out, but I think this week is going to be a lot better for some of our investigators and so hopefully they will go through. We were able to use our time this week to get our area books organized. We have literally hundreds of former investigator sheets in our apartment. If you were to take all of the former investigator records from all of my other areas combined it wouldn't be half as many as the ones here in this part of Vienna. Elder Nelson made a promise at one point that in each area book there is at least one person who will be baptized. We have our records organized into 8 books, so now the trick is finding these people. However, we have made a good system for getting in contact with these people so hopefully things will work out well.

On Saturday our district had a huge Finding Day in the Wien 5 Ward's area. While I was there I was able to work with Elder Eaker for the whole day and it was incredibly fun. Elder Eaker and I were made and released as Zone Leaders at the same (he was in Munich) and he has been out one transfer longer than I, so we have been out relatively the same time. Not counting my roommate Elder Smith who will be going home in a couple of weeks, Elder Eaker and I are the two oldest missionaries in our zone. If you take the 6 youngest missionaries in our 10 Elder district and put their mission time together Elder Eaker and I, by ourselves have been out longer than that. When he told me this it really blew my mind that I was starting to become an old missionary... but anyways, working with Elder Eaker was great. He works similarly to Elder Davies so it was easy enough to work well with him and we had some really fun conversations. On top of that, towards the end of the day he treated me to what was probably the best Italian Ice Cream I have ever had, which is saying a lot because that is the only type of Ice Cream you can really find here.

Something that has been sticking out on my mind is what one of my football coaches always had us do; whenever the 4th quarter came around he always had us stick our arm up with four fingers and start yelling "Fourth Quarter" and get excited about it. The principle behind it was despite whether we were winning or losing in the game, the fourth quarter was something special, it's where legends and miracles take place and it's important to play this quarter as your hardest. It was something that always made us excited because it was the chance we had to go all at it to the end and really prove ourselves. This Wednesday I have exactly 6 months left so tha'ts when my fourth quarter starts. The idea of that has really pumped me and I am more excited than ever to go full out with my full effort and really just make these last 6 months the best, hardest working, most fun filled, most enjoyable months so far. I hope it goes well.

I love you all and I hope you are having a fantastic week.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen