This is the closest I have ever worked with a ward...

September 16, 2013

Servus!

     Well this was a really good week. We had an investigator that Elder Smith and I found back in June named Axx Mxx She is from Hungary, but has lived in Austria most of her life. She is about 55 years old. When Elder Smith and I found her we weren't able to meet with her because she had to go to Hungary for some family reasons and wouldn't be back until sometime in September. Well about a week and a half ago she got back and we had contact with her again and we came to find out that she is completely golden. While she was away in Hungary she read the entire Book of Mormon and is reading it again a second time to really soak in everything and learn as much as possible. She really loves it and believes it to be true scripture. We met with her and she told us that she had been a catholic her whole life, but felt like something was missing. She had been investigating other churches to find that missing piece, but until she ran into the Book of Mormon she hadn't felt like she was right on track yet. We met with her three times this last week and you can see how the spirit really confirms everything that is being taught. Her catholic priest had recommended that she start taking a course to be a Nun and she had considered it for a time, but she then told her Priest that she would start the course in 6 months if she didn't find a better church before then. She really likes the gospel and is hoping to get a confirmation in this time. She was really sick on Sunday and so she wasn't able to make it to church, but she feels good about everything she has prayed about and has read and wants to come to church and thinks that that will be a sealing decision. She also understands everything being taught extremely well and wants to continue to discuss deeper into the lessons.

     This week Rxxx was in the hospital because she had to have something removed from her eye that got caught in it, but other than that she is doing fantastic. She is as happy as ever and she is coming to institute every week now. 

     Right now I feel really good about how much work is going on between us and the ward in unison for missionary work. This last Wednesday we had one of the most effective meetings with our Ward Mission leader and mission team where we came up with a plan that we will be using to help each family in the ward develop a family mission plan that we can follow up on and every week we will have a day where we will do splits with our ward mission leader and ward missionaries to visit some of these families and present this plan to them. In our ward council this last week we put together this huge plan where next week all the members of gemeinde rat plus their presidency members and us will go in teams of two on a certain day to visit a certain number of less active members that were prayed about and assigned to specific teams. When we visit them we are going to share a special message with them and invite them to church and we hope to visit as many of these people as possible. I will be working with our ward mission leader, Bruder Teply, himself and we have a number of people to visit. One in particular is a man who is young adult age who had a child's blessing, but never got baptized and we have a strong feeling that we can help him make progress. In addition to that our ward in general in the last few weeks has gotten really excited about mission work and we have been able to work with them rather well. This is the closest I have ever worked with a ward while being on my mission and it's keeping us really busy as well as feeling super productive.

     So, the missionary who was supposed to be my companion, is going to be able to come back to Austria. He has to go back to the original city he served in for a couple weeks, Linz, to sort out all the technical stuff, but he should be able to stay here now. In fact, they are flying him straight into Wien airport and so Elder Fletcher, Elder Mielacher, and I have been asked to pick him up on Tuesday and get him on the right train back to Linz.

     Well that is about all from this week. I hope you have a fantastic week. Love you all.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen