Picture from Alpine Mission site: Mission Leadership Training (formerly known as Zone Leader Council) Elders Christensen, Bodily and Bailey.

Picture from Alpine Mission site:  Mission Leadership Council after mission tour. Zone conference at the church with Elder and Sister Teixeira. (Elder Bodily front- right table side).

My prayers are with you, especially you Grandpa.

May 20, 2013

Hey, I hope everyone is doing well. That was not the news I was expecting to receive this morning with Grandma Crow passing away, but I hope everyone is doing well. It will be sad to come back and not see Grandma Crow there when I come home, but the great part is we do have the gospel and a Saviour Jesus Christ who made it possible that this isn’t the end. Grandpa I hope you are doing well. There are definitely a lot of people praying for you at this time. Grandma Crow was a great example for us and I know she is doing well now where she is. I am glad I did get to see a couple of days before I went on my mission. I hope the spirit is there during the viewing and the funeral and that everything goes ok. I love you all and my prayers are with you, especially you Grandpa. I am glad we do have the knowledge of the gospel with the firm foundation of the resurrection. I would like a copy of the obituary when it comes out, thank you. 

As for what happened this week, yesterday Sebastian and Ralf received the priesthood. The unfortunate thing is that we weren’t able to be there because the bishop asked us to be at a special young single adult sacrament meeting for a YSA convention that had been going on this week. There were about 200 young adults there from south Germany and Austria and they asked for the missionaries support with helping at it. Anyways, we talked to Sebastian and Ralf afterwards and sounded like everything went really well. We had met with Ralf this last week at our bishops house to talk about the priesthood in depth, and with Sebastian he understands everything about it already, but he wanted to take us to dinner this week and we figured we could brush up on it with him there. With Sebastian the paper work for his fiance is coming together. It sounds like the wedding will most likely be in mid July. They are actually going to be going to Utah in the next few weeks here to visit Jenis’s family. It’s possible he might stop by and say hi to both Elder Davies family and you guys, but I can’t promise that yet. Hopefully it works out though. Lena is doing good as well; she has been out of town this last week, but will be getting back next Monday.

This week went really well as far as teaching opportunities went. As mentioned we got to meet with all of our new converts, but on top of that we met with our investigator Kxx. He is making a lot of progress. He is reading the Book of Mormon quite a lot and he decided to take notes during our lessons, since he feels like he is getting a lot of answers. We wanted to talk about the second half of the plan of salvation with him this week since we didn’t finish that last time with him, but it ended up being one of those lessons that the spirit completely took over and we focused a lot on prayer. It ended up being exactly what he needed since he had some many questions that he hadn’t asked beforehand. He had been big into meditation before we started meeting with him and thought that was a form of prayer. We told him about how meditating and pondering over things was a good way to feel the spirit and receive insight and then taught him how to truly pray. He was happy with that because he thought how we prayed was only what we do with a group of people. Now he is going to pray morning and nights and I think that will be what puts him exactly where he needs to be going.

We had a meeting with a college student named Jxxx. We found him while trying to search for Luis and we had an amazing appointment with him. However, this is where agency takes a role. He said he believed everything we said, but he just didn’t think he could come away from his family’s religion. That tends to be one of the biggest difficulties we have with teaching here is getting over family traditions, but typically they just tell us right off the bat that they won’t change and so they don’t want to meet with us. Nonetheless, we still have a really good feeling about Julian and although he may not be ready to start progressing, I think the Lord will be working with him through time and something good will come for him. He did say at the end of our visit that he had friends that would be really interested in meeting with us. Hopefully we will hear back from him this week on those and who knows if the Lord meant for us to meet with Julian now to find his friends.

 We found a man named Lxxxx a week ago and had an amazing appointment with him on Thursday. He is from Nigeria and is the manager of a shop that ships car parts to African countries. The two nationalities you will find most in Germany that aren’t Germans are people from Turkey and Nigeria and with teaching Nigerians there is kind of a stereotype. They are usually very religious, but because of their culture, or what they have been taught as they were young, there are a couple of points with the gospel that are usually hard for them to fully understand. The two main ones are prophets’ roles and their priesthood authority and the other is the great apostasy. The definition of prophets is taught that if you follow Christ and you want to share the gospel, that qualifies you as a prophet. You don’t need to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost or the priesthood. Everyone can be a prophet and receive these great revelations from God. The other is they stereotypically can’t accept that the apostasy happened. However, when we meet with Lewis at these two points he said something that gave us a lot of hope. He reads his bible everyday and he told us how he was always trying to tell his friends that there was something special about the prophets and apostles that they had that others didn’t and he wanted to find it. When we talked about the great apostasy he opened up his Bible and said "You know I was thinking about this for quite a while," then he read the scripture where it said Jesus wept and said, "I asked myself, why is he weeping". The answer is that he was weeping for Lazareth before he went to raise him from the dead, but he replied instead, "It’s because I see all the people these days tearing apart the church. Of course that makes Jesus sad. We can’t be tearing apart his church. We need his church. The one he leads." However he decided to interpret that scripture, he nonetheless understood that there had been an apostasy. At the end he kept talking about how the spirit was working in him and making him feel great and excited. He wants to be baptized too. Because he is English speaking we are turning him over to the international elders, but it will be cool to see him get baptized in a few weeks when they make an official date.

We actually got let in by about three different people just from dooring this week. We will see how much progress they will want to make, but they at least let us in and lets us share our message with them. This upcoming week though is packed with appointments so we should be pretty busy running from one appointment to the other. And people say that you hardly ever teach in Germany....

We need to get going here but I hope you have a great week. We will keep Grandpa Crow in our prayers. Love you all lots.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs wiedersehen

Stuttgart District:  Brother and Sister Benson, Sisters Jencks and Bice, and Elders Bodily,  Davies, Tauche, and Armstrong.

Postcard sent home of Stuttgart's Scholssplatz.

We had another baptism in our ward this week!

May 6, 2013

Servus Zusammen!

            Well we had another baptism in our ward this week! The International Elders had an investigator named Ralf who was to get baptized on Thursday. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but lived a long time in New Mexico and was planning on returning there in a few months so that's why the International Elders were in charge of the teaching because they figured he would be in the American ward until he moved back. It was originally planned this way for awhile, but then two days before his baptism Ralf decided it might be better that he should be in the German ward until he moves back to America so that he could help his own people who he could relate to better for the time being. We were kind of surprised by the announcement, but we were deeply impressed by his commitment to serve the Lord as best as he could and the ward was excited to have another new member. The international elders still went through with finishing all the teaching and performing the baptism, and will continue to meet with him with us as well. Ralf is a very spiritual in tune man who has been searching for the true church for a long time. He found the International Elders on the street one day and somehow just knew he had to talk with them. Since then he has been making quick progress. We weren't able to see his baptism because of some unexpected events which I will explain later, but it apparently went really well and he was confirmed on Sunday. They were originally going to have the Stake President confirm him with the Holy Ghost, but the International elders had not been able to get a hold of him so about five minutes before sacrament meeting started they asked if I could do the confirming. I was really glad to do it and it was a really spiritual experience. After the ward confirmed him he teared up and said how he felt like part of a big family. He had grown up as an orphan not knowing his family and so such an experience for him was something really touching to see.

            You couldn't help but feel the spirit through it all. The ward has been really excited about missionary work as of late. They have been able to see three baptisms back to back these last three weeks, when they normally see two a year or so. You can't help but feel the spirit of the Lord touching the people in Stuttgart. Great miracles have been happening here.

            This Thursday was transfer day. There weren't a whole lot of changes in our zone, but we had to be at the main train station to help send people off and help people get coordinated to their next destination. However, there were some unexpected problems with the mission secretary's computers and the train time schedule wasn't given to us until the morning of travel, so we didn't know what to plan for. Also in the rush of everything it was hard to proofread so we had a few wrong train times. Also a number of trains got delayed. It was little confusing and stressful, but it worked out in the end. However, we had to miss Ralf's baptism because of it since it takes awhile to get from the train station to the church and we never knew what to expect, and when the final people came in the baptism was over. But the sisters from our ward were there as well as a few members, and of course the international elders were in charge of the baptism. The important thing was that Ralf got baptized.

            This week we had a really cool experience. We went on kind of a search and rescue mission to figure out where Luis had gone. No one had had contact with him, but we had his address. The directions to his house though were terribly confusing and we spent about an hour and half walking all around to figure out how to get to his apartment. It had been a little difficult because I had eaten something wrong that day and was feeling really sick. We called Luis's friend to get reclarification on the directions, but we ended up more lost than before. Finally, I had the feeling we should say a prayer to find him. I offered the prayer and after I closed Elder Davies said he had the feeling we needed to talk to the first person we saw no matter what. I thought he meant for directions, but he had meant about the gospel. Thirty seconds later a young man was walking down the street. We went up to him and as soon we said something, there was a huge smile on his face. I can't remember everything that we discussed, but he ended up being one of the most amazing people I have met. He was a college student at the local university, named Julian, studying architecture, but swalloped up everything we talked about. We even got to read a lot of the Book of Mormon right there on the street with him. I can't really put it into words, but after we finished talking with him Elder Davies and I knew that that was the whole reason why we had been there that night. It was Heavenly Father's plan that we would run into him. We also had a strong feeling that the perfect member to bring on a joint teach, who would be a really good friend for him in the church was Sebastian. He has only been a member for two weeks, but he is already going to play a big role in missionary work. We have an appointment with Julian this week. We are still looking for Luis, but we have hope for him and in the mean time we found another person ready for the gospel.

            On Friday we had our transfer meeting with the district leaders. We have two new district leaders in our zone now. One of them being Elder Moon, and the other being Elder Chapman's companion which means I will get to work with both of them on austausches (since we get to choose who works where for the austausches). I am excited and this week I will be going on Tuesday to Ludwigsburg to work with Elder Chapman - so it will be like old times in St. Pölten.

            On Saturday we had a stake youth activity that many of the stake missionaries were invited to since it was based on missionary work. Half of the youth in our stake is from the International ward so they needed us to translate from English to German or vice versa. We also got to teach the youth how to do various missionary tasks such as teaching lessons and contacting. They called the youth to mini missions in various countries and they would go to classes where they would learn about the country from members who had served in those countries (mostly international ward members since most German members tend to serve in either Germany or England). Elder Davies and I got to translate for Brother Wells from our ward who had served in Mexico. I learned from it that Cinco de Mayo is only celebrated in America, so in honor of a Mexican-American holiday yesterday we went to Taco Bell on the American base today. Anyways, it was a really fun activity to do with the youth that I hope they enjoyed as much as we did.

            Speaking of the Wells. . . I will be calling home from their house on Sunday at 8:00 Utah time. Just thought you'd like to know. I think we will be skyping, but if not I will call from their Utah line number. I love you both. I hope you never worry about how much you did for me as parents, because you have both done more than enough

            I hope you have a great week. I am excited to see some of you on Sunday.  Hope you have a great Mother's Day Mom! Love ya'll.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen

Weichelt's baptism:  Sisters Bice, Jencks, Lena Weichelt, StefanBullinger, Elders Bodily and Davies.

Lena Weichelt's baptism April 27, 2013 with Elder Bodily and Elder Davies.

It was Super Spiritual and Simply Wonderful.

April 29, 2013

Servus!

            We had a wonderful week this week. The baptism for Lena Weichelt went very well. It was super spiritual and simply wonderful. Stefan Bullinger who has been a new convert since last October in the ward had the chance to perform the baptism, and then on Sunday I was able to give the blessing to confirm the Holy Ghost to her. She was very spiritually in tune throughout it all. The bishop asked her to bear her testimony in church on Sunday after she received the Holy Ghost. It was one of the more powerful testimonies I have heard. She doesn't express emotions very much like most eastern Europeans do, but you could tell she meant everything that she said by the spirit it brought. She talked about how it took her a little longer to realize the church is what she needed; her mother was baptized in 2000, her one sister a year after and then her two daughters were baptized two years ago and now she was finally baptized. She talked about how when she realized that the church was true and that she had experienced feeling the Holy Ghost, she couldn't help, but act and work towards being baptized and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. I think she went up to almost every member in our ward that she knew at the end of sacrament meeting and told them thanks for helping her through all of this time. It was a cool experience to be a part of and to see the Lord bless her.

            For the baptism, Lena's daughter was supposed to perform a musical number, but right before Elder Davies and I left the apartment to go fill up the baptismal font she called and said that she hadn't had the opportunity to practice this week, and so she wouldn't be able to perform the piano piece. So, I called Sister Bice, since she was a vocal major at Snow College and asked if we could put something together for the baptism. So while we let the baptismal font fill up, we put together an arrangement of "Come Thou Font" and performed it an hour later for the baptism. It was really fun to do and it seemed to go well.

            We had transfer calls this week. It's hard to believe that 6 weeks have already gone by since the last ones. Anyways, Elder Davies and I are staying together. This will be our third transfer together which is the longest companion I will have had (all the others have been 1 or 2 transfers) in the field, plus if you add the MTC that's another transfer and a half. It's been great working with him and we are really good friends. It will be weird getting a new companion later since Elder Davies and I know how to teach and work with each other so well. Our whole district is staying the same, too, which I am glad for because it is one of my favorite districts ever. When all 8 of you work in the same city and see each other so often and 2 of them live with you in your apartment you bond pretty tight. 

            As for the work: We are still trying to figure out what happened to Lxxx. His friend who is a member of the church hasn't heard from him in about 3 weeks. So we are not sure exactly what happened, but we are on a search and rescue mission to figure out where he is at. On the flip side we had a really good appointment with our new investigator named Kxx. He was the one Elder Davies taught on the austausch last week without me, but he is super chill and absolutely loves the Book of Mormon. He listens to what we have to say and always makes a remark after he thinks about it for a second, like about how much sense the gospel makes and that it all just sounds like wisdom from above. Before we met him he said he had been really trying to build a spiritual connection with God, and that was why he let us come back and teach him. He hasn't been a big fan of going to churches in the past and so getting him to church will take a little work, but other than that he is golden. We challenged him to baptism and he said he wants to study and hear more about the gospel before he commits to anything, but he understands the importance from what it sounds like and has nothing against it. 

            We had an austausch with the Tubingen Elders this week and during the austausch Elder Stricklin and I went by on an old investigator. His name is Jxxx and he had won the Mr. Universe competition earlier in his life. He is now 64, so not in the crazy body building shape that he was in before, but I still wouldn't want to get in a fight with him. He had trained with Arnold Schwartzenegger. He took steroids earlier in his life and it fried his brain a little bit, but he was super excited to see us when we showed up at the door. He really loves missionaries and was so happy that he hadn't been forgotten by the church. We are not sure how much we can do, but we told him we might come by every third week or so and invited him to come to church.

            This week the International Elders have a baptism. The guys name is Ralf. He is being taught by the International Elders even though he is German, because Ralf had lived in the US for about 15 years and is going back in a few months, so it made more since for them to work with him and they were the ones who found him anyways. There is the possibility that he might end up coming to the German Ward just because he is German. He hasn't quite decided yet, though he is leaning towards the International Ward. Either way there will be another baptism in the city of Stuttgart. 

            So each week on Tuesday we have dinner with the Wells family, which is the family from Orem who lives here in Stuttgart. Because of his job as an author, he can pick and choose where they live and they decided to come live here for a couple years since she speaks German and his books have been selling really well here. He also really likes playing board games, and has been working on his own that will get published here at the end of the summer. So the company told him to test play the game a lot, so this week we came on Monday for family home evening and he played the game with us and the sisters so we could work out any flaws. It was great and he said he would get  us all a free copy of the finished product that he would ship to us once he was back in Utah next March. We don't know what the game is called yet, but when it comes out in stores I will be able to say that I was one of the very first people to play it. Also the Wells family asked if we needed to call home on Mother's day so we officially have connections for the Mothers Day call. I will get more of the details to you next week.

            That is the main extent of what happened this week. I hope you all have a great week, I sure love you all.

Elder Bodily

Gott sei mit euch bis aufs Wiedersehen  

Sebastian's baptism on April 19, 2013 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Elder Bodily, Elder Davies, Sebastian and fiancee Jen,  Sister Jencks, and Sister Bice.

I can cook! Made German Schnitzel to celebrate Sebastian's baptism.