December 14, 2015

Hello everyone! I don't have that much time to write today so I might leave some stuff out.

Tuesday we had a lesson with Werner Schopf. He is such an awesome guy! We brought a member that was about his age and they seemed to get along quite well. After that we went to the church to teach the Persians. It was such a good lesson!!! We went over the plan of salvation because there were so many new people. There is no way that we taught that lesson. It was all the spirit! We went into detail about everything and answered all their questions perfectly. It was amazing! We also ha our last district meeting with Sister Baker and Elder Carr…:( but also this was one of the best days I've had on my mission so far!

Wednesday was one of the most tiring, wet, cold, rainy days ever!! I thought I was going to die... Haha!! But I had my first Austrian doughnut. :D It was amazing!!! Also we found a cool place where you can take a book and exchange another book for it. I got a really cool old press printed German book. I exchanged a Book of Mormon for it haha! ;)

Thursday I gave my first blessing on the mission! It was for one of the members named Klaus. He is one of the ward missionaries. He also baptized a guy named Mahmoud. Mahmoud translates at our Persian lessons. The crazy thing is that Mahmoud didn't even know German when they taught him so they just used body language….hahaha. Eventually he learned German and is now really good at it Later that night we went to a religious discussion that we got invited to. It turns out it was just a bunch of Monies….hah! They have some weird beliefs but they were pretty dang nice.

Friday we only had one lesson with the Persian. We taught them how to sing silent night J ….naturally because that song came from Obendorf Austria! Other than that we just tracked.

Saturday we went to a Deutsch course at the church for German study. One of the members teaches it. It is really good because a lot of non members come. It's a good way to get investigators. We stayed back at the apartment most of the day because were doing our weekly planning. After that we went to Plesching See to door. The people over there seem to be a lot nicer!

Sunday was good! We only had two investigators at church one of the Persian speakers and Rumy. We committed Rumy to baptism three weeks ago but he has been so busy we have had to postpone it. He still comes to church every week and he said he will call us this week. So that's good! :) We are planning on making him cookies. After sacrament meeting we were in our investigator class and all of the Persian speakers came in! It was so crazy!!! Brother Alsobski taught them about the gift of the Holy Ghost. It's was really good! So the dilemma we have with the Persians is that we can't baptism them until they get citizenship. Brother Alsobski basically told them to all go get citizenship which would be crazy if they all did at once. After church we ate with a member family, the Erlacher's. They are such and awesome family and their daughters are so freaking cute!!!! They wore our name tags around and we wrapped Books of Mormon for them to give away. We watched one of they Christmas church videos and had palat schinken which is basically a crepe. The best part was sitting down with the family and singing 4 or 5 Christmas songs. It was what Christmas should be.

 

So here are some things I've learned on my mission so far...

• When you try your best every day your best becomes a little better.
• Most people are going around living life with their hands two inches from their face. Sometimes it's nice to take a step back.
• Faith emits a light.
• So throughout my life I've always had little trials of faith and doubts in the church. I wanted to believe it but I wasn't sure. It would always bug me because within a day or two I would always find an answer to reconfirm whatever it was that I was doubting. It was always maddening because I didn't know why I would have these doubts. But recently it all made sense. Without those little reconfirmations along the way I could never grow or progress and I would forget why I knew the church was true. These doubt are important!