A girl with a mission: "We're such missionaries!" September 30, 2013

WE LOVE THIS MISSIONARY

Kate's mission president sent a letter reminding us to send Christmas packages very early (plan on having them arrive by December 1) and to send them to the mission home address in Munich. He ended his letter by saying "We love your Sons and Daughters; they are all amazing servants of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May His peace be with you and your family this Christmas season in rich abundance. Our Savior lives and loves us all." I know the Miles truly do love these young missionaries and I'm grateful for them.

Now, for Kate's letter.....

"Stay Between the Lines" is a Mormon Message by Elder Holland, watch it. We showed it to Jenni. Obviously she loved it. Later she tells me that she spent hours the next day watching Mormon Messages. That's my girl!

Well, Jenni is an official member of the church! Her baptism was on Saturday night and she was confirmed during Sacrament Meeting on Sunday.

(FYI - Baptism in the LDS church is by immersion - just as Jesus

was baptized by John the Baptist)

Moments I don't want to forget:

***Booking it from the Institute Zentrum to the church and trying to imagine how we're going to figure out the font and if it will be full in time! Our ward mission leader texted us that he was running late and the elders had to go home to change into suits.THANK GOODNESS FOR GOOD MEMBERS! Baagii and Richard were already there, Baagi setting up tables and best of all, Bruder Huber was downstairs filling up the font. Yayyyyyyyyyyyy.

***Benjamin's talk. It was so funny. He is too good. It was straight from his heart and just precious. He really does have a testimony. Also he basically proposed to Jenni in his talk. They talk about getting married all the time.

***Singing with Sister Judd. Neither of us felt like we rocked our solo verses, but our harmonized verse went really well. Benjamin cried. He cried hard. It was such a special day for him. Actually probably one fourth of the people there cried. There were a lot of missionaries and a lot of young single adults there. And some ward members too.

***Standing to the side of the font with SIster Judd waiting with towels and watching them struggle to figure out the correct baptizing position. I was dying! They told us they practiced! They're literally walking into the font and they mention that they have no idea what they're doing. I'm not even sure who helped them figure it out. Probably a lot of it was Perry, our ward mission leader.

***Brushing Jenni's hair in the bathroom and helping her get ready to go back upstairs. I know that might sound stupid but it was just so good to be with her.right after she had been baptized.

***Realizing that Jenni brought delicious treats to her own baptism. I love her.

Earlier that day we had this activity at the Zentrum (youth/insitiute center) where we went out on splits and invited people all over the streets of Vienna to a Besucherabend (fireside for friends of the church) the following day. I went with a young woman who is from Vienna and just got back from her mission to Berlin. Score! She was awesome.

Besucherabend (investigator evening) was good. Perry gave it. The topic was "How can faith in Jesus Christ help me?"

I see the Strongs normally about three times a week. (The Strong's are a Senior missionary couple serving in Vienna in the Young Adult Ward). They are in charge of the center that I talk about all the time. They are in my district. There is no typical day, but there are kind of typical days of the week. To some degree. Make sense?

Monday:

Study (insert that as the first thing every day on normal days. But not every day is normal)

Emails

Groceries

P-Day fun

We used to go to Omana's every single Monday for a lesson with her, her son Robin, and the elders. She has unfortunately been dropping off the planet, not returning calls, and even ignoring calls. We have no idea what's up. She's been an investigator for forever (8ish years I think) and supposedly she does this sometimes. There are pictures with Omana and Robin in Dropbox. She's from India. Omana has come to sacrament meeting almost every week that I've been here, but not the last two. She has even come to sunday school twice. Her son Robin is a member as of earlier this year. He has the priesthood and has been to the temple to do baptisms. But I just really want to see her. We're going to drop by tonight but there's no guarantee that they'll be there. We have some less actives who live close by that we will go by on if we don't get a lesson with Omana.

Also on Monday nights is FHE at the center, which we can go to if we have an investigator going.

Tuesday:

District Meeting

German/English

Usually we go to Sankt Polten to meet with our investigator there (who, by the way, went to church for the first time yesterday!)

Wednesday:

Institute (we only go if we have an investigator in the right age group going)

Thursday:

German/English

Friday:

Waffle night at the center (again, we only go if we have an investigator going)

Saturday:

Games in the morning with whoever we can get to come (less actives, contacts, members . . .)

Every week we meet with our ward mission leader on Friday or Saturday and talk about the week and prepare for our meeting on Sunday

Sunday:

Meeting about missionary work in the ward

Church

Usually dinner at a member's

Yeah honestly every day is very different. And every week. German/English class is a service that we do every week but I still get to be a learner and not a teacher. Unless they really need me to teach. Also we have done yard work and that's about it.

We got a new washer this week! After doing our wash by hand for about two weeks. The new one is so much faster and we're so happy!

Quote of the week is all of us in our apartment telling each other all the time how excited we are for conference. We're such missionaries. But you should all be excited. General Conference is the best.

Yeah so Jenni is baptized and it's great. But other investigators are just not making progress. So now we have no progressing investigators. There's a big difference between someone who is willing to meet with you and someone who wants to progress towards making covenants with our Father in Heaven. So we're working on that.

This is from President Miles to the missionaries:

"I believe that one of the greatest aspects of our “Mission Culture” is Personal Touch. Small acts of kindness and love are the Foundation that True Charity, the love of Christ, is built upon. Love, expressed each day, in small acts of service is the way God would have us live our lives. I am thankful for the many acts of service that you all render your companions, ward members, investigators and all of mankind each and every day."

I really love the emphasis on personal touches. It's just about recognizing each other and uplifting each other through little acts of service. For example, today Sister Harman and Sister Clark left notes for both me and Sister Judd with some chocolate. Or elders shine each other's shoes. It's cool. Hey love you family!