Still learning

Liebe Mutter und Vater,

I want to tell you partly about our food. :) Because I love it so much. I have never had herbal tea before!  We have started having tea occasionally---at members' houses, and Sister Hladky gave us some, so we are having it more. We also have rice with fried eggs (but the yolk still runny) on top. That's one of our favorites. Oh, and we made lasagna last week. It has been SO much fun. And, I'm learning tricks and tips from Sister Scoggin.

Anyways. This week. This week was good---I felt so blessed---but I wasn't working as hard as I could've been. So it's been a week to learn. See, what's hard is contacting---especially around Hauptplatz. We've had so many talks about being natural and normal missionaries, getting to know people, becoming their friends, instead of "Hello, you're at church, so you must be interested in the gospel, will you get baptized?" So, not that fast. ;) But contacting---street contacting and dooring, which we almost never do---is unnatural, and I have a weird fear of people, of being rejected. So it was hard this week to do contacting. Basically, we just avoided it, which is a bad idea. Because we did things that were mostly effective with our time, but we are supposed to be trying to talk with every person. Sigh. It picked up at the end of the week, though.

So, kurz overview of the week, and then about what I'm learning. :) Because I learned a lot this weekend.

Monday, we went to Traiskirchen, by Baden, to visit a less active member. He wasn't home. Traiskirchen issketchy at night. That's all. I don't want to go there at night ever again. Tolerable during the day, but not at night. Nothing happened. It just is a sketchy place.

Tuesday, we went to E! She's wonderful. She just needs to have conviction and desire. She doesn't doubt that the Book of Mormon is true; she just doesn't have the spark of desire to find out if it is or isn't. Goodness. But I love her. :) We also translated at the dentist for P, M, and E. 

Wednesday, we met with C. I feel like she's starting to make progress. She's harder on herself than she needs to be, but I think she's starting to understand. She definitely wants to come back to church.

Thursday was when it started to pick up. We hadn't found many potentials, and we both knew we NEEDED to contact, so we just streeted until GMK (Mission correlation meeting? Something like that in English) (Gemeinde Missionskorrelationssitzung). Got caught in a rainstorm at the cemetary. (That was our end destination.) 

Friday, we had weekly planning (which takes a while..........), then we went spontaneously by on Sister E, who is a wonderful woman. I love her. She carries a lot of stress, but she is so active and has a testimony and trusts in God, and she shows it. It's wonderful. We showed up at just the right time, when no one was home, and she just needed to sit down and talk with some people. Sister Scoggin had had the feeling to go by on her before going and visiting some less actives, and it's a good thing we listened to that, because otherwise, she wouldn't have been home. After that, we went to Sport, which was very fun, because Patricia, Marcelo, and Erica came. The game was so intense. Not competitive, just I felt like everyone was hitting the ball more forcefully than usual. One ended up flying into the backyard of a neighboring house........oops.... ;)

Saturday, we were determined to talk to people. So before catching a train, we went through a park and talked to a couple people. And it got interesting. The woman that we came up to believes in God, but starting talking with to us in a kind tone, but it was clear she was just trying to disprove us. And then a drunk man and his wife came up to us, and he said he's met with the elders for 8 years. Mmmm.....just funny. And then we missed our train. ;) So we walked around some more, but got the next one and went out to Felixdorf. Then walked quite a while to get to a less active woman we visited a couple weeks ago......who wasn't home. (We were still determined and trying to talk with everyone on the streets.)

On the way back to WN, we talked about our problem. We are not sure how to use our time the best. Most of the members live outside WN. Some of our investigators live inside WN, a couple live outside. This isn't a big city, where there are Straßenbahns every few minutes or U-bahns every fewer minutes, so it's hard to do much train contacting, except for when we go außerhalb. And we hate walking around WN, because there are never people on the streets. We're just working on it...... We need a method to our place, to being ever so effective, but we still haven't found it. :/

But we came back and then went to P and M. Huge miracle of this transfer: a couple weeks ago, a young man from Chile named Sebastian moved into our ward. He's an RM, served in Chile, went to Utah State, and is now going to a school in Wiener Neustadt. And he'll be here for three years. Doesn't speak a word of German. But we brought him as a joint teach, which was wonderful. We taught the Restoration last week, and we wanted to do a good follow up (nachfass) and make sure they understood, and then talk more about the Book of Mormon. Basically, Sebastian sort of just re-taught the Restoration. We didn't say much. But, it was EXACTLY what they needed. We were happy just to let him go and teach. He was very respectful of the fact that we're the missionaries, but it really was what needed to happen. Just to have someone from their own continent who actually speaks the language, who has taught the gospel in that language, come and solidify everything we taught them last week. It was so good. The Spirit was so strong. And I learned a loooot of things just from listening to him.

Afterwards, we went by on Sister P, because we had a few minutes before dinner and then sprach studium. But Sister P wasn't there; her husband was, though, which really was very, very good. He's not a member, and he doesn't let her come to church. But we talked to him for a few minutes, and he was very kind and very open. We both thought that he needed to have that interaction. :)

Yesterday was great. We had church, then we went over to Jose's to work....on something fun. :) Next week, President and Sister Miles are coming to Wiener Neustadt!!! I'm SO excited. We asked Bishop sometime in August if we could have a Sunday where we talk about missionary with the members and help them "catch the vision." He told us we could do it on the 1st of September, then later said, "Let's do the 22nd, because the Miles will be here." So this Sunday, we're taking the first two classes and sort of doing a zone conference thing where we teach, we present, talk about it, and then also do role plays. I'M SO EXCITED. It's going to be awesome. The bishop wants us to use the "Work of Salvation" broadcast. So we all got together yesterday and watched it at Jose's. The Spirit was SO strong. I had a lot of ideas. I'd forgotten how GOOD it was! OH man..........And we have all the talks printed out, so now I can go back and read them again and again. I'm so excited. My topics are love and personal preparation.

One thing that I LOVE about the call letter is that it says that this is a labor of love. It REALLY is. Oh my goodness. It's so wonderful.

After Jose's, we were just on fire. We left his apartment, and talked to EVERYONE on the way back to ours. No one really wanted to listen, but we went from one person to the next, just trying to invite. Then we went up to Baden to take a card to Sister K, a less active whom we'd never met before. In Baden, we did the same thing, just contacting. At some point, we met a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses.  Their favorite thing to bring up is how God's name in the Bible is Jehovah. And then try, in a nice voice, to just Bible bash. Which I'm just tired of. It hurts so much. After that, we were getting pretty discouraged. It was hard, so we stopped and said a prayer. I had the impression after we closed, that Christ is with us, and I felt that we were not alone. We still didn't get any potentials the rest of the night. BUT. Sister K was home, and we were able to meet her. A couple of people on the street complimented us on the fact that we were pretty girls, no tattoos, no beer or alcohol, just walking and being polite. And on the train back, we read different scriptures about the Lord being with us from the Doctrine and Covenants. And then a guy came up to us and said, "Are you Mormons?" I was shocked. That doesn't happen here. But he's from Mexico, working in Graz, served as a missionary for the Catholic church, but always played basketball with the missionaries? members? in Argentina (where he must have spent some time....). We talked about the church a bit.

Yep. Well, I am learning to trust in the Lord. I'm learning about love. And about faith. Aaaaand about how I need to talk to people and get out of my comfort zone. The thing is, whenever I do, it gets easier, and everything gets better. I have more of the Spirit. It is a little easier every time to talk to someone else. Even if we don't get potentials, I know I am trying hard to do the work, and I feel much more successful at the end of the day. I LOVE this work. The Church is ever so very true. And it is wonderful.

My challenge for you this week: Go watch a video from the "Work of Salvation" broadcast. :) It's pretty AMAZING.

Sister Scoggin thinks I'm ridiculous. I'm still laughing at the picture, "What do you call an alligator in a vest?...........An investigator." It's so great!!  Hehehehehe. Yep.

I love you so much! Thank you for all you do, for your prayers, emails, snail mails, everything. :) It means a LOT to me.

Love, love, love,

Sister Elizabeth Jill

Caught in a rainstorm. Without my umbrella. I loved it.

My room!

Bad Sauerbrunn