Dear Mom, Dad, and Catherine,

WOW. I am amazed. God IS a God of miracles---that's for sure. Sundays are usually AWESOME days. Starting with yesterday's miracles and tender mercies:

-A came to FHA. We haven't seen her for a while. BUT! She came! And we did Family Search Indexing together. And we're having a "girls party" of sorts this Saturday---"have hot chocolate, do indexing, talking, girl stuff....etc." to quote her. :) This is REALLY good. It'll be over before 9:30. ;) #sistermissionarytypeoflatenight

-Schwester F came to church. We've been trying to call her and visit her and she hasn't answered until Saturday, when she picked up the phone, asked if we've been trying to call her (Yes), and she said she felt like she should come to church this week, and our call was just kind of a confirmation. (She's less active.)

-At church: we gave out Gebet Zettels, which was good. I played piano. They are USING my piano-playing skills. Talking with J. He's Hungarian and SO COOL. He can improvise like I cannot. He's WAY good.

-After church: we went to the Ms' and had lunch. Br. Masked me where I'd been on my mission and so I said, "Wiener Neustadt," then he came in and said, "We started the Gemeinde Wiener Neustadt." He and his wife and another person were the first few IN Neustadt. It was SO COOL. Ten, fifteen minutes, we just talked about people there and where the church was held until we finally got a church building. That was SO helpful for me. HUGE tender mercy. It was really wonderful. Man. And then on his mission, he also served in Stuttgart. And so we talked about that. It was SO GOOD.

-Huge miracle of church: I was feeling pretty tired and worn down when church started and all of a sudden there were all these faces of people I just didn't know and I got overwhelmed. But then right after church, we started talking to people, and all of the right people---people I didn't know---were walking around near me, in situations where I could grab them and quickly ask what their names were. It was such a help. 

Okay. Now starting at the beginning. People.

The Hs: Part-member family. The missionaries have worked off and on with them.  Bruder H is a member but has been less active for a while. His wife is not a member. They speak some HEAVY dialect, but they are SO FUNNY.  Monday night, we got to know them a little better. Friday, we went and taught the Plan of Salvation. We invited M to be baptized, but she didn't commit to a date. But she really has the potential to do so.  She’s got a good understanding of her relationship with God and that this needs to be between her and Him. When we were teaching the Plan of Salvation, it was really cool because wherever she had a question, her husband answered in the way that he knew she would understand. And she understood really well. It was REALLY cool to see. Also, I love their dialect. It's crazy but I love it. 

Zone Training and Tausch:

Tuesday was Zone Training. My first one. It was scary and a little nerve-racking but still really good (I hope). It was fun. I think there were some things we could have done better, but it was good nonetheless.

I SAW SISTER ARNOLD. I about died of happiness. Oh my goodness. Also, I have a granddaughter. (Technically step-granddaughter, but she's already adopted into our family.) Her name is Sister Fenton. Sis. Arnold half-trained her. She came out at the same time as Sister Wilkes and Sister Angeloudis. :)  I was overjoyed to see Sister Arnold. Oh, man. I just kept looking over at here, not really believing that she was really here, really here. Oh my goodness.

We had a Tausch:  Sister Siems stayed with me and Sister Wilkes went to Italy! with Sister Jaursch. We visited some less actives and talked with people, then went home. EVERYTHING in German. 100%. I haven't done SO much since I was in the MTC, and it did me a lot of good. But it was still a lot of fun. 

Wednesday, we had a few appointments: We met with S (new investigator) with the Elders (ZLs---who were actually also on Tausch, so with Elder Nielson and Elder Wasden) and started reteaching the Restoration. It was okay...but it really changed when we talked about Christ and His Atonement and how that has personal relevance to her. She used to be Catholic but is very enttäuscht with them---and whenever we were trying to teach a point, she always told us what they believed or something else, but never about herself, what she thought or what she believed. Then Elder Wasden asked if she understood what it meant that Christ died for her, and we had a longer-ish discussion about that and she really thought about it. It allowed the Spirit to testify to her.

Afterwards, we were in a predicament because E hadn't bestätigt that we could still come to her and we're not supposed to buy tickets on Tausch to go somewhere else without having an appointment. So we prayed and both felt like we should still go down there, and so we bought the tickets. We went and had a reeeeally good lesson with E and her friend D, who only speaks Romanian. We taught the Plan of Salvation there as well.  We focused on how we started with God, and our goal the whole time is to return to Him. Therefore, we need to do things on earth in order to have that---namely, live the gospel. The Spirit was really strong. It was SO good. I felt like I could explain things in a way that she really understood. And even though she didn't commit to be baptized again, she understood why it is so important.

Thursday, we tausched back in Innsbruck (Our whole zone is GORGEOUS), then came back and had lunch. Sister Wilkes got her cold on Tausch, poor girl. It's been pretty intense.

I: We met with her on Thursday and talked, the Spirit was super strong. She wants to come back. She stayed for Institute! Which was SO good, because the lesson was about covenants. It was really good for her. Then J came in and I played my Brahms prelude for him (which I hadn't played for a while, and so it wasn't great, but passsable….), and then he improvised on the mood that I'd created. Again. He's really good. He and Ildiko talked in Hungarian, and it was beautiful.

Saturday, we had a finding day in Mattighofen (Neumarkt's area). Tender mercies: we ran into a woman who knew the elders, so we told them to go back to her. We saw C (NB who needs some help) on the train up there. A less active picked up who NEVER does. :) Also, we're super tight with Br. S, our GML. Hahaha. It's one of our goals.   

Riding into Salzburg yesterday for church:  the clouds were lower than the tip of the mountains, which was really cool, because the mountains were really dark, and then there were light-colored clouds above the tip (with some sky showing) as well as below.  Then. Riding Bus 1 to Bahnhof:  it was raining pretty lightly, not super hard. But the beautiful thing was all the light. The clouds weren't as heavy as they usually are, and there were breaks where the sun was coming through. We were crossing over the bridge over the Salzach after Hanusch-Platz and upstream the Salzach was the end of a rainbow, right where the sun was hitting the mountains beautifully, but the clouds were so dark blue---and the Salzach was light---light on the river. Not so heavy and thick like normal.

I'm living in a dream. And all the Christmas markets are going up. Ah, ah, ah. It's beautiful.

I love you SO SO SO much!!! I looooooove it here. It's woooooonnnderful.

Love,

Sister Rooskieroo Winters.