Dear Family,
As you all start preparing for the big summer reunions, we are going through some milestones as well. Grandpa has been teaching an Institute class on Wednesday nights and this past week was a review of the last quarter and the final formal week before everyone adds up their credits and moves on. We had a quite interesting time reviewing all sorts of interesting things that the Pearl of Great Price teaches us that aren't so well explained in other scriptures plus had a little fun like asking everyone questions like if Methuselah lived longer than any other person in mortality how come his father lived longer than he did?
Yesterday was a big party and outing to commemorate the closure of the school year. We started out with an hour's train ride early on a Saturday morning to an outlying ward known as Wiener Neustadt. We'd been there once before just a couple of weeks ago but still managed to head off by foot for 45 minutes in the wrong direction. Luckily they had our phone number and sent a car to rescue us so we could help put together a lovely brunch before they had a nice commemorative meeting and then headed out on a lovely hike up a watery course filled with waterfalls known as Myrafaelle. I've attached a few photos to give you an idea plus some shots of the young people we deal with on a daily basis. After three or four hours of hiking and playing games we came back to Vienna to the YSA Center to watch Brazil finally beat Chile in a long drawn out soccer match in the World Cup while Grammy worked for quite a while preparing open faced sandwiches for everyone to eat for dinner. She also helped prepare about a hundred and fifty tacos that were served after a special Singles ward sacrament meeting that was held in the center today as part of the Institute certificate passing out ceremonies. It was a busy lovely time and we didn't get much of a P day in this week. Family Home Evening is tomorrow night and we'll see if anyone is still hanging around but we had people in from as far away as Salzburg, Linz, Klagenfurt and even met the senior couple who work in Salzburg who had driven in to support about six or eight of their youth who had come too.
We're also learning about some of our other responsibilities like replacing or repairing broken washing machines, stoves, refrigerators in the missionaries' apartments etc. which seems to have jumped on us all together. We've priced some replacements but it was hard to raise the mission office personnel as we just lost President and Sister Miles a few days ago to be replaced by President and Sister Kohler.They are all busy getting them oriented and moved in so we'll try them again tomorrow to see if we can finish all of that up.
On the more typical missionary side of things, because we were at the center on the weekend which we typically aren't we just happened to get all kinds of passerby who stopped in to check on our free language courses. I met one lady who really wants to learn English but seemed very curious about the church. Were we Catholic, Lutheran? I explained to her that we were the restored Church of Jesus Christ and ended up sharing the Joseph Smith story with her and talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon in our religion. She graciously accepted a copy which I gave her and said she'd be back on Tuesday when we offer the classes. On the same day, Grammy had the opportunity to teach a lesson with one of the sister missionaries and also felt she could handle the German pretty well, at least enough to bear her testimony also about the Book of Mormon. The other two sisters had a lesson at the same time and they were really having a booming day with 7 lessons given in all. It was quite a busy day and we'll see how the coming week goes. Our washing machine broke down briefly and Grammy was the ace who figured out how to go online for repair instructions which worked very well and we're getting our washing finally done after sitting around in wet wash baskets for about 2-3 days.
I guess Warren and Marilyn Clark should be home by now and we're excited to hear about all of their experiences. We've been watching a few of their lovely pictures on Facebook as they have posted them. Everybody have a great 4th of July. It will be Waffle Night for us so we think we'll do red white and blue waffles somehow, maybe with strawberries, whipped cream and blueberry toppings or something like that!
(From Mom) Lest you should think that I am really awesome, I don't handle all that cooking and preparing by myself, only dinner on Mondays and Friday night Waffles. For the Institute activities there are a couple of other sisters who are in charge and I just help them out as much as I can and enjoy, talking and sharing things about every day life with them. We have fun laughing over my German-English and whatever it takes to understand each other. They have all ready become "dear to me", as have the sister missionaries. The sisters are teaching German and gospel lessons to the young woman we met from Kazahkstan. She has come to Waffle Night on Fridays and likes helping me with one of the sister missionaries. She loves waffles and making them. Last Friday I let her mix up all the batches and do most of the cooking; she is great at making big fluffing ones. She has also become my dear little friend (she is small) and on Saturday while having a lesson with the sisters, she said she was thinking about baptism. We are all so happy about that.
As Dad said, yesterday and today was the Institute closing. So we took an hour train ride to one of our outer wards, helped fix Brunch, and then went on a great hike to some water falls. After the whole party moved to our Center for dinner, which is really "abend brot ", meaning we had open face sandwiches that we helped to fix. It was rather chaotic but a lot of fun for the young adults who played games & watched the world soccer games. But while that was going on one of the Sis. Missionaries asked me to help teach a discussion to an investigator with her because her other 2 companions were already teaching in another room. It was my first real teaching missionary experience even mostly in German. It was a sweet tender mercy the Lord gave me to feel the spirit of the work and to show me I could do it. I was a able to share some thoughts & testimony in German. I felt blessed.
Love you all and hope you have a great 4th of July and getting together for family reunion.
Mom, Dad, Grammy, Grampa (Oma and Opa) -- Elder and Sister Parker