Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been a little more relaxed with most of the action taking place on Facebook or otherwise on the Internet. We appreciated all of Heidi's efforts in putting out the Parker Post (all 4 versions!:)). It was wonderful being brought up to date on all of your activities and even though a few of you didn't have contributions, we've kept up with most of you through other contacts. We're still hoping for some pictures from the family reunion which we understand are in the works but we've had lots of contact about it otherwise.
We did receive a huge package which Mom is very grateful for containing bed linens, sheets, pillow cases, etc. and also letters from all of you which were written at the reunion. We've decided to open up one every day and have as of today gone through 12 with 18 still to go. We're posting them on our bulletin board so the apartment is filled with family and a new contribution is apparent every day!!
One of our responsibilities is to inspect the various missionary apartments here in Vienna and keep everything working ship shape and up to date. We've been given a special responsibility coming from the European Area office to make sure all the elders and sisters have working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide monitors. With that encouragement, we realized we had a carbon monoxide monitor sitting on our bedroom desk without batteries not knowing what it even was. So we got our monitor working and mounted and found there was one missing in one of the sisters' apartments which has now been installed and working. We have thus far replaced a washing machine, a room fan (very important in a climate that doesn't have much air conditioning installed) and an iron that was quite corroded. Still to come are a refrigerator and a broken ironing board. As to the former, we have one spot we've used quite a bit for most of the above items but they don't accept credit cards or check cards which do work over here fairly well. So we decided we'd branch out a little bit and look for other businesses that might be more credit friendly. We have to pay for everything ourselves and then are supposedly reimbursed by the mission. Because we pay our basic rent through our missionary contributions to the home ward, they have told us that we get billed extra for things like our Internet connection, phones and of course we pay for all of our meals and travel expenses. So far we've never received a bill for the other things and are under the impression that any other reimbursable items will simply be deducted from what we owe the mission. So thus far we're up to about 500 Euros we've spent but have no idea where we stand in how much of that has been applied to our other bills. We keep bugging the elders in the office who say they'll send us a reckoning but thus far we have waited in vain.
We went out the last couple of days to explore a couple of other appliance stores and thought we would be able to find them. The first time, on Thursday, the store was located on a very long street which is quite unusual in most respects. Most of the streets change names every block or two but the two stores we wanted to look at were both on streets that stretched over several kilometers. Fortunately, one had a streetcar that went almost the whole street long so we got on and waited for the store to appear. At one point there was a large mall and we got out assuming it might be there but it wasn't. Back on the street car which we took until it turned off and we had to get off. At the stop we were at stood a young man carrying a bag with the name of the store we were searching for! I asked him where it was located and he pointed up the street we had just turned off. We don't know if it would have been a long or a short walk but decided that our time was up and we had to get back to the center to meet the elders and an investigator who was desirous of learning German so she could extend her visa.
A very interesting situation then developed. It turns out her husband is an inactive member of one of the wards here, Both speak Farsi as their primary language and they come from Iran. We had met the husband a couple of times in the past two months as he had come in to the Center but our language difficulties prevented us from ever making a good contact. So this time as he came in with his wife and about a two year old son we got phone numbers and a firm name. Thinking they belonged to one of the wards we set up an appointment with one set of elders who are in that ward. As they got into their lesson, difficulties were encountered because she didn't speak any English and was attempting to learn German. We have frequently used the Internet to translate for us but this was especially difficult because translating Persian into German requires that you be able to read Persian or Farsi and only she could do that. She had requested meeting earlier than we usually start so we accommodated her, as did the elders and when she came with her two year old, one of our other contacts who is also learning English recognized her and her son and offered to babysit the young man for a while while she was being instructed. Then as other elders appeared, we found out that they actually live in a ward they are responsible for and that they had actually visited the family not too long before. That was the first time the woman found out that her husband was a member of the church. At any rate, we'll see how it all goes. It is a challenge teaching Muslims and if they get serious about joining the church, it requires the permission of the mission president because should they return to their native countries, Christians are regularly imprisoned or worse and their families often times also suffer rather intense persecution. Still we have a number of faithful members who were previously Muslim and the work progresses.
So yesterday we decided we had enough time to pursue looking up one other appliance store so out the door we went. This one was located on another long and very busy street but Mom was resourceful enough to look it up on the Internet by using Google maps and we came to it really rather quickly compared to the day before. I guess we must have been asleep as we headed out because as we arrived about noon time on a normally rather busy Friday we found the store and all of its neighbors closed up for Maria Himmelfahrt. This is one of the big Catholic holidays, which virtually all of the holidays here are and celebrates Mary's ascension to heaven. We don't know where that shows up in the scriptures, perhaps the Apocrypha, but in any event we found it was not a prime day for shopping so we'll try again. We later realized we actually had the holiday noted on our stake calendar. We have now looked carefully for the next holiday coming up and it appears to be All Saints day which follows Halloween. They celebrate the former but not the latter and probably consider us Americans really pagan that we celebrate such a scary night but not the next day. Refer to the end of Fantasia to get an accurate glimpse of the proper perspective one should have for the two celebrations. It is interesting to note that the Stake is having a Young Men/Women dance on Halloween but not billing it as such. We have noted in pictures from the center that Halloween has been celebrated in the past by the Young Adults so we'll have to see if we need guidance from our leaders before we go all out.
Last night, we closed up the center early instead of having our usual Friday night Waffle Night to attend our first Austrian Polterabend. That is a celebration that occurs prior to a wedding. It is somewhat like a reception without a line and was held in our stake center's cultural hall. A great many members of the stake were there along with several missionaries and even a few investigators. We went and sat with the investigators, both of whom we knew well and who usually otherwise would have attended the Waffle Night. The couple was a cute young couple, both of whom have served missions. She however is from Spain and served a mission to Paraguay. She speaks virtually no German though he speaks quite good Spanish. The cultural hall was packed and they started out serving everyone "cocktails", certainly the LDS version with some luscious smoothie type drinks while they had a cute presentation on the stage with a great guitar player and some dancers from the young adults followed by what we'd consider the typical video version of the couple's life histories. Both appear to have been life long members of the church and the program was presented in German with translation into Spanish. Following they had a wonderful buffet dinner which we presume was contributed by various of their friends, family and members of the church. So a new cultural experience was had by the senior missionary couple.
Here's a another photo of the Belvedere Castle grounds with Leonie Wiese by the Waterfall Fountain.
It looks like this week was pretty ordinary except for the unexpected holiday, which closes even grocery stores for the whole weekend. A few more of our young adults are coming back from vacation and showing up at the institute night, so we have hope that we will continue to increase into the Autumn. Some are even hanging around to play games after institute and dinner. While it is still summer, the last few days have been quite rainy and cool. I love it, but it increases the weight of my already heavy bag to carry the umbrella around. The only really annoying thing right now is our hot water heater which clicks off every time we use it. This means if we get it to stay on we have to leave the water running or lose the hot water, so that means leaving it running in the kitchen in order to get it in the bathroom. Oh, the joys of being missionaries, but we are learning to be very flexible about things. Things must move forward one way or the other. Still if you need a pick up, it is easy to go out for Gelato and it is delicious. We had Zone training this past week which is also a wonderful pick up for all the missionaries. There is truly a powerful spirit present there and you know the Lord has prepared another great generation of young people to move the church forward.
I guess it is time for the Utah kids to enjoy the last couple of days before school starts and the others their last couple of weeks. Do something fun and send a picture.
LOVE AND HUGS,
Grammy & Grampa
Mom & Dad
Elder & Sister Parker
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