Dearest Family,
As might have been evident by the long delay in our last letter, it has been a very busy week, starting with last weekend. We decided that it would be fun to provide a full Thanksgiving dinner for all of the missionaries here in Vienna. The entire zone includes several missionaries who live at quite a distance and it seemed that most of them were already being taken care of by their local wards. But there were still 14 elders and sisters who were right here in our immediate area comprising the greater part of three different districts. We initially proposed that we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day itself but there was a little hesitation about devoting some time away from a normal working day and a couple of them indicated that our predecessors had done the same thing on the normal P day last year, that being Monday. So we decided to do the same and actually found a couple of small turkeys in one of the stores. That's a rare thing as most Europeans are happy with duck or goose so we snatched up two of them about 7-8 pounds each.
We decided we would pick up everything else on Saturday and then it would be fresh for Monday as we got it all prepared. Saturday is usually OUR Pday but the previous Saturday we had spent trying to get an apartment ready that really had some major problems that we have talked about before, and our district leader announced that the next Saturday would be a special district meeting with President Kohler in attendance to interview everyone in the zone. That would take two days, Friday and Saturday and our district was told to come on Saturday at 1 PM. We were the last group and sort of assumed that we'd be all done within 2-3 hours, getting away by 4 PM at the latest. Apparently the previous mission president had always been fairly efficient with his interviews, allotting a specific time to each missionary. Not so with President Kohler who felt each interview should take as much time as was necessary. Senior couples are typically the last ones interviewed and so we were actually finished about 5:45.
Now you need to understand that Austria is not like the US with Saturday being a big shopping day. Generally speaking, at least as far as the businesses are concerned, all the sidewalks are pulled in by 6 or 6:30 at the latest. If you want to go to the opera, symphony or the theater, that's a different thing but if you're looking to buy Thanksgiving goodies, we figured we might have 45 minutes at the most to get into the store for our purchases. We hopped on the subway which would have taken us about 15 minutes to get to our desired store and sat and sat and sat until they announced that there was an electrical problem with the system and there would be considerable delay. Everyone disembarked and we looked for another way to get into the city from the outskirts where we had been interviewed. One of the tram operators indicated which line we should pick up, across a plaza and heading into town and it was really crowded and most of those who had left the subway were doing the same thing. We realized immediately that this was going to be a long ride and after about two stops they announced a transfer point to a different subway we were familiar with. We decided to hop off the tram and grab the new subway line with the result that something that should have normally been about 6 stops, turned into 18. By the time we got to our intended destination it was just after 7 and the store had been closed for a half hour. We remembered one store in a different station that remained open every day until 10 PM and there we picked up our corn, other veggies, cranberry sauce and the fixings for the dressing, getting home just after 9 PM.
Early the next morning we had scheduled a visit to one of the outlying wards that required us to get up at 5 AM, catch a train and then from the destination train station, walk about a half hour to the chapel. Probably not the best decision considering but one of the sweet young adult sisters who has been newly called as the Stake YSA leader and whose father is the bishop of the ward we were attending offered to drive us back to the train station on our way home. That was a real blessing and after grabbing a quick bite we headed off to the center where we only have one oven so that Mom could make and bake the pumpkin pies for the next day. We decided Saturday night to pick up some extra turkey breasts that we could use Monday night after the missionaries had eaten for Home Evening and so pre-cooked those at home for a couple of hours anyway late Sunday night after baking the pumpkin pies in the center. You see why we had no time to write a letter that weekend.
Monday we were up again at 6 and got to the center early to start baking the turkeys and the dressing. Mom was really putting her all into it as she usually does and I set up a bunch of tables and chairs. We decided that we would do it up right and instead of using plastic plates and utensils, we found some table cloths, real china and silverware, pretty orange napkins and fancy glassware that had been stored high in some cupboards. We found several good pictures depicting various Thanksgiving themes including the Macy's Thanksgiving parade and some great cartoons from Peanuts that we used for decorations. All in all it looked quite festive.
About 1 PM the elders and sisters began to arrive with many bringing some assigned food like golden carrots, rolls, whipped cream, mashed potatoes and one of the elders, our district leader who finishes his mission in a week brought some yummy Apple Crisp for dessert. We had a wonderful and delightful Thanksgiving celebration and most were able to stay for 2-3 hours.
By the time everyone had finished with warm hugs and great feelings of appreciation, we cleaned up, the missionaries helping quite a bit and then they all left, with us then getting ready for home evening in a few hours. We finished up cooking the extra turkey breasts, had some pumpkin pie and plenty of dressing left over and put on the equivalent of a second dinner that evening. Elder Parker had the assignment for the spiritual thought and made a presentation on the importance of family history, passing out the little booklet "My Family" to all who were there. We had both filled our personal booklets out placing pictures of everyone in them up through all of our great grandparents, most of which we were able to find on line in Family Search. A few of the missionaries came back with investigators and so had their second Thanksgiving dinner that day!
Tuesday we finally had a little bit of a break and that's when we wrote last week's letter but had another good attendance at the language classes. One young lady walked in wanting to learn better German. Interestingly she comes from Hungary but spoke pretty good English. She works as a make-up artist and had worked for a year in Frankfurt with English speaking film makers and then returned to Hungary where she got married and returned to Vienna with her husband. Elder Parker took her in hand personally and told her she was a real godsend because we have a young Hungarian man, a member of the church who speaks very little English and equally little German who we've been trying to work with and improve his German with great difficulty because we have no common language to work with. So we spent an hour with her going over some basic vocabulary and I indicated that if she would return on Thursday, our other Hungarian should be present and if she was willing to help translate for us, we could then work on the German language together. She was very willing. It's always fun when we get a chance to teach personally. At the end of the day the sisters came by and we broke out the turkey leftovers for Thanksgiving number 3.
We then had to scramble a bit to get ready for the Institute class that Elder Parker teaches on Wednesday and that took up most of the extra time available that morning. We meet every couple of weeks with the Institute Council, usually at 7:30 in the morning on a Thursday and so that looked like our beginning of the actual Thanksgiving holiday. In two tender mercies, first we got an email telling us that no one could make it on Thursday morning and so they were going to delay it for a week. Hurray! Then we received a phone call from a sweet brother in one of the wards, inviting us for the real Thanksgiving dinner at his house. We had previously been invited there one time before way back in June when we first arrived. He's a retired attorney who married a delightful wife originating from Mongolia. He does have some major health problems with diabetes and is essentially blind. He was recently in the hospital with a heart attack but seems to be doing much better now. They speak excellent English and he's fun to talk to because he's been everywhere. (We finally determined that he'd never been to Japan or Portugal. You name any other country and he's been there.) He indicated he had invited 8 other missionaries including our zone leaders and district leader and asked if we'd like to come. Of course we said yes! and he asked us to be there by 12:30. More turkey with all the trimmings and even a home-baked cake with ice cream!
It was truly a delightful time and we decided to show our appreciation by offering them a bouquet of flowers, note on the left in the last picture.
That evening we had our language classes again with another session with our new Hungarian woman but unfortunately our other Hungarian member didn't come so we're still waiting for that all to finalize. But we told her we usually start each session with prayer which she was very willing to do. We have also started meeting with an older member who wants to perfect his English and so Elder Parker also spends an hour with him once a week, just discussing our lives. He seems like a very warm man who found his wife by direction of the Spirit before he was a member. But they've been married for thirty-three years and members for thirty and have yet to be sealed in the temple. That's our real goal, to see those blessings actualized. Thursday night it was our fifth Thanksgiving dinner with lots of left overs still around from Monday and Tuesday, the good fortune of all who host fancy dinners.
That brings us to Thursday evening. We got home a little earlier than sometimes and Elder Parker spent the evening bringing up Christmas music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, all on line. It was really quite fun because the selections went back over all the previous Christmas specials. Kate was all over the place and Jessica was really well featured in a Silent Night selection. Finally spotted Sam in a very quick glimpse but it took a long time to find Laurel. At last she was there, seated on an aisle in (I think) a Sandi Patty special but once we'd spotted her we could pick her out in every shot of the women. I even saw Frank Bentley from high school who's long retired, and good old Brother Crapo from Alpine. Last summer we met one of the clarinetists in the Orchestra on Temple Square who was here in Vienna on vacation and so he's now a familiar face we see often and of course Brother Smith who is a tenor and always easy to see, three of whose children I have delivered. It was really old home week and brought the beginning of the Christmas season right to the front. By now the lights should be turned on at Temple Square.
We saw an opportunity to purchase a Christmas tree of our very own at one of the building marts here, kind of a Home Depot like place and for 10 Euros we got ourselves a cute little two foot tree with all the decorations which we put up, as tradition goes, on the day after Thanksgiving after we got home from a good Waffle Night. That also entailed setting up for a huge get-together today for about 60 young adults who gathered to make Advent Wreaths, a great European tradition. The four Sundays prior to Christmas are Advent Sundays and the Christmas season really begins on First Advent even though they're just like the rest of the world with commercial Christmas banging down the door by Halloween. So we had to set up every table in the place and move a bunch of others from classrooms into the big assembly room so everyone could gather to use real evergreen boughs with decorations, ribbons, candles and just about anything else you can imagine.
Mom was learning her way and so was I as we heated up little metal rods to push inside our candles and then insert them into the wreaths before using hot glue to attach a variety of other decorations.
Note all the pine boughs back in the corner.
Seated at the table to Mom's right (left in the photo) are Chris and Rahel, newly weds. She was really good at this wreath making and her husband is a policeman leading the way for Brian. He showed up one night in full uniform and I thought we were really in for it until they told me he was a member. Here's the final product already to have its first candle lit tomorrow.
And finally, our impressive Christmas decorations, at least one view.
Stay tuned for future letters to see the rest of the apartment.
(Sister Parker) I must say it was a lot of fun making a wreath from fresh pine boughs, but it took a lot of work to build it around the base. I'm going to try to remember how its done and maybe do one next year at home. They made 60 at the Center today. It was quite a delightful day with sisters of all ages working together and even a few single young men in the group.
How grateful we are to be able to work with these faithful young adults. It has truly been a blessing to sit in Family Home Evening with them and to feel their great spirit. Last Monday as we sang "Oh My Father" in preparation for the lesson on Family History the spirit rang out so boldly it touched my soul. These young people are the strength of the church here in Austria. We are also grateful for all the love and support we get from family and friends at home. May we always live so that the blessings of the Lord may surround us. I'm thankful for each and everyone of you.
LOVE AND HUGS
Grammy, Grampa,
Mom, Dad,
Elder & Sister Parker
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