Dearest Family,
Wow, it seems like a long time since we last wrote and I guess that's because it has been. Part of the reason we won't tell you in this letter is because it really belongs in next week's letter but suffice it to say that it has been a very busy weekend with not much time until now to get our weekly letter off. It's about 10:30 PM on a Tuesday night as this is written and we're finally coming up for a little air. Trying to find out where we left off, we realized we didn't put a title on our last letter so I guess we could call it "the Lord's Tender Mercies."
So anyway, as you gathered from that letter, the Christmas season seems to be off in full swing here in Austria and with everything coming up we decided we'd better get all of the apartments inspected that we're responsible for. That meant that we needed to get all the outlying apartments done that are over an hour's train ride away. We already reported on getting to St. Poelton last week but that left two apartments down in Wiener Neustadt that we'd only inspected once previously in the entire six months we've been here. One of them had no lights in the bathroom and the elders were showering and shaving by the light of a small heat lamp they put in there. We had been bugging them a bit on getting out to a store and buying two new fluorescent light bulbs to see if that was the only problem and it turns out they finally did that and voila!, they had light again. The distance to walk from the train station to their apartment takes about 30 minutes and it's much colder now that the last time we went but at least the exercise kept us warmed up. From the first apartment it was another good 30 minutes to walk to the second apartment. Although they do have some bus lines, it's about on the equivalent of what we get in Utah with buses coming every half hour or so if you're lucky so it just proved easier to walk.
The second apartment used to house three sisters but since they finally found a companion for the third sister, they decided to move the other two to Vienna and put some elders in the apartment instead. One of the things we check on is to make sure their carbon monoxide sensors are working as well as their smoke alarms. Most apartments have just one of the latter but this one turned out to have three. But only one of them was working and we discovered that the other two didn't have any batteries. I guess one is enough for most of the apartments in this mission but we decided that it wasn't that big a deal as long as they had them to get some batteries installed in their two extras. When we finished up it was another 30 minute walk back to the train station. We had left about 8 in the morning and got back to the station for the ride home about 1 PM. The ride in had taken about 45 minutes of actual travel time and we took the first train leaving to get back figuring it would be about the same. But NOOO. It turns out we got the real local ride which stopped in every little village along the way and it was a good hour and a half before we arrived back home. It was however quite scenic to stop and see the countryside along the way so it wasn't too bad. We've been reading every day in the Book of Mormon in German and despite the fact that a few people might be listening, we figured it couldn't hurt them to hear a little scripture so we read along the way.
As we reached into the brief case to pull out our papers we discovered a cute little chocolate bar along with a nifty folded paper in the shape of a white shirt and tie with a message on the back from the first elders we had inspected. They had slipped it into the briefcase while we weren't looking and thanked us for taking care of them as their parents would have done. We were touched by their kind gesture:)
The rest of the week was pretty routine with good turnouts to all of the daily activities. We had about 50 people to Institute night and we're getting around 20 now to the language courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One new brother is a member who was actually passing the sacrament at the ward we attended last week and he came once to try and polish his English, attending first, the basic beginners course but then decided it was too elementary for what he needed. So Elder Parker decided to get directly involved and teach him the finer points of English conversation which was what he needed. We started off just telling each other about our lives and he proceeded to tell us that he had been a member for about 30 years having left Poland during the years of the Solidarity movement when he and his family moved to Vienna. He originally joined with a small group of other Poles but stated that he and his wife were now the only active members of the original group and he had no idea where the others had gone. We had spent some time telling about our family and so as he was finishing his story we realized that he had been a member for 30 years. So we naturally asked the question of when he first went to the temple. To our surprise, he hadn't yet been to the temple at all. So there is obviously much more to his story than we yet know and we suspect there may be some good we can do there in trying to motivate the family a little more. He's passing the sacrament so we suspect there is possibly an issue with his wife somewhere.
Our district meetings are usually held each Tuesday. Following this meeting it had been decided to eat lunch at our favorite local Wiener Schnitzel restaurant that has favored elders for about 40 years. It generally happens just about every transfer and here is the attendance this week.
At the end of the meeting we were informed that President Kohler would be in town on Saturday for interviews and we'd hold another district meeting while the interviews were going on as well as get some personal instruction from our mission president. He's very good about taking whatever time is necessary with his interviews so the rest of us stayed busy until it was our turn with some interesting Gospel activities and discussions. Seniors tend to be last on the interview schedule and so the meeting on Saturday started about 1 but we weren't out of there until almost 6. Saturday being our P day it really put a crimp in our style as we had decided to have a special Thanksgiving dinner for all of the elders in Vienna on their regular P day which would be the next Monday. So we really needed to get out of there and do some shopping. Austria is definitely not like the US and even the big city pulls in its sidewalks around 6 PM as far as all the stores go. Fortunately we found a grocery store in one of the train stations we go through that is open 7 days a week until 10 PM, a real rarity but saved us as we had to pick up quite a few things or else shop on Sunday which we would never have done. More about all of that next week.
(Sister Parker) A few extra details of our weekly activities. We had to visit 4 different apartments for inspections and arrive early in the morning so we could fit the rest of the days activities in our schedule. That wears on us because we rarely get to bed before midnight, getting home most nights after 10:00 pm.-- so much for missionary bedtimes which are 10:30 pm. The other fun adventure we had was on Saturday when we were trying to fit in all our p-day preparations. Late from the Mission Pres. interviews we took a bus from the church to the Ubahn or subway only to find that the Bahn was not running because of problems on the line. Finally we asked someone where we could catch another bus or Strassenbahn (street car) and boarded only to have it stop every couple of blocks. By the time we got to the main station the store in it had closed so we had to take another slow bahn to another Station that had a store that stayed open until 10 pm. We couldn't believe we had such a hard time getting the food we needed to start cooking on Sunday Night. Then of course we had to be up at 5:30 am. to take us to one of the out lying wards. No rest for the weary we again had to be up by 6 am for Mondays activities. Hopefully this next week will bring a little more, much needed sleep.
The admonition for this week is: "Early to bed, early to raise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Healthy and wise is what I'm trying for.
Love you all and grateful for you all.
Grammy, Grampa,
Mom, Dad,
Elder and Sister Parker
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