It's Really Over!

To Our Dear and Wonderfully Supportive Family,

Somehow we can't end the saga of our mission without a few photos of the wonderful homecoming that missed the last installment.  Here are a few that nicely summarize the arrival at the airport as well as the Sunday of our homecoming talks. A picture is worth a thousand words.

These last two were of the first zone leader to met us as we arrived and one of our later zone leaders as we were ready to leave as well as three of the senior couples with whom we worked. Next to us are Elder and Sister Strong whom we replaced when we arrived. It was a marvelous experience which we recommend to all of you when the time is right and of course to all of you who have yet to serve while you're still young.

We love you all and hope to mingle and mix with you as often as possible!

Love, Mom and Dad, Grammy and Grampa, Elder and Sister Parker

D&C 53:7

To Our Dear and Beloved Family,

     The end has finally come and there is nowhere else to go that doesn't get us gradually closer to home. Since we last wrote we have been living in the lap of luxury which has given us much greater access to the social media we all love and thrive on. We had several lovely nights saying goodbye to dear and cherished friends, YSA's, investigators as we rounded up our last events. Although a few came to each of our last events, for many it was the final farewell at the Friday Waffle Night, the Home Evening, the language course on Tuesday and the big finale at Institute on Wednesday. There were so many hugs and embraces that we can't imagine it being any better than marching into paradise. Even though our bags were essentially all packed, we still were given some presents that we had to find places for and Sister Parker managed to squeeze in one last shopping spree to pick up a few special items that have already appeared in the stores. The great Christmas markets are all starting up this next weekend but will have to do so without us.

     

     Here we have two engaged couples, three investigators and the stake YSA leader who all helped to give us a resounding send off. The next morning it was off to the main train station where we headed north to Prague and two free nights at the Sheraton Hotel with some credits earned from our time shares with their system. What a great city. We enjoyed Wenceslas Square, named after the famous and kindly king who is as rightly revered as the Christmas carol celebrates, a beautiful castle high over the Vltava River and a long famous bridge over the river full of sculptures and history dating back into the middle ages. One of the reformers, 100 years before Luther, who was thrown off the bridge for his heresy, reputedly had five stars leap from the water as he hit the river. To touch the sculpture representing the event brings one the fulfillment of his best wish, but be careful, for it's a one time only deal! Sister Parker went first and kindly passersby informed us that your foot and other hand had to be placed correctly hence the first try and the corrected try.

There were lots of performers and musicians on the bridge and one man was particularly so moving with his violin playing that we noticed he wasn't just placing his violin case out for donations but was also selling some CD's of his work. We bought a CD from Karel Jakoubek that we have already listened to twice that is just lovely and will be a lasting memory of our walk across the bridge. 

Next was an opportunity to get some real Czech food near a famous 500 year old astrological clock. Chicken skewers cooked on the spot with the Czech version of french fries which were really yummy. A few more souvenirs were picked up for you guys and we walked past the last remnant of the gate from the old wall through which Maria Theresia from Vienna drove through with her carriage when she was crowned Queen of Bohemia back in the 1700's. Then back to the hotel to get ready for a long train ride the next day to Budapest.

     Here we met Elder and Sister Peterson serving in the Hungary Budapest Mission and with whom we had served in a singles ward bishopric back in Highland and who was still serving with a different bishop when Benj was in the ward.

  

We had the opportunity to enjoy church meetings today in a ward that meets in the same building shared with the mission office and the mission home. Then they hosted us to a delightful Sunday dinner and a guided tour up to the castle where King Stephan had introduced Christianity to the country back in the middle ages. Become a Christian or die he had said...sounds similar to what's going on in the middle east today. It was a rainy night but the lights were lovely and we all thought it was better than Disneyland.

The Danube flows through the middle of the city on its way from Vienna to the Black Sea and tonight we were on the Buda side with the Pest side across the way. That's in the works for tomorrow and then Tuesday we'll hop back in the train and head back to Vienna to make our final preparations for the 17 hour flight home the next day. We'll see how much of our luggage gets lost as we change planes twice, once in Frankfurt and again in Denver.

  It's all so hard to believe that in a couple of days we'll be home again. That day seemed so far away when we began, but now seems to close. We have truly come to enjoy our missionary days and the many young people that we have gotten to know. We have loved them all and it's hard to say so many good-byes to people who are so dear and some whom we probably won't see again. But we have "FaceBook" hopefully to keep us in touch. We are excited to see you all again and to look for some new adventures.

   Try to keep the weather nice, and we will see you on Wednesday evening.

        HUGS AND PRAYERS,  

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

How does one live without Internet?

Well guys, this is really it. 

We have picked up our successors, the Neugebauers, about 72 hours ago and have been busy showing them all there is to see and do here. As a consequence, we moved out of our apartment and into one we have set up and furnished for a couple who haven't yet arrived but is not furnished with WiFi. Sunday, although we had some contact at church it wasn't conducive to getting off a letter and yesterday the Internet wasn't working at the Center.  Thanks to a good technical brother, it's working today and so we can dash off a real quickie.

  

Today has been absolutely wonderful with a zone training meeting that gave us a chance to say goodbye to most of the elders and sisters we have known who are still in the zone and tonight at our language courses, we've had the opportunity to say goodbye to lots of others we've gotten to know and love well. 

Tomorrow is our final Institute Council meeting which we'll let the Neugebauers really represent us, but it will also be a good chance to bow out as we co-teach our last lesson with the replacements and our good brother from the International Ward. It will be a nice way to end the mission and then the next day we're on the train to Prague for a couple of days. Saturday night we'll arrive in Budapest to meet a Senior Couple with whom we worked in our Single Adult Ward back in Highland and they're going to show us around there for a couple of days. Then it's back to Wien where we're hopefully going to be completely packed and ready to hit the airport for a long 17 hour flight. It'll be 7 PM for you guys but 3AM the next day for us so be tolerant. We'll see if our luggage makes it through Frankfurt, Denver and then eventually to Salt Lake.

  

We have absolutely loved it here and will probably look forward to doing something similar again in the future. No pictures this time but we've taken tons of them today, mostly of faces dear to us.

Mom says Hi and we'll be seeing you all soon.  There is an outside chance that we might dash something off from Budapest this Sunday if we can't find anything else to do that night.  

Love you all, keep the faith and we'll be seeing you soon.

Love, 

Mom and Dad, 

Grammy and Grampa, 

Elder and Sister Parker

True--False: The Last Transfer

Dear Family,

Once again another week has rolled around and each seems to get busier than the one before. Even Sister Parker has now become aware of how close things are getting. Is it fair to say we're getting trunky if we start packing the trunks? It's amazing how much one can accumulate in just 18 months but we've now sent off two big boxes of stuff we don't want to put into the luggage and have one of our four large suitcases essentially packed and ready to go.

We spent a half day finishing up the apartment for the new family history couple that are arriving at some indeterminate time. Elder Parker spent 2-3 hours putting the IKEA purchased bed together, after correctly getting all the parts together and even got the bedding on it prior to Sister Parker's arrival as she was finishing a few things up in our apartment. He didn't admit until later that he'd forgotten the fitted sheet over the mattress and had to undo a few things to get back to that step but it really looked pretty good,in many respects we think it's nicer than the apartment we've been living in for the past year and a half.

We've been attempting to get an arrival date out of the mission office as to exactly when the family history couple is going to come but haven't been so advised as of yet. Our replacements, the Neugebauers, are supposed to arrive sometime this coming Friday and we definitely have to be moved out by then so they can move in. Our predecessors, the Strongs, stayed in a hotel for several days so we could move in without delay and we're secretly hoping we can move into the new apartment for a few days instead of going the hotel route. We certainly wouldn't mind having access to laundry and all the comforts we have now provided rather than having to live out of a commercial room, (though admittedly the included breakfast in the morning does sound tempting.)  

In the meantime the normal activities have just been blazing along!  We set a new record for the language courses on Tuesday and Thursday with a lot of new people coming in and Wednesday night Institute topped out at 46 plus a few stray adults walking around, augmented by 14 more after we included the young mothers and the young marrieds who come on Thursday morning and evening.  Friday we lit up the Jack o Lanterns we made a week ago and had a couple of rousing sessions of Halloween Bingo totaling 29 people of whom 6 were investigators. It really seems like the work is rolling along and it will be exciting to give a good report to our replacements.

.

Today was, of course, Fast and Testimony meeting and we decided to go to the International Ward. There was a combined Priesthood/Relief Society meeting led by the Bishop and a great Sunday school class afterwards. We have 4 new returned missionaries coming home this month, two of whom are already here and one of whom blessed the sacrament and gave the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting today. We hope he will be an enthusiastic encourager for the other young adults in the ward as they seem to be the only group we haven't been able to reach. They've even assigned a co-teacher as related last week from that ward. However he was in church today with his 6 children (four of whom are red-heads!) as his wife is heading to the States this week so he has his hands full and won''t be able to help out until next week. By then we'll have the Neugebauers in the trenches and we can probably get ready for our departure the next morning.

Everything seems to be in order. We have some good info on Prague but were a little concerned about exactly what we wanted to see in Budapest. We may have reported a couple of weeks ago that we received a lovely letter from the Area YSA couple who visited us on a Europe-wide tour to meet with all of the senior YSA couples. They included pictures of their visits with each couple and we were quite sure that the couple in Budapest were well known to us. We gave them a call this week and confirmed that we had previously both served together in a bishopric when our stake first initiated its singles ward. Acting on the Area supervisor's recommendations we obtained reservations at a hotel that we are now told is within walking distance of the church and they both live just across the street from the church. They have offered to show us around a bit so that reduces our anxieties considerably about what to see and do in Budapest and we will attend church with them on the 15th prior to our return and arrival in Vienna on the 17th. The next morning we will make the really big move and arrive the evening of the 18th, again at 6:58 on a United flight out of Denver.

  

For those reading this who may not know, our homecoming is scheduled for 10 AM on the 29th in the Highland 2nd Ward now meeting in a new location from where we held our farewell. The address is 10494 North 4720 West in Highland. Come up or down 4800 West by the Mount Timpanogos Temple or the American Fork Canyon road (11000 North) and turn on Ole Bish Lane.

[Sister Parker] Truly, it is hard to believe that we will not be in this apartment next Sunday. And although this apartment is small, it does seem there is a lot to do to get it all shined up for the new couple. There is just no time to wash the curtains, the rugs and shine the tile walls while still trying to live your daily missionary life. I now empathize with those missionaries who are cleaning out their apartments for transfer days and still need to do the missionary work. Oh well, we all just do the best we can.

     Today was another good-bye time with the members in the International Ward. It really is marvelous the way we have instant ward family everywhere we go around the world, and they are people who are faithful in the Lord, Jesus Christ. We have finally come to know members in every ward that are special to us. We love them all and will miss them. With our young singles, I also feel like a mother hen who is about to leave her little ones alone in the nest, not knowing for sure just how they will fair. Of course, they will be fine, and of course they are all on "Facebook", and I've reassured them the next couple will also love them. It's that, they just keep tugging at my heart strings. But I'm ready and excited to see my grandchildren and children again.

      Now as we travel around Vienna on the Bahns, I'm thinking this may be the last time I see this or that. The weather has been beautiful lately, so we are enjoying our last few days and being sentimental.

  

HUGS AND PRAYERS, 

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

Jack O' Lanterns and Farewell Talks

To All of our Beloved Family!

    If we ever thought we might have a little free time now and then, that image disappeared quickly this week. It seems we have been busy every day from morning until evening with one thing or another. We got informed that the Senior Couple  for whom we had initially picked out an apartment were now again being rescheduled to come here in November instead of waiting until January. There was an apartment vacated in Munich by a couple who had been released and the mission office decided they would take all of the furnishings in this apartment and bring them to Vienna sometime during the week. 

We had some assignments for district meeting on Tuesday and all the normal preparations for a special Home Evening on Monday that kept us pretty busy for the first day of the week and followed through with a good meeting with the missionaries, feeding them after we were done with some of the extra food left over from the night before. Then we were notified that the loading truck would be here by Thursday afternoon which meant we had to make all of the purchases for bedroom furniture which were the only things not included in the other furnishings. We have become real aces at getting around IKEA without getting lost in the 45-60 minutes it usually takes and made all of the decisions of what we felt we'd need.  The president had given us an advance of what we might need and we felt pretty good  that we still had a reserve of about 300 Euros when we'd made all of our decisions.  Then we got informed that the double bed we'd chosen was felt to be inadequate for a senior couple (even though that's what we've been sleeping on for the past 17 months) and we should upgrade to a queen size bed. 

In the meantime Institute on Wednesday night went off really well with our best attendance since last summer of over 50 people in attendance. We even had about 10 people in the English class which was a new high and it included a young woman from some kind of religious study group who wanted to find out more about the LDS church and its teachings. So Thursday morning we were off early and bought the bigger bed and all the stuff that goes on it, under it and around it with our advance money coming within 8 Euros. We thought we were going to make it until they informed us there would be a 140 Euro delivery charge so we coughed up the extra money not sure how the mission was going to reimburse us without paying some high fees for a bank transfer from Munich to Highland. At the end it was all set up for delivery in a week. Then Elder Parker received a call that the van was coming into Wien so, he left his companion at the language courses while he met the office van. We were able to recruit the Zone Leaders and eventually they were joined by the elders who had finished the language courses, to offload a few thousand pounds of furniture and get it all up to a fifth floor apartment. That same day, we had arranged for the teacher of the young mothers group on Thursday morning to get a key so we wouldn't have to be there and to have Sister Parker stay around to support the Young Marrieds who now meet on Thursday nights while Elder Parker joined the moving group of elders.

As we got everything moved in pretty well, it was announced that we would have the van available to us all day Friday if necessary and we thought we might be able to save the 140 Euro delivery charge if we could pick it all up instead.  So the two senior elders made a run up to IKEA to rearrange all the financing after a phone call seemed to indicate we could pick it up if we arrived prior to their closing at 9 PM.  Everybody still with us?  

Back to IKEA where there was a bit of a line we had to wait in and by the time we had it all rearranged, we were informed that the 15 items purchased would not be ready until about noon the next day. To make a long story shorter, Sister Parker and I reunited that evening and still made it to pre-arranged apartment inspections Friday morning. Then it was off to IKEA again with the van where we loaded in the bedroom stuff. We decided we could squeeze in a quick trip to a different store to pick up a new dryer and then it was back to the apartment where the elders helped us again to bring another several hundred pounds of stuff up to the fifth floor. All done and out of there in time to only be a half hour late to the center to set up for Waffle Night!

The YSA's had decided it would be fun to do a little pre-Halloween stuff, a holiday which is steadily creeping (literally--it's sometimes a little too creepy) into Europe and so we had a Jack O' Lantern contest, forming two teams and seeing who could come up with the best rendition.  Here are the results, you decide who won:

Saturday, we had to finish our farewell talks which were given today in the ward where we first started  17 months ago. It includes many of the people we've worked closely with at the YSA Center including a couple where the husband, an ex-stake president, and his wife were called to the presidency of the Freiberg Temple. They have now been temporarily released while it's closed until next July but we're secretly hoping they'll be recalled again which might give us the opportunity to get an inside track. We'll have to talk to Heidi's parents to see how they pulled it off. At any rate, our talks seemed to be well received and gave us an opportunity to put our thoughts in order for about a month from now. We guess a farewell talk here can pretty much approximate a homecoming talk there.

    We decided yesterday that there might still be an opportunity to get to one of Sister Parker's desired but yet to be visited sightseeing spots, the Vienna Butterfly Museum.

It was pretty and very interesting and you are literally right in the middle of it all but one step inside and one becomes immediately aware that the temperature is 115 degrees with a humidity of only 99%. Within about 15 minutes we decided that this was a supreme example of Mosiah 3:27.  

Our clothing was becoming damp, our glasses were fogged up to the extreme and we wondered how butterflies ever survive in Utah. We made it through all the bridges, tunnels and intricate pathways with butterflies all over the place with strict instructions not to touch any of them, even if they're dead and certainly not to take anything out with you! We couldn't make it much longer than it took to get around everywhere and were glad to make a hasty retreat and enjoy a lovely film about the life cycle of butterflies in a wonderfully air-conditioned room!

    Refugees continue to pack into Austria on their way to wherever.  Despite next week being Fast Sunday, the Vienna Stake decided today would be a special fast day in behalf of the many refugees.  Contributions were encouraged in behalf of the humanitarian funds of the church and we felt the members were encouraged that they really could help in a significant way not only monetarily but also through their fasting and prayers.

   [Sister Parker] This really has been a busy week of running here and there and meeting all the mission needs besides taking care of the center and the young people who wish to linger longer. They really don't have another nice, homey, welcoming place to hang out and now I am more willing to stay longer with them as we all know the Parkers will be leaving soon. Some keep asking if we wouldn't like to stay longer, and of course we would on one hand for them, but on the other home is calling. Really, though they have brought us many blessings and some wonderful experiences. I pray for them as I do for my children. I pray that we may all hold on to one another and to our Savior as we go through life's ups and downs. I am also glad to have my talk over with, it was waking me up in the night thinking in German. Now I can concentrate on organizing our apartment for going home.

      Sending our HUGS and PRAYERS, 

and enjoying beautiful Autumn days and Halloween. 

Grammy and Grampa, Mom and Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

Genesis 49:1

To Our Beloved Family,

     Well, we have just finished our fourth conference in about six weeks.  The Senior Conference in Switzerland was followed by a Zone Conference in Salzburg a few days later, then the wonderful General Conference and finally, today, our last Stake Conference.  This one was something new as prior to this it has always been held in a very large rented hall where the entire stake could fit at one time. For today's conference, because they had no general authority visitor, it was decided to hold it in the stake center and beam it via the Internet to three other locations that are more distant. Two of the wards met in one other building and there were two yet more distant that had the conference transmitted to their respective buildings. One of the best speakers, however, was a brother who has been serving as the president of the Frankfurt Temple which was just closed for a couple of years for remodeling and expansion. His remarks focused on the revelations that each person can personally receive as one attends the temple to receive the needed guidance for daily living.  It was a wonderful opportunity to see many people for the last time as we just have three more Sundays to go prior to our release.

     Next week we will attend the northernmost ward where they have asked us to speak. We both think that our farewell talks to them will likely be very similar to our homecoming talks a few weeks later. Today in stake conference they asked us all to fast next week for all of the refugees who are flooding through the European Union and dedicate special offerings for that same purpose. Then the following week will be the regular fast and testimony Sunday. We're planning on attending the English speaking international ward that Sunday which is where they actually list us as full-time missionaries serving in their ward. Then the final Sunday we will be joined by our replacements, the Neugebauers. They will have joined us two days earlier and we will embark on a quick orientation as to their responsibilities and where all the ward chapels and missionary apartments are located which they will be visiting.

     It seems like we are moving through a bunch of lasts. This week instead of district meeting we had our last Zone Training which differs from a zone conference in that it just comprises the missionaries from our zone whereas the latter includes us and Salzburg zone together. The next one of those will be the Christmas Zone Conference which we expect to celebrate with all of you guys back in the states!

     Our mission president and his wife were at the Saturday night stake conference where they both bore their testimonies but we think it will be the last time we'll see them. In addition to settling our mission financial account with us they brought some wonderful little keepsakes, the mission lapel pin for Elder Parker and a similar necklace pin for Sister Parker. They already have us enrolled in the blog for former missionaries of the Alpine German Speaking Mission and it sounds like everything else from here on out may be somewhat anticlimactic. We are definitely committed, however, to not getting too trunky.

     We understand that today was the reorganization of our home stake presidency at their stake conference so we're excited to find out just who will be officially releasing us. So now, back to the other things that are keeping us busy. This week we met with a real estate agent and the landlord lady he represents (interestingly, she's a pharmacist) to sign for and receive the keys for a new apartment which will be used by a new family history couple coming in a couple of months. In the meantime it looks like we'll actually use the apartment for a few days when our replacements arrive instead of having to grab a hotel for five days. We can even store our extra luggage there while we inspect the delights of downtown Prague and Budapest prior to our actually climbing on the plane. We already have reservations in both places with the hotel in Prague coming as a freebie with some points we have saved up from our time shares.

     An interesting point regarding our visit to Budapest. Friday a week ago we were visited by the Area YSA supervisors who are headquartered in Frankfurt. They have been in the process of visiting all of the YSA senior couples in Eastern Europe and met with us on our Waffle Night. They had already been to Italy, Graz in Austria, Bratislava in Slovakia (the other half of old Czechoslovakia) and Sopron, Hungary but prior to visiting us they had also visited with the couple in Budapest, Hungary. They mentioned that they might be able to get us a reduced rate at a hotel near the church there which is available for church officials and gave us the name of the couple, which didn't ring any bells, and the hotel. Then just a few days ago we received their monthly message which they send out to everyone within their area of responsibility. That includes everyone from Scandinavia on the north and all of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and we think might even include France, Spain and England. But at any rate they had pictures of all of the recent visits they had made, including us. Lo and behold, the couple in Budapest are from Highland, Utah and we worked together in the bishopric of the Mount Mahogany Ward. So we're looking forward to having someone take us to church in Budapest. We'll be there from Saturday night until Tuesday before we leave.  Nice to have speakers of the language who are also good old friends!

     So there are still three more Institute classes to teach including one the night before our departure. We still have to inspect five more apartments before we leave and completely furnish the new apartment, especially if we expect to sleep in it for a few nights. We have to figure out how to get the gas and electricity turned on, prepare some assignments for the next district meeting and pack up a bunch of memorabilia, souvenirs, etc and get them shipped off in the next two weeks before our replacements commandeer our apartment. We understand the YSA's are going to throw a big farewell party on our last Home Evening. Should be a big farewell dinner Sister Parker gets to prepare but she should have plenty of help. She already knows what the recipe is.

    For our sightseeing adventure yesterday this is where we went: You are looking at "The House of the Sea" a huge 8 story aquarium complete with other animals like birds and monkeys that let you walk through their habitat. The building itself was an old World War II flak tower that was completed in May 1944 about a week before the D Day invasion began. It was used to spot and shoot down enemy planes but also as a type of bomb shelter which could protect as many as 45,000 people at the time of an air raid. The city decided to put it to good use after the war and the place was crowded on a Saturday afternoon with lots of families, especially many young children that really made Sister Parker homesick for her grandchildren. We don't have much left we plan to see except maybe the Butterfly House. We'll see if we can work it in.

  It really does seem strange to be doing all these things as a last time and to be hugging some people good-bye for the last time. Its one of those bitter sweet moments that stay suspended in time and which you, for ever more hold dear. But there is still quite a bit left to take care of so we can't dwell on it and will be rather busy until we leave. There is still plenty of time left to share the gospel, support our missionaries and YSA's and have some fun. Try to keep the autumn weather good until we get back. I'm still looking forward to a walk in crunchy leaves.

Thinking about you all, 

with HUGS AND PRAYERS,  

Grammy, Grampa, 

Mom, Dad, 

Elder and Sister Parker  

Time is Short--Visit the Clock Museum!

To All of the Beloved Reasons Why We're Looking Forward to Coming Home,

I guess it's pretty hard to come up with a week as good as the last one was but even so, it went pretty well. Other than Monday night when we had about 19, every other night was pushing 25-30 people in attendance. Even our language courses were reasonably well attended.

Special events were Wednesday as we really started the new Institute Year. No one had signed up to take the English speaking class so Elder Parker prepared without knowing if he'd have anyone to teach. But it turned out that with the help of a co-teacher the stake called, thinking we might not have a replacement for a month or so, and one of his assignments being to enthuse the slackers in the International Ward to start attending again. We actually had three students with the two teachers dividing up 1 1/2 apiece. But we knew all three well and so it was a good introductory lesson to the next semester. We continue to get a hard driving response from our new stake representative, the 4th year medical student who is teaching the German class on the same subject. She's going to get 49-50 people signed up for Institute by this next week or know the reason why! We get about 3-4 emails a day from her as she is expressing her efforts in a great way. Her parents were also in town this week, living in Anchorage, Alaska but here for a visit, but the mother originating here in Linz, Austria. Interestingly, one of our elders who just happened to be there was from their ward. They'd known him since he was in primary.

It was a good week for parents as our special young lady from Italy was visited by her father, a non-member, who came by on Friday night to play games and enjoy the evening with his daughter's friends. We think he was favorably impressed with the wholesome nature of her companions. While at the temple a couple of weeks ago we picked up a 500 piece  jig saw puzzle depicting the children of the world visiting with the Savior in a painting by Greg Olson. We thought it was pretty cute and actually started putting it together last Monday night. But it got a little too late to finish so Elder Parker finished it up on Tuesday. He then decided to take the whole thing apart and see if anyone might be interested to try again on Friday. Result: We had a cute young returned missionary sister from Hungary who apparently has a passion for jig saw puzzles and she couldn't stop until we were done. It was almost midnight before we got out of there!

We naturally slept in a little on our P day but decided it was definitely the time to finally see the Vienna Clock Museum. To hear them tell it, Vienna was the clock making capital of the world back in the 1700's, though they had the actual clock mechanisms of clocks that went back a couple of hundred years earlier. They even had the original works of the clock in the tower of St. Stephen's Cathedral, the focus of the heart of Vienna, which hasn't had a clock since the early 1900's.This was Elder Parker's favorite 

You're looking at a pocket sun dial, the absolute ultimate for the traveling man!    

And then of course there's the ultimate cuckoo clock.  The picture doesn't do it justice as it was about three feet across and four feet high!

   Sunday was, of course, Fast and Testimony Meeting and we had a lovely meeting at the ward we'd picked out to be one of our last such opportunities to bear our testimony of the truthfulness of what we are engaged in. That evening we had a Visitor's Evening at the center, pretty well attended at which all of the Vienna missionaries were present along with a good selection of people from around the stake and even a couple of investigators.

  

   So here are the details about our return. We will arrive on United Airlines flight 5483 at 6:58 PM on the 18th of November at Salt Lake City International Airport. We have a two hour layover in Denver following up from a two hour layover in Frankfurt. All are invited to the house for Thanksgiving dinner on the 26th with the homecoming addresses scheduled for the 29th. We'll figure out a way to put up any out of towners that want to come.

    [Sister Parker] I can't believe we are thinking on Thanksgiving and Homecoming, but whatever, it is true that we are visiting our wards here in Vienna for the last time. Even though we haven't gotten to know very many members closely, there are always a few that we have personally connected with. This ward has a sweet, friendly spirit and it is hard to say good-bye. I think our young adults are also thinking on our leaving and seem to be hanging out longer and longer in the evenings. But here again it is a joy to be with them, and it tugs at my heart. I find myself trying to cook their favorites. I think my favorite thing this week was attending the couples institute class on Thursday, as there was only one person and Ester asked if I would join. The lessons are on Jesus Christ and His Everlasting Gospel. It is interesting that being on a mission helps you see so clearly the purpose of life and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to change peoples lives for the better. Cherish your testimonies and continually nurture them.

    Looking forward to coming home next month, but trying not to think on it too much and to finish up what we would like to complete here. Its also getting colder and time to put on those heavy winter coats. Temperatures the next couple of days are from 47 degrees down to 32 degrees 

HUGS AND BLESSINGS,

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker