Dear Family,
Another wonderful week has gone by without much weather to worry about which has been nice for our shoes with the cold moderated a bit, coming and going but generally a bit warmer than it was a week ago. I wrote that last night and this morning we woke up to about 4 inches of snow! Most of our routine activities have been a little less busy with a lot of the elders and sisters participating but fewer members. We hoped we'd see our Iranian family again but none have returned since the holidays.
We had an assignment on Tuesday for our district meeting to present some of the principles in Preach My Gospel on the creation. This comprises a very short paragraph and the challenge as of our last zone training was to conduct our district meetings in German. So Sister Parker decided she would present most of the principles and then I would go over the cited scriptures which cover those principles. So we had these in our mind for the next day when Home Evening came around on Monday night and the person assigned for the spiritual thought didn't come. We had 2 members there, 4 investigators and the two of us. So I decided we might just as well talk about the creation for our spiritual thought. It gave us the opportunity to talk about our pre-earth life, the purposes of our life here on earth and even the spiritual creation of all things. The investigators were all long term friends and three of them are involved in a group that apparently has fastened on the belief that the end of the world will come on September 30th! We smiled and told them we'd like to have a good talk with them all on October 1st! At any rate the whole discussion took place in German and was great experience for the next day. We were helped quite a bit by one of our two members, a returned missionary, who really saved the evening as the discussion got a little more involved.
We did come up with a great scripture not included in the Preach My Gospel selections that you all might want to look up: D&C 88:17-20.
So Tuesday, the district meeting went well and that afternoon at the time for our language classes an interesting man came in indicating he wanted to improve his English. The elders were all involved in classes teaching German and he really wanted to just talk to someone to improve his English because he has a professor who speaks English and he wanted to be able to present his proposal for a doctorate thesis. It turns out he also comes from Iran, is a psychologist with a master's degree and has worked in a couple of the Iranian prisons with inmates who are struggling with addictions. It turned out to be quite an interesting match-up as I decided that I should be his language teacher. I had had no idea at the outset what his background was but he was filling me in on his beliefs, from his experience and research that there were great similarities in the responses from addicted individuals whether they were addicted to opiates, metamphetamines, or even video games. He talked about areas in the brain that were affected by these addictions and pointed out their responses were very similar even in schizophrenia, depression and other mental disorders and at least when he talked about the amygdala, the hippocampus and other brain areas, I had some idea what he was talking about.
So to make a very long story a little shorter, we decided we would meet every day for an hour and work on his English. After the first two days, he spontaneously brought up how impressed he was with Christians, how very nice and kind they seemed to be and how concerned he was about the lack of freedom he and his family experienced in Iran. We ended up talking for over two hours on Friday and essentially he got most of the first discussion and a little bit of the second. We had to go a little slow because he knew very little about Christianity per se but we had a good talk about prophets and revelation and if it keeps up he'll have a Book of Mormon in his hands by Monday. We've even got a copy in Persian if he prefers. Oh...the above title...he thinks people with addictions can be helped by exposing them to "transcranial magnetic stimulation." We'll see how well it holds up to the Holy Ghost!
Yesterday we finally decided it was time to go out and get a little culture and so we bought a year's card to one of the best museums in the world located here in Vienna. We were already museumed out after about three hours and we only covered ancient Egypt and Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. That didn't even begin to cover more than perhaps a fourth of what was there.
Here's the upper lobby of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and we weren't even paying attention until we came down the stairs to the Islamic bride and groom who had come in for their wedding pictures to the left behind the lion!
The next picture is in the same location looking straight up.
Fill you in later with a report on a young man and woman from Hungary!
This week did seem pretty regular to the routine we follow each day. Routine daily life is just doing the things we are expected to do because it is right to do so and blessings come from following through and being faithful. We enjoy the spirituality of the moments that come no matter how great or small they are, and there are many. Being faithful and holding steady is just part of the test of earth life.
This week a young man came by that is a convert of about a year. He doesn't work far from the center but is very busy in his work commitments and studies. Hence he said he was too busy of late to come to Family Home Evening or Institute, or Waffle night, or to even go to church. I couldn't help asking if he at least was still praying. He said, no, "no time". But I said, he should always be able to pray in his heart. He really is a good young man and does have a testimony, but we all know how neglect can diminish what you have. He only came by to say "Hi" to us for a few minutes, so I didn't really want to get on his case. But I felt like I needed to admonish him to pray and to read his scriptures. Well, lo and behold, he was at church today and I was so happy looking into his eyes and knowing he was still trying to be faithful. So, to all I would like to say, "be faithful in the little things and the big things will take care of themselves." I'm so thankful for the daily blessings of the gospel in our lives.
LOVE and HUGS,
Grammy, Grampa,
Mom, Dad,
Elder and Sister Parker
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