Mission Tour!

To Our Dear Family, One and All,

Another eventful week is now behind us with really not a lot going on in the center as far as the YSA's were concerned but there was plenty of action amongst our investigators. We were coming off a semester break at the university, so called although there are several universities here in Vienna and they're not all on the same schedule.  But at any rate, the week before we'd had no institute and it seemed like things were slow to start up again. It was also due to the major snow storm and blizzard we awoke to on Monday. Totally unusual for Vienna and caused a few traffic problems.  At least we had an assigned spiritual thought for Home Evening and that brought out a few stalwarts with three long-standing investigators also there though none of them are really following through on any specific commitments.  Tuesday we had as many language class students as teachers with five different classes going simultaneously although neither of my Hungarians showed up for some reason. Wednesday's institute was pretty scant to start out but more came in as we got going.  I only had 2 in the English class but one young lady got engaged recently and was off visiting her fiance who apparently lives in Innsbruck.  Then we had 13 who left immediately afterwards to travel to the Frankfurt Temple for a 3 day temple trip and so that left Friday's waffle night really skimpy with six missionaries, one member and a couple of investigators.

But that skipped Thursday, usually a language class day but we shut the center down for the "Mission Tour", an opportunity for the entire mission to meet with President Kaeron of the European Area Presidency.  This happens periodically and in the past they have accomplished it with 2 zones each over 4 days.  This time they decided they'd combine 4 zones at a time over 2 days and we were the second day with Vienna, Salzburg, Stuttgart and Munich all meeting in Munich.

Elder and Sister Parker found Sister Bushman who served with them in Vienna and 

who is now serving in Stuttgart (Picture kindly sent to us from Sister Bushman's mom!)

We were up at 4 AM with maybe about 5 hours of sleep if we were lucky to catch a train that left Vienna at 6:30 in the morning, getting into Munich about 10:30.  I didn't see anyone sleeping on the train as it was a great time to renew acquaintances, study, etc,  We got into the train station with all the young missionaries traveling on a ticket the office had purchased for them and they all immediately headed for public transportation which had been paid for.  We didn't have such tickets and by the time we got oriented to consider buying passes, the rest had gone and 4 of us weren't sure exactly how to get where we were going.  But we'd been in Munich last fall and knew the way to the church where the conference was being held.  It wasn't a very long walk, maybe 15 minutes so we decided to hoof it.  They wanted us in our seats about 15 minutes early, reverent and ready to be taught but the other sister we were with had to walk pretty slowly and we kept the couple company as we went.  We actually arrived about 7 minutes early which we thought was pretty great and actually arrived just as President and Sister Kohler drove up with Elder Kaeron.  It gave us an opportunity to shake his hand and say hi as we hurried upstairs to the chapel to find seats, of which there weren't very many left!

The conference went for about 6 hours which included about 45 minutes for a sack lunch the members had prepared for us.  Sister and President Kohler started things off, along with the Munich Stake President who also was in attendance and spoke excellent English which was the language of the day. But most of the conference was taken up with Elder Kaeron who is a native Brit, as he styled himself, as well as a convert at the age of 26, joining after initially hearing about it at age 24 and getting lost for about a year or so.  We found him extremely motivating, understanding missionary work and its challenges and working through a comprehensive approach to getting better at what we were doing.  He started off with the typical morning, getting up at 6:30, praying and then getting our morning exercise in.  He asked who did the best pushups in the room and Elder Plumb was heartily approved by all the elders who knew him.  Up to the front he came to demonstrate how to do push ups properly.  Then it was personal study, companion study and particular attention was paid to how one prepares himself for the investigators that you're actually teaching.  He talked about the images one receives in being called an "investigator" and becoming aware of how our "friends" regard such a word along with being termed a "non-member".  How would you feel, he asked us, walking into a posh club and being asked if you were a member or automatically being excluded as a "non-member."  We worked on finding people and teaching people as the preludes to baptizing people.  

He had three great videos to show, the first taking only 7 seconds to show a cheetah rapidly chasing a young deer or emu and then once we were all fascinated by its speed, showing us the remaining 5 seconds where a native man runs up, outpaces the cheetah and snatches up the deer with the cheetah then obviously losing interest. One needs to change ones habits!  His third was quite amusing, showing a man and a woman on an escalator, going up from one floor to the next when it suddenly stops.  Both start complaining that they really didn't need this and how long it's going to delay them to wait for someone to come fix it.  No discussion about why don't you just finish walking up the stairs!  Again, change your habits. It was quite interesting that he could see many of us starting to get a little drowsy from lack of a previous night's good sleep and he would periodically have us all stand up for a few minutes while he continued talking.

The conference ended at 4:30 and I thought our train back left at 5:54.  We took time to visit with everyone, I had to turn in some old cell phones we'd had kicking around the apartment for a few years, apparently, which the mission was still paying for and by the time we got to the train station it was 5:28.  Came to find out I'd misread the schedule and the train left at 5:34.  By the time we got there we had 3 minutes to spare.  A little too close for comfort but a tender mercy.

Saturday we celebrated Valentine's Day by going to a new Wienerwald Restaurant (that's Vienna Woods for you non-Deutsch speakers) that was opening and had passed out some discount coupons.  

Today we witnessed one of the new members from Pakistan, who has been to the center numerous times and even taken the English Book of Mormon class, receive the Aaronic Priesthood and be ordained a priest.  I congratulated him and told him his handshake, which used to be like a jellyfish, was getting really good!  We also had a lovely visit afterwards with a 92 year old member who told us some stories about living after the war with her husband a war prisoner in Maryland.  She had been alone for several years waiting for his release and even lost an 8 month old baby to double pneumonia which bonded us considerably.  She stated she has a 95 year old cousin living in the Czech Republic.  They're the only two left in the entire family and she's just waiitng for him to die so she can have his temple work done.  She does have a foster son who takes good care of her and he's promised to have the work done if by chance she doesn't outlive him :)

  (Sister Parker) This week we had a few adventures with the Elders. First we took some elders to get a new bed slat support system and then spent the next hour helping them put it together only to find out it was a bit too long and big. It was great to see Elder Abbott find a tiny 3 inch saw knife and proceed to saw off 1/2 inch from each end of the side boards. After loosening the screws in the bunk bed frame it fit just nicely and the bed was able to be tightened up again. Great, for elders and ingenuity. We had another example of ingenuity on Saturday when we went to pickup 2 mattresses for elders in Wiener Neustadt. The ward mission leader drove us and the elders to pick up the mattresses which were not rolled up as we had been told. It took an interesting bit of putting a puzzle together to fit 5 of us all in the car plus 2 car seats and 2 mattresses. We tried to take pictures of us stuffed inside with me holding one of the car seats, next to the elder stuffed under the mattresses and the other elder in the back stuffed under both the car seat and the mattress. See if you can figure it out. (Note one of the blessings of either being the driver or riding shotgun was having great seats!)

​ I thought our Mission Tour day with Elder Kaeron was great. I especially liked the story told about Elder Kaeron and the scorpion in the Arabian Penninsula  desert where he grew up: "As a seven-year-old boy living in the Arabian Peninsula, I was consistently told by my parents to always wear my shoes, and I understood why. I knew that shoes would protect my feet against the many threats to be found in the desert, such as snakes, scorpions, and thorns. One morning after a night’s camping in the desert, I wanted to go exploring, but I did not want to bother with putting on my shoes. I rationalized that I was only going for a little wander and I would stay close by the camp. So instead of shoes, I wore flip-flops. I told myself that flip-flops were shoes—of a sort. And anyway, what could possibly happen? As I walked along the cool sand—in my flip-flops—I felt something like a thorn going into the arch of my foot. I looked down and saw not a thorn but a scorpion. As my mind registered the scorpion and I realized what had just happened, the pain of the sting began to rise from my foot and up my leg. I grabbed the top of my leg to try and stop the searing pain from moving farther, and I cried out for help. My parents came running from the camp. As my father battered the scorpion with a shovel, an adult friend who was camping with us heroically tried to suck the venom from my foot. At this moment I thought that I was going to die. I sobbed while my parents loaded me into a car and set off across the desert at high speed toward the nearest hospital, which was over two hours away. The pain all through my leg was excruciating, and for that entire journey, I assumed that I was dying. When we finally reached the hospital, however, the doctor was able to assure us that only small infants and the severely malnourished are threatened by the sting of that type of scorpion.He administered an anesthetic, which numbed my leg and took away any sensation of pain. Within 24 hours I no longer had any effects from the sting of the scorpion. But I had learned a powerful lesson. I had known that when my parents told me to wear shoes, they did not mean flip-flops; I was old enough to know that flip-flops did not provide the same protection as a pair of shoes. But that morning in the desert, I disregarded what I knew to be right. I ignored what my parents had repeatedly taught me. I had been both lazy and a little rebellious, and I paid a price for it."  Obedience is an important part of the gospel. We don't regret obeying. We regret disobeying. This is a good story to remember when you are trying to decide what to do.

   

Have a good week. We're not quite as cold as we have been. I even wore real shoes instead of boots to church today.

         LOVE AND HUGS, 

Grammy, Grampa, 

Mom, Dad, 

Elder and Sister Parker