It's a Besonderes Life: Anniversary, General Conference and Easter!

To Our Dear and Beloved Family,

How we miss you guys, especially at these times of the year when big celebrations are going on! The Austrians really know how to celebrate Spring Break and Easter. They take a whole week off plus two long weekends on either side. It all started a week ago Friday and will finally be over at the end of today. It was recommended that we close the center as most people would be vacationing so in that sense it was a bit of an easy week as we didn't hold our usual Home Evening, Institute or Waffle Night activities. But we decided we'd go ahead with our language courses on Tuesday and Thursday. Even there, however, the numbers were well down and many of our regular attenders didn't show. We were ready to go home early on Thursday, waiting for our Hungarian member to come for his German instruction when he walked in about 15 minutes late. We decided we'd only do a half hour instead of the usual hour and were within 5 minutes of that when in through the front door, completely unannounced, walked our mission president, his wife and kids, all in their P-day clothes.

They had said they wanted to come by some time but had never seen the facility so it was interesting that we had been detained long enough to let them in. Their children were out of school for the week and so they were all on vacation and were visiting the sights in Vienna. They have a daughter returning home in June from a mission in Japan about the same time that Jeremy will be released. Their son, Tanner has just submitted his papers for this summer as we anticipate Jeffrey and Ian will be doing soon.

The next big event of the week was, of course, the 46th anniversary of yours (plural) truly. One of our big supporters at the Institute, Sister Wadosch, who has, with her husband, been called to the Freiberg Temple presidency, suggested that a great place to go for our dinner celebration would be the Donauturm or Danube Tower. We may have possibly mentioned this earlier as it's located very near to where we held Stake Conference two weeks ago. It's a huge tower with a rotating restaurant on the very top. We went over directly after conference and were able to secure one of only three remaining reservations for April 1st, one of which was at 6:30 PM which we thought would be ideal as sunset was to be at 7:20 that day. So that morning we checked the forecast. Cloudy and rainy all day until about 6 PM when it was scheduled to clear up a bit. We thought some clouds would make for an impressive view and were not disappointed though it was quite windy as we approached. We discovered that they also have a great Bungee cord jumping place about three fourths of the way up though there didn't seem to be any activity that day. They took our picture as we went up and you can tell that our hair was a bit wind-blown.

Remember that dates in Europe are always day, month and year so that really is April 1st and not January 4th. You can see a picture of the tower on the right along with some of the other sight seeing spots around Vienna.

We ended up spending almost 2 hours there for a lovely dinner with all of the spectacular scenery and a pretty sunset to go along with it and we departed to a beautiful moonlit sky to wind up a wonderful evening.

We were glad to see many of the family get together for an Easter-egg hunt on Saturday and enjoyed the pictures you have sent. We thoroughly enjoyed General Conference and we were able to get three of the sessions live. Saturday and Sunday mornings here come in at 6 PM and we saw both of those at our Stake Center where it was presented in German in the chapel, English in the cultural hall and Spanish in the baptismal font room. Most of the missionaries saw it in English along with many members from the International Ward and a few of our native Austrians who wanted to hear it in the original and speak good English. The Women's conference, Priesthood and Saturday afternoon sessions were offered Saturday at 5 PM, Sunday at 11 AM and 2 PM respectively which made for a long day with breaks on Sunday so we elected to watch the Saturday afternoon session at home on the church website. With the new trend to allow several speakers to speak in their native languages, we wondered if President Uchtdorf would offer a sermon in German but apparently he only got as far as introducing the hymn in the middle of the Sunday afternoon session! Elder Parker sat in on the Women's session which was truly wonderful but attended the Priesthood session with the other elders on Sunday morning and then returned home to watch the Saturday afternoon session on the church website with Sister Parker. We both enjoyed the Sunday morning session live with the Tabernacle Choir broadcast with the members at the stake center and then after returning home stayed up until past midnight to watch the final session live on our computer.

There were almost too many to comment on but I especially loved the talks by Elder Wilford Anderson and learning to "hear the music when we dance" as well as the many talks on marriage given by President Packer, Sister Burton, Elder Perry and all of the talks given at the Women's Session. (Elder Parker thinks he's going to sneak into that session more often!) Especially moving was the talk by Elder Neil Anderson as he recounted the events of the Second Coming as they are rolling forward. One of the questions we love to ask the missionaries comes from that intermediate hymn sung just before Elder Andersen spoke, "Come O Thou King of Kings, Thrice welcome to thy throne." Can you name the three times he will come to His throne?

[Sister Parker] It was great to have a little extra free time this week and not to have to cook for the center, but as usual with vacation time we managed to fill it up with District Mtg., inspections, and other missionary needs, so we didn't get quite as caught up as I would have liked. We did, however, have time to celebrate our anniversary, through wind and rain, and taking the wrong bus, It was of course, an adventure which it needs to be if you are going to have a really good time. When we finally were seated at our table and looked out the windows over all of Vienna, it was awesome. I probably use that word too much since we've been here, but then it was awesome and even more so when all the lights twinkled on like little sparkling jewels across the dark land. We could see houses, buildings, bridges and trains silhouetted in the lights. It was fun to see the long string of lights from the trains travel it seemed on air or open space across the river to the station. It was all delightfully magical and romantic. And to add to it all, there was a beautiful almost full moon peeking out between the clouds as we ran down a dark street to catch our bus home. This time we did get on the right one.

We enjoyed all of the conference talks and the Spirit that comes with them even over the computer. A lot of the Elders liked the talk of Elder Holland, as they could visualize the brothers hanging on the cliff. I felt the emphasis was on marriage, family and the Savior. It seemed like they were inviting and calling us all to come to Jesus, to repent, and to feel his comfort, peace and joy. One of my favorite scriptures since teenage was quoted:"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." This is the kind of peace every individual, young or old, needs in our troubled world, that no matter what happens the Lord is in charge. We pray for that peace to be with each one of you.