Luke 12:55---Mosiah 24:15

To Our Dear and Wonderful Family,

It seems that the week has gone pretty normally considering that many of the young adults are finished with school and back with their families again.  Hence our numbers continue to be down somewhat but we still have a pretty good contingent of regulars that show up for our various activities. Our young Italian member continues to amaze us with her willingness to help out in a variety of multilingual capacities. She really helps with the young member from Chili as very few others speak Spanish and because she's pretty good in German and English she is really amazing as a good go between. She's also befriended a young man who is really quite pathologically depressed, lost his mother when he was just a teenager and thereby apparently also lost his faith in God.  We hadn't seen him in several weeks but he was back this past week at her urging.

We decided to spend Thursday as our best day to travel down to the recently vacated apartment in Wiener Neustadt which still needed a lot of help in cleaning up the debris left over as the elders vacated. We had previously spent numerous hours in getting most of the trash environmentally organized because the Austrians are real sticklers on disposing of biological waste in this bin, plain glass jars in this bin, colored glass in another, strictly paper products in another, metal cans in a fifth and all of these bins are not located on every street corner.  Additionally we had what amounted to five washer loads of towels and bedding to cycle through and dry. We had essentially 4 hours available, not including travel time, to get all this done and because each load takes about 55+ minutes to cycle we only got through 3 of them.

Sister Parker was especially concerned because we have been going through an off-the-record heat wave here this past week. That means that temperatures have been hotter then they have ever measured since they began keeping records! None of our missionaries' apartments are air-conditioned and the ones up higher are hotter than those down lower. Naturally, this apartment is on the 4th floor.  We weren't overly concerned because other than the 15-20 minute walk to get there from the train station, we knew there was at least one fan we could turn on to cool down a bit. We knew their second fan was broken but much to our dismay, the other one initially wouldn't start either.  With the washing machine and dryer both going constantly the place got up well over 90 degrees.  With thanks to the Lord, we finally got the fan going but it wouldn't project a breeze any farther than about two feet away so we crowded together often. Sister Parker cleaned the bathroom while Elder Parker did the dishes and worked hard on scouring off an oven baking sheet with about 2 years of grease baked onto it. At least we met often in front of the fan. Our clothes were literally dripping wet when we decided we had to give it up and head back to our responsibilities at the center. We didn't know how we were going to manage the walk back to the train station in the predicted most hot and humid weather ever, and believe us, we were looking pretty bedraggled. So we were more than grateful as we emerged from the apartment to find that it had rained while we had been working, the sky was still overcast and there was a lovely breeze blowing all the way back to catch the train!  Hence the interesting couplet with which we've titled this letter above.

     We ended up still being about an hour late but were able to call one of the sets of elders who have a key to the center and they got things started on time. By this weekend the heat seems to be dissipating a bit and we actually felt we could clean up our own apartment a bit as well as take in a little more of the city on our P day. By the way, here is an interesting picture of a crystal in the Natural History Museum, about three feet across and a foot or so high, named after one of our granddaughters!  Hopefully you can see what it's called.

We attended the International Ward today to find out that they have a new bishop.  Today was his first Sunday presiding and both of his counselors, retained from the previous bishopric, had to work so he was really going it alone. Three sisters spoke on the principle of charity including the Stake Relief Society President who did a great job speaking in English. She met her husband years ago in Greece shortly after joining the church and although he has never joined, he is very supportive of her, and attends most of the meetings. As she likes to phrase it, "He has been investigating the church now for 25 years!" We know her son well who was called to Greece on his mission and we are all patiently waiting for him to tell us he is engaged to a lovely young girl he has been going steady with since this past spring.

  

     This next week promises to be challenging as our regular adult leaders are all away on family events. Hence we have been asked to do the cooking not only for Monday and Friday but also for the next two Wednesdays as well as teach the Institute class in German. They don't think there will be many attending as there is a YSA conference in Cologne, Germany and a Temple trip for the youth the next week but we'll see. Today was a real answer to prayer as things just fell into line regarding amplification points to discuss in the upcoming Institute class. The gospel is true and the Lord supports and sustains us in our efforts!

     We were sorry to miss the Pioneer Day celebration. No one over here really remembers it and a few of the young adults questioned why we even brought it up at Family Home Evening. Throughout history there has been a recurring need to rescue God's people in their trials and tribulations while journeying to their promised lands. During these journeys the people grow in strength and spirituality. Thus it is not only a journey with physical hardship but also a time of spiritual growth.  Remember Moses and the Red Sea, Lehi and his family and maybe even Noah and the ark. With the restoration of the Gospel, God's people also required a journey of physical trial and spiritual growth. This is why it is so important to remember the journeys that are often referred to by the Bible prophets, the Book of Mormon prophets and our prophets today so that we can remember how God's mercy and divine intervention have strengthened and helped his people to overcome the trials and struggles of their time or today in our time.

      We love you all.  Stay cool.  

Grammy, Grampa, 

Mom, Dad, 

Elder and Sister Parker

An Austrian Wedding, [One,eins,uno x2,egy,wti], and a Flash Mob

To the Best Family in All the World!

     It has been another wonderful week filled with new experiences of which there never seem to be an end. Although there have been several weddings that have taken place here in the last 14 months, few of them were with YSA's that we had really gotten to know well. But on Friday a young lady that we know very well was taking the big step with a young man she had met at a YSA conference held at a city in the middle of Austria known as Linz just this past spring. One of our trainers back in the MTC at Provo had noted that we were heading to Austria and had been involved in her teaching and baptism and asked us to look out for her. She is the only member of her family but her fiance' comes from a good strong Mormon family. The wedding itself in Austria is always first a civil affair with the temple sealing following.  Bishops and Stake Presidents are not granted the privilege of marrying according to Austrian law. (We expect this may happen in the states as well if same-sex weddings become a civil right.) So we were informed that the wedding was on Friday morning but in a somewhat remote suburb to the north east of Vienna.  Apparently it is a busy marriage season here in July and all of the local officials in both Linz and Vienna were booked up for several weeks. So rather than delay for a long time they elected to get married where an official was available sooner.  The marriage wasn't until 11:00 but we were advised to be there early and there was a good crowd there already by the time we arrived at 10.

 Formal occasions all operate on an individual basis, as do church meetings and many were there in a variety of dress standards with few full suits or dressy dresses and even a few in Levis or shorts, but we see that fairly often even at sacrament meetings.

 But the bride and groom were well decked out and the service was really quite lovely, lasting over 30 minutes with people telling us that often in Vienna they don't last much longer than about 10 minutes including the time it takes to sign all the official papers.

The official was a woman and she provided a good helping of solid advice to the young couple. The sealing will take place this coming Tuesday at the Frankfurt Temple. There was a lovely wedding reception that evening which we attended for a short while before we had to leave for our usual Friday night activities at the center.

There we had a good showing of our local elders although rumor has it that the mission president feels they may not be making good use of their time and should make sure that missionary purposes are being met. More of that will be discussed in our upcoming Zone Training Meeting this Tuesday and Elder Parker may actually get an assignment to go into all of that in more detail. There is a somewhat old guideline we're aware of where a previous mission president spelled it out in pretty good detail and which we've offered to read. But all of that aside, we did have a very interesting turn-out for what is essentially our only truly social evening of the week at the center.

We had been warned that our current BYU students would not be present because of other commitments and so planned on reduced volumes of food but we did have an interesting attendance from our YSA's. We have a fairly frequent and regular attending young man from Hungary who's getting better and better at his English with his German coming along slowly. Then of late we've been seeing more of a young man from Pakistan who was baptized last January. His mother tongue is Urdu and he definitely is making better strides in English than in German but he's remained quite active and is now responding to our requests that he come around more often to the center at which he at one time was quite a regular.

A newcomer is a young lady from Chile whose brother lives south of Vienna in Wiener Neustadt but who is getting ready to prepare for admission to the University and so needs to live in the city proper.  Her brother, a returned missionary, speaks excellent English and pretty good German though they both consider Spanish as their mother tongue. She has been coming to learn German but really has no English foundation which makes it difficult for us to teach her without the significant help of Google translate. (That, by the way, is now much more accessible with everyone using I-Pads!) And then we have our multi-lingual sister from Italy who in addition to Italian can also speak excellent German, English, and previously unknown to us, even Spanish.  What a help she has been to our sister from Chile as her brother is not usually around very close.

     So one of our favorite games on Friday Night is Spot-It. For those of you who may not be current in the game it consists of fifty or sixty little round cards each of them covered with 8-10 different symbols.  Every single one of the cards has some symbol that will match a symbol on the other cards and the idea is to match them up in such a way as to gain cards or get rid of cards in various versions that the game can be played in.  Some of the symbols can be things like a zebra, an igloo, a carrot, a tree, a car, a spider, a question mark, an exclamation mark, etc.  So we had six of us playing last Friday speaking English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Urdu.  In order to claim a match you have to call out the name of the item you have paired.  So depending on who dealt the cards, we started at the count of three:  One, two three; or eins, zwei, drei; or uno, due, tre; or uno, dos, tres; or egy, ket, harom; or wti, 9>, jw (those last three are very poor approximations of the letters making up the three numbers in Urdu!).  We were impressed at how good both Chile and Pakistan were at playing this game!  One of the symbols we have named Ying Yang and it has the remarkable ability to be an apparently international symbol, at least the name sounded about the same in all five languages.  Who could have guessed?

     Our final unique event of the week occurred on Tuesday requiring us to hustle a bit on our usual afternoon language courses. Yet another group from BYU was in town for just a couple of days, this time a contemporary dance team. We had been informed that they wanted to put on a flash mob at one of the local plazas and apparently there was a little bit of difficulty in getting permission for the locale of first choice. So they finally decided to do it at a spot on a plaza between the Technical University of Vienna and the Church of Charlemagne. It's also near a major transportation hub where there are usually a lot of people around. However it turned out that with school out and many people off on vacations, the crowds weren't as plentiful as we had hoped. Still it was pretty fun and they actually ended up doing it twice at two different areas on this very big plaza.We tried sending a short one and a half minute video but it's too big to attach to this email. Someone can tell us how to send it later if you're interested.

     We had a chance to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir today which is broadcast live at 5:30 PM here in Austria. We got some portions of the Pioneer Day concert that was presented Friday and Saturday nights. Elder Parker was tickled to hear the Handcart Song sung as the opening song. Every time he did a forceps delivery he always asked if the delivering mother knew the forceps song.  Most, of course, didn't so he would always sing "For some must push and some must pull."  He got a little lump in his throat today!

    [Sister Parker] In spite of the over whelming high temperatures, (the street cars are like giant ovens), it has been a great week. It was a joy to be able to see our dear young friend get married on Friday, all in all it was a lovely affair, but I would rather be seeing her get married in the temple on Tuesday.  I know that will be most important to her also, she is a very faithful young convert and wanted only to marry a faithful member in the temple. It is a privilege to witness the joy they have found and pray that they will endure to the end.

    It still never ceases to amaze me that whenever our close young adults move on, that someone or two moves in to take their place. I always wonder who is going to fill the empty space left by these dear friends, but the Lord knows and sends someone new for us to help support. This is one of the greatest aspects of our calling, except for the good-byes at the end. It's really amazing how the Lord brings people from all over the world together to help each other. Who would have thought that we would have friends from Pakistan, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Chile etc. The Lord really is pulling in his chosen people from the four corners of the earth. And to think Utah has more convert baptisms than we have here. There is work to be done everywhere and everyone can serve wherever they are living. Think Missionary.

We are glad to be a part of this missionary gathering here in Vienna. 

Hugs and Prayers, 

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

Baptismal Highlight of the Mission!

To all of our Children and Grandchildren,

     After having been involved in several baptisms during our mission, we think the highlight occurred yesterday as we were privileged to witness the baptismal service of Kaylee via FaceTime.  We weren't sure we were going to get permission as photos are not allowed but we were aware of other similar situations where grandparents on missions were allowed to participate via a little digital technology.  So we were thrilled to get in on a little of the action as Kaylee prepared to leave home and head to the church as well as enjoy the talks, the baptism itself and the confirmation.  What a special day it was for all of us!  We even got to see some of the family picture-taking afterwards.  Now we're not going to say that it was any better than the baptisms of Amelia, Amy and Eric, all of which took place just before we left and which we were able to personally attend.  But it was definitely the best baptism we've seen since we have been full-time missionaries!  We loved the wise council and advice given by Trisha and Grandma Black on baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost as well as the lovely confirmation blessing offered by Grandpa Black.

     It is truly amazing what we can do with this amazing technology that has been made available to us. The missionaries are loving their I-Pads and the scope of their use is always expanding. Although we failed to let the brethren know of the conflict, our usual Friday night Waffle Night started exactly at the same time as the funeral services for President Packer.  Nonetheless, we were able to participate in that live as well.  Primarily we saw the funeral cortege arrive on Temple Square and later leave and we listened to Elder Nelson's opening prayer and the talk from Elder Packer's son.  The talks from Elder Ballard, Oaks and President Monson were able to be enjoyed later as recorded as we had quite a crowd there for a change with our current BYU contingent showing up in force.

  

      While still thinking about technology, as we're writing this communication we're listening to the Orchestra at Temple Square performing "A Night in Vienna" on Elder Parker's resurrected Android cell phone.  It has been truly wonderful to have that possibility again.  Today we visited one of the wards we haven't been to in several weeks, unaware that it was their ward conference.  It was quite interesting that one of our reasonably newly converted young singles living in that ward has been having some problems with depression.  We wondered if she would be there but she's pretty good at her attendance and showed up to sit next to Sister Parker in Relief Society.  The Stake Presidency and the Bishopric had decided that the theme for this ward conference would be on the same theme given by Elder Renlund at General Conference. "Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying."  All three hours were focused on exactly what she needed to hear.  Even Elder Parker contributed to the Sunday School discussion by reading Mosiah 34:13-15 which impressed him as appropriate to the topic.

     The rest of the week went quite well, too.  Home Evening had about twice the attendance of the week before and the Institute class in English continues for awhile as long as anyone wants it to.  From three last week, it doubled also to six this week with all of the stalwarts now missing but new members attending from BYU, a returned missionary sister from Hungary, one from Italy and one from Chile.  It's nice we all have a language we can unite on to communicate! 

     We did have a little time on Saturday to see a few more sights of Vienna.  It seems like this city has more to see than we can ever take in completely. We found the site of where the building once stood where Mozart died, now replaced by a large department store named after St. Stephen's cathedral "Der Steffl". 

 Then we moved to a fairly new church by Viennese standards,

only 250 years old or so but which claims to have the oldest still functioning organ in the city.  Outside stands a statue of Moses.  We wonder if he would approve?

  And finally quite an interesting group of landmarks all dedicated to the humility and repentant feelings of today's neutral Austrians as they commiserate over all of the evils perpetrated by the fascism represented by the years they were governed by National Socialism, the Nazi's. 

Here represented is an old Jew who was forced to scrub the streets on his hands and knees, actual occurrences of which were well known.  Ignorant tourists were occasionally found sitting and resting on the monument so they elected to cover it in barbed wire as a further depiction of the subjugation of the Jews prior to 65,000 of them being deported and murdered in concentration camps.  Nearby is a large stone monument which carries the new Austrian Declaration of Independence inscribed upon it, written in 1946 and a prelude to Austria being granted the right to function again as a country in 1955.  Most of the official publications of the church note that it was also officially recognized in Austria in 1955.

     We were hoping to be able to attend a temple sealing in Frankfurt later this month as another one of our recently baptized young sisters (about 2 years ago) makes that big step but the Frankfurt temple is closing in September for two years for expansion.  That coming on top of the Freiberg Temple already closed for a year for similar purposes, the Europeans are crowding in for last minute attendance and we were a bit too late to get into the crowd.  Oh well.  We will be able to attend the preceding wedding here in Vienna this coming Friday and will then have to content ourselves with a Senior Conference to Switzerland and the Bern Temple in September.  We were asked this past week to lead a discussion on ideas to stimulate and help the Young Single Adults on the second day of that conference so that will keep us busy.

 [Sister Parker] This week we began to read the Pearl Of Great Price, where once again I was impressed that Adam received the complete fullness of the gospel of Jesus with priesthood authority. The ordinances of baptism, by immersion, and the receiving of the Holy Ghost were all given to Adam, Eve and their children.  As Grampa said, the highlight of the week was being able to see Kaylee's baptism on Face Time. Interesting how the spirit is transported through the cyber-net. I truly felt a beautiful sweet spirit come across. It is such a joy to see our grandchildren receive the ordinances of the gospel. I think the Savior is pleased that we are among the faithful followers of this day. We just need to keep trying to do what's right and help each other along the way.

HUGS AND PRAYERS, 

Hope you are having some summer fun!

It's turned very hot here again!

Grammy, Grampa, 

Mom, Dad, 

Elder and Sister Parker

Kugelmugeling

To Our Beloved and Widespread (though at the moment perhaps not so widespread!) Family:

     It appears the summer heat has really begun. According to the weather report Vienna hasn't had weather this hot since 2003. We've been up over 90 for a few days now and that's no fun wearing suits and ties. Yesterday we traveled to Wiener Neustadt where we learned that the locals had made the rule that suit jackets were not required and most were in short-sleeved white shirts. Unfortunately, no such rule has come forth from our mission! We've learned that sweat and perspiration are all translated into the same word, "Schweiss" and we are all witnesses thereto.

So school is over, the kids are all out and about and even the streetcars run on a different schedule during vacation time than during the regular school year. The schedule will run as it now is until September 5, essentially giving us only two more months of regular schedules until our mission concludes. We haven't been certain exactly what will happen in our Center although we experienced it all last summer as we were just getting our feet on the ground. We do seem to remember that all of the activities were pretty light as a lot of the YSA's return home and the summer is kind of catch as catch can. Sister Parker has been preparing full meals for home evenings on Monday and we have had so much left over that we have invariably fed our district on Tuesday with the leftovers. They, of course love it but perhaps we'll figure out how to tone things down a bit.

     The language courses are running about like they always do so no big changes there.  With the BYU group still in town, we have agreed to keep teaching an English class for Institute for a few more weeks but so far they've always had other activities they've been involved in. This week we had our three regulars there and one BYU student but this coming week, the engaged girl is visiting her fiance', the other is leaving today for 13 months to be a nanny in New Jersey and that leaves us with a sweet BYU sister who has received a mission call to Hungary and will be in the MTC in October as well as one of our YSA leaders who returned from his mission about 8 month ago but has wanted to attend the English class. We're pretty much preparing a lesson week by week and will see how long we can keep it up.

     Last year the 4th occurred on a Friday, consistent with our Waffle Night and you may remember that Sister Parker prepared a special cupcake tray decked out in the stars and stripes. The Saturday celebration this year was our P-day and so we enjoyed it vicariously with all of you. Though it wasn't much fun running around in the heat we decided to catch a few sight-seeing spots that are all within a half mile of where we live. Several of you might have received an email that morning of our visit to the Kooglemoogle, spelled Kugelmugel. In keeping with the spirit of independence, it is the remnant of a ball-shaped home that was built by a man who declared himself independent of the Republic of Austria back in the 1980's and declared he didn't feel obligated to pay taxes. No doubt he didn't feel like he had adequate representation.  His efforts fell on deaf ears and he was actually imprisoned for a while until pardoned by the Prime Minister with the understanding that he would henceforth lead an exemplary life.  

His home is now located pretty close to the giant Ferris Wheel of local fame and is pretty buried within the trees.  We also decided to visit the site where a beautiful Jewish synagogue once existed.  It served as an architectural model for several other synagogues in cities around Europe but was destroyed by the Nazis on the infamous Crystal Night when the "barbarian hordes" stormed through the city burning and looting anything of Jewish ownership.  Interestingly, that occurred on November 10, 1938 when Great Grandpa Parker was just celebrating his 16th birthday. (I remember while living at Camp Pendleton that November 10 is also the anniversary of the United States Marine Corps!)  

The synagogue was completely burned to the ground and at the time was a refuge for many Jews who had come together seeking shelter from the persecution that was raging around them.  It has now become a shrine with many names noted on the fence around it who were deported to various concentration camps and there murdered during the Holocaust.  It was Saturday and we were interested to see the many Jewish families there, a new synagogue having been built next to the original site.

  

  The three white pillars represent the memorial. Note the families in both pictures. 

Sunday, of course, was Fast and Testimony Meeting and we decided to travel to Wiener Neustadt as noted above to attend church. They have had two missionary apartments there for as long as we have been here. Originally one housed a team of three sisters who divided their time between WN and Vienna proper. But they were eventually moved to Vienna exclusively, much to the dismay of the members and were replaced by a second team of elders. With the continuing decline in our numbers, the President decided to close the second apartment in the ward leaving only the two remaining elders to cover an area that extends over about a hundred square miles. They had departed about 10 days previously with instructions to clean out the apartment of all perishables, wash the bedding and leave it folded in the closets, etc. The mission will continue to pay rent on the apartment for a while pending the eventual increase in numbers and we think this represents perhaps 10-15 apartments throughout the mission that are now vacant. We thought we would see how well they'd done and visit the apartment after the services.

      The Relief Society discussed the importance of faith in the basic principles of the gospel and priesthood meeting discussed the importance of family home evenings.  Interestingly, only about three of twenty raised their hands to admit they were holding regular home evenings of whom Elder Parker was one but it was a good discussion about several of the options that help provide a wholesome time for the family.  In their defense, several of the brethren are in part-member families but I think they were encouraged that they too could promote some wholesome family togetherness time. Sunday School was especially wonderful as we usually attend the Gospel Principles class. It is taught by a truly wonderful brother with the Holy Ghost being the topic. He asked us how long we had been married and he teared up a bit as we told him 46 years. We're aware that his wife divorced him last year and we're sure it has been a difficult time for him but has not diminished the wonderful Spirit he exhibited as he talked about the Holy Ghost. Later in Testimony Meeting he was one of several who bore their testimony and again mentioned us and our long marriage as good examples all should strive for. Everyone was aware of the recent passing of President Packer and along with the vacancy created by Elder Perry's death, many expressed that they were fasting for President Monson as two new apostles will be named. Elder Parker bore his testimony on, among other things, his memories of meeting with Elders Nelson and Oaks many years ago, now the seniors in the Quorum of the Twelve, and discussing the topic of church doctrine on stillborn babies. Elder Parker has long commented that if Elder Nelson ever becomes the President of the church, now looking like more of a probability, he's going to revisit the possibility of the Lord giving us further revelation on exactly when the spirit enters the body.

     Following the meeting we began a long hot trek over to the recently vacated missionary's apartment and we thought, wouldn't it be nice if someone offered us a ride. No sooner had we expressed the thought than one of the members and his mother, here from Hungary, offered to drive us over in their nice air-conditioned car!  (D&C 58:4 recently quoted to Sister Bonnie Jepson, also briefly without air conditioning)  Dropping us off right at the door we walked up three flights of stairs to the apartment which also didn't have air conditioning but did have a fan we immediately turned on.  The other two elders had been there the day before and warned us that the place was still a huge mess and they were right. Lots of perishables still in the refrigerator which hadn't been cleaned or turned off according to instructions and numerous bags of trash lying around.  We worked for a couple of hours to straighten things up and then received a call from the other two elders who had finished their appointments for the day and asked if they could come and further help. We decided the ox was in the mire and welcomed their assistance. We figure it took about 8  man hours (and about 4 woman-hours) to get it all fixed up. There was wet laundry still in the washer that clearly needed re-washing. We divvied up the residual food between them and us, leaving some non-perishables available for the ward mission leader who will come by to dispose of the various trash bags in the appropriate, Austrian environmentally-friendly, trash receptacles including glass, paper and wet garbage!  We got on a fast train home and even though it wasn't air conditioned, the windows were all open and we had a wonderful wind (breeze is not a strong enough word) blowing through the car to keep us reasonably comfortable.

    My mind this week, especially, Friday and Saturday was on the 4th of July. Even some of the members here wished us a Happy Independence Day, which I thought was great since not everyone here loves America. But I do and I'm glad to let anyone who wants to know that America's "Declaration of Independence" has blessed in one way or another every nation of the world. We believe in Liberty and Freedom and I'm grateful to all those who have fought for those rights from the beginning of our county to those who have willingly fought to allow those rights to other nations throughout history. On Saturday, since we couldn't find a Balloon Fest, we went out for the traditional breakfast at the best American place we could find "McDonald's." We also listened to as many of the patriotic Tab Choir renditions as we could find.  The words touched my heart. "Oh, beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years"  May God truly bless America through her difficult times and may we ever be part of those patriots who stand up for her.

HUGS AND PRAYERS 

Grammy, Grampa, 

Mom, Dad, 

Elder and Sister Parker