Can a Week Get Any Better?

To Our Beloved Family!

We don't know how a week can get any better than this one! Just getting back from the Senior Conference in Switzerland, having spent last Sunday in Salzburg, we fell right into a tremendous home evening night on Monday with investigators almost equaling the number of YSA's present. We had not anticipated that anyone was going to show up with a Spiritual thought so thought we'd just pull it together earlier that day. But Sister Parker got heavily involved in fixing the meal for the evening and Elder Parker was needed to joint teach with the Sisters as they were teaching a young man . Just before all that started, a young man walked in indicating he frequently walked by the building and today felt motivated that he should come in to get some questions answered. Turned out he was an ex-member who had been baptized as a teenager and been more or less active for a few years before completely dropping out and eventually having his name removed from the records of the church. Now he was engaged and felt oppressed with a heavy weight over him, seeking the answers to the questions of life. A couple of elders and Elder Parker were talking with him when all of us had to break for our scheduled appointments. But he elected to hang around, talked with Sister Parker in the interim until we all returned and by then many of the YSA's had started showing up. In short, there was no time to prepare a Spiritual thought, so we decided it was time to let the Spirit do the preparing. Elder Parker was impressed to start talking about covenants and everyone participated just wonderfully as we talked about the nature of contracts, then baptism, then the Sacrament, then the difference between a civil marriage being two way and an eternal marriage being a three-way covenant. Our ex-member was an active participant in the discussion and admitted his interest in the marriage covenant now that he was engaged.
  

After the formal discussion ended he got into further discussions with one of the members who is a returned missionary and ended up asking if he could receive a blessing. When asked if he wanted just a blessing or whether we should administer to him, he wondered if non-members could be administered to. We assured him they could and the two of us provided a blessing which ended up with everyone in tears. The Spirit was definitely present. Elder Parker even got the chance to use his new vial for consecrated oil purchased at the Swiss Temple a few days earlier, having lost his original at the outset of the mission when his briefcase containing the original was stolen. 

   
We'll see where all of this goes but it was a great start to a week that moved on to our latest Zone Conference back in Salzburg. This time we were able to make the trek back on the train, plenty of refugees still around but not really a problem as long as we weren't planning on trying to leave Austria. The conference was supposed to begin at 10 AM and end at 4 PM but it turned out the extra hour in the morning was to allow all the missionaries to receive their flu shots. Seniors were given the option and we decided to bypass the honor if it wasn't required. But then the conference went until 5, we missed our originally scheduled train and the one that followed by about 4 minutes so ended up not getting home until after 9:30. But the day was another spiritual feast with President and Sister Kohler in their prime. They had us all prepped to give 7-10 minute talks on three different subjects and then asked a Golden (remember that's the mission name for a Greenie) to give one of the talks with the other two also being excellent.

Friday for Waffle Night we had prepared for our usual 14-16 attendees and were pleased to get a total of 23, six of whom again were investigators. Everyone was having a good time and we ended up staying way too late with a couple of our favorite YSA's who helped us start putting together a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle of a painting by Greg Olson on the Children of the World being taught by the Savior. This we had purchased in Switzerland. Luckily we got home before the streetcars stopped running but slept in on Saturday. When we finally got up it was a good opportunity to do a thorough clean of the apartment which had been neglected a little in the previous weeks.

The major event of the weekend was obviously General Conference but the rebroadcast of the Women's Session from the previous week didn't start until 4 PM and the live Saturday morning session didn't start for us until 6 PM. Sister Parker decided she would watch the Women's Session Sunday morning while Elder Parker went to the taped session of General Priesthood meeting so that gave us a little bit of time on Saturday to walk around a few blocks in the immediate neighborhood of the center which we had never done thus far in a year of being here. Within two blocks of where we mostly hang out we found the oldest preserved baking oven in Vienna, now a restaurant, a palace which had been, temporarily, the home of the Vienna Choir Boys, the church where Beethoven had laid after his death prior to his burial and wonder of wonders, the Peoples Museum which just happened to have free admission that day because it was the "Long Night of Museums" in the city.

Earlier we had been guided into a hidden-away courtyard showing how the poorer people had lived during the middle ages and then found out that the People's Museum contained many artifacts from about the same time, probably the 1600-1700's.

This was a particularly fascinating find hanging on a wall behind some table tapestries which indicated that "The  most beautiful thing the world around is a home that's built on firm ground" (Better rhyme in German but it's close). But we found the all-seeing eye and the clasped hands below it to be of extreme interest.

     That led us directly into General Conference. We were able to see three sessions live, Saturday and Sunday morning sessions and by staying up until midnight Sunday,also the closing session. The Women's, Priesthood and Saturday afternoon sessions we got on tape delay although we did stay up late Saturday night long enough to witness and participate live in the sustaining of Elders Rasband, Stevenson, and Renlund, all of whose testimonies we witnessed when they were given Sunday morning. No question that this was a superlative conference. We loved the talk from Elder Anderson, and especially moving were the talks from Elder Holland and President Nelson on the divine nature of motherhood and womanhood.

       [Sister Parker] It seems our missionary life is packed full of many wonderful experiences. At first the days were kind of slow but now they come and go so quickly that I have to pause a moment to enjoy what we are engaged in. Everything and everyone has become so dear that even now some of our young adults are emotional about our leaving even though it is a month away.  It is too bad that at the beginning we do not feel as competent as we do now in accomplishing our purpose as senior missionaries. I hope we have or will have accomplished all the Lord has sent us here to do and touched the lives of those people with whom we were suppose to connect. Fortunately or not there are also many challenges that fit into the scheme of things and hopefully we have grown and gained new insights in ourselves, our church family, and the gospel.

       I came to conference looking for a respite from the evils of the world we pass through every day and found the "Fount of many Blessings," and so sweet was the spirit. It was a joy to be with all the missionaries, members and investigators and to drink from the fountain and to drink again and again, and to be filled. I wish it would last forever, but I guess we have to wait for that in Heaven. I came away feeling that we all needed to evaluate how the gospel is really working in our lives, to seek for greater companionship of the Holy Ghost and to strengthen our families. Then in doing this, we can show others the way to a better life through our Savior, Jesus Christ. Oh, how I love the Savior. I hope you were also strengthened and your little ones with you. May the Spirit always guide us through our daily cares.

With great love for you all,
HUGS AND PRAYERS,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker