Monday, June 24, 2013

Exchanges, Chinese food, and Outlaws

Dear family,

That may have been one of the funniest E-mails so far. I died when i read about the toys at the parade and poop on the hand. It sounds like it has been a really awesome week! Here it has been really really hot and sweaty.  We had rain for like three weeks and now the sun is trying to catch up on the time it missed. The worst part of the heat is having to sit on an already stinky train with a bunch of really stinky people. But luckily our apartment is on the first floor so it stays pretty cool in there as long as we have our fans going.


Despite the heat we actually had quite a successful week. We didn't teach many lessons but we found quite a few potentials and i think one is very ready to hear about the church. On wednesday we traveled to a place called schärding to contact a referral. Schärding is right on the german austrian border and it is a really pretty. It turns out though that our referral lives right across the border so we got to walk across a bridge into germany. so now i have been there three times. We didn't even get to talk to the referral but we did eat some really good chinese food and now the owners are potentials because we have a sister in our district who speaks chinese so we got them on the phone together and now they have some interest.

On thursday we went on exchange with the linz elders and i got to stay in haag with elder Naegle. we had a lot of sucess but he didn't like that there weren't street trains for us to take. I made him walk a bit more than he is used to in Linz. The next day we travelled back to linz where we stayed over night before we switched back and on saturday elder stilger and i got to bike through the countryside to do some service. We work with a guy named siegfried. He is really cool and at one point wanted to show us the new A Katana that he had recieved. That was pretty cool but he wanted to step it up so he went inside for a minute. When he came out again he had a pistol shoved into his cut-off jean shorts and a big rifle on each hip. It was pretty sweet. Because he lives on a farm we always call him a farmer but he doesn't like that so he says (in english) "I am not farmer... I am outlaw!" And now we believe him.

I wish i could send my photos but i don't really have a way to do that yet. But as soon as i figure out how i will send an army on pixels your way. I have been talking to kelton and the other guys every week but i hadn't seen that he had to go home yet. I will of course make sure to talk to him.

Thanks for all the support and prayers! I am working my hardest every day because of the lessons i learned from you all over my life. I'll talk to you all next week!

Love,

Elder Eldredge

Monday, June 17, 2013

Fun in the Sun?

hello everybody!

the last week has been pretty awesome. it's finally stopped raining and the sun is coming out again. I liked it better when it was raining because now it's just crazy hot and i can't do anything about it. But if it rains i just put a jacket on and keep going. yesterday i almost died walking to the train station in my suit jacket. That wasn't fun. But we still have mostly just done service all week again. we helped clean out a members barn that was just filled with crap. just wood planks and iron that hasn't been seen for like 60 years. This member is a bit interesting. He has lost a lot of sanity due to his age so he just pokes you in the chest and tries to convince you of really crazy doctrines that he made up. Yesterday he came up to me, poking me, and asked me what the best clock in the world was. I didn't know so i asked him and he told me that it was our hearts because we can tell the time by our heart beats. So i asked him why he was wearing a watch, he threw his hands in front of my face showing me his thumbs (that are stubbs because he accidentally cut them) and said " I can't feal my pulse because i don't have any thumbs duh! " He's a guy that we all need to meet. he just makes people laugh.

we also had an eating apointment on thursday. the food was really good and we talked and laughed and than the father got up and left. he just got in the car and drove away. So the wife took advantage of our being trapped and asked us to build a foundation for their swimming pool. She even had work clothes in our sizes picked out. that wasn't planned.

We talked with B----- and he is back on track now. he doesn't have a baptismal date but we hope it will be in the next two months. we were supposed to have a meeting with him two days ago but he pretty much got heat stroke because he was studying the gospel in the sun too long..... we weren't sure whether we should have been happy or not. But we're happy because he loves the church still. He said he just needed some time because he felt we were moving too fast. He's a really cool guy.

We still haven't been able to go finding very much at all because Elder Stilger devoloped an allergy to the sun and if he goes outside too long he gets really sick. I feel bad for him. That would really suck. But not being able to go outside has allowed me to deap clean our apartment and organize my desk and closet so that was releaving.

All this talk of days at the lake sounds really awesome. I wish i was there. Plus, since when were ashton and pierce big enough to splash around in a lake! Everybody is going to be so different when i come home. I am already in my third transfer! It won't be long before i am about to come home still thinking i just got here. Crazy stuff. Well keep having fun and staying happy! I am going to look at those pictures now.

Love,

Elder Eldredge

Monday, June 10, 2013

Mud, Floods, and Nudist Colonies

well hello everybody!

Sounds like a ton of stuff is happening back home! I'm happy that the playhouse is finally getting fixed. I'm going to need a place to stay when i get home. I have been doing a bit of hard work myself lately. I don't know if you heard about it but the area around where i am got a ton of rain and there where major flooding problems especially in passau. But i got to work almost everyday this week with the firefighters and red cross. We went to this farm house to clean out the bottom floor because everything was destroyed. just to give you an idea the water was like eight feet high at this ladies house. So we
swept a lot of mud and carried a bunch of sand bags and talked to a lot of firefighters about the church. In fact yesterday we went to this place and we made some friends with a crew called axberg fire crew. they were a bunch of really cool guys that liked us alot. we drove with them to this wierd place where everybody lived in trailor houses on stilts and stuff. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into but it turns out that that nieghborhood was a nudist colony............ don't worry everybody had enough respect to put on almost enough clothes. It was still a pretty cool day and we worked really hard. When we were done working we had to wait for a while to get on a shuttle bus back to where we could leave so we sat in a beer garden with a bunch of fire fighters and just hung out for about two hours. I drank a ton of coca cola while everybody got drunk. I also don't know if i told you about the tradition of feasting after a hard day of work but they really take that seriously here. I had four feasts in three days and sat in the sun in a beer garden in the middle of a nudist colony. We didn't teach more than one lesson and we only found one potential but that's ok because we did a lot of service and did a lot of good.
 
So today is the first day of my second transfer while in the field which means that i have been gone for three months! that's crazy! That is a total eighth of my mission. sad day. time really does fly in the field. I'm half way done with training even. this stuff is nuts.

tomorrow morning I am travelling to München for a mission tour. Elder Nelson is speaking to us (his daughter is our mission presidents wife). I am way pumped because i will get to see a lot of my friends from the MTC so i can't really wait to catch up with them and see how they are doing.

That's pretty much all that i have to report for this week. It was just a lot of service and eating and haveing fun. It was really one of the best weeks i've had out here. I hope that everybody is still doing well and healthy. I try and send pictures when i can but i can only really get the ones that i forward to you from the weidmans (the married couple in our district). OH ya my package did come so thanks for that! it was awesome and i got to show elder stilger what sour patch kids are.

Well anyway i can't to hear from you all again next week! Let me know everything. i really get a lot of time for emails and sometimes I end up not using all my time and then i just wait for Elder Stilger to finish so don't worry about how much info you send me.

Love you all!

Elder Eldredge


P.S. I can't watch the videos because i have to download them and i am on a public shared network when i do emails so it won't allow me. But pictures i can view without downloading.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Rainy Days and... schnitzel and Nutella?

well hello family!

So this last week was kind of a bummer. It was pretty rough really. Let me tell you about it. Once again, we were in linz until wednesday morning so we didn't get to work in our area for the whole first half. Oh i think i have mentioned the rain..... it still hasn't stopped. in fact it's almost getting worse everyday. So proselyting has been unsuccesful because nobody wants to talk to us especially in the rain. Elder Stilger was asked to give a lesson in priesthood about missionary work and he wanted me to help him. the problem was that he was kind of angry while he planned it because the members in our ward really don't give us much help at all besides our bishop and Ward Mission Leader, so his plan to teach them how they can all help us do missionary work just made the members angry because he was angry at them and tried to preach to them. Truthfully i let it happen because he doesn't listen to me very much so it wouldn't have done anything for me to tell him it wouldn't go well. now he knows not to preach when he's angry. Oh also, we couldn't get in contact with B---  for like three days and we didn't know why he wouldn't pick up until he texted us and told us that he didn't want to get baptized because he doesn't think the church is right for him anymore. Luckily he did agree to meet with us one more time. We hope we can understand him and get him back on the right path. we think that he just got a little scared about coming to church.

No my package didn't come yet but i'm sure that has to do with the three holidays a week policy they have here in Austria. I think that's why people are catholic. they just like that there are so many holidays based off of catholic belief. oh well. This is how my birthday went down. I woke up and Elder stilger cooked me a traditional english breakfast but our pans are horrible and burn everything. it wasn't very good but i did my best to be polite. Then E. Stilger started to feel really sick so he took some pills and was out cold for the rest of the day. I spent my time organizing our area book and then i read the entire "Our search for happiness" by elder ballard. That's a pretty good book. But it wasn't really the ideal missionary birthday spent by dooring and speaking to people. It still wasn't that bad.

In the last two weeks i ave succesfully eaten my body weight in schnitzel and nutella. yet i am still at a solid 60 kilos. I do a really good early morning workout every day so i am really healthy and am pretty in shape. Plus all the walking helps. But man the food here is good. WE got invited to lunch yesterday by the familie kroiß. there is Herr Kroiß and schwester Kroiß. They are really funny. Herr kroiß is like 40 years older than Schwester kroiß. But he is such a boss. like two weeks ago he tore both off his achilles tendons (he is like 74 years old) but he came to church like four day later.... Walking. He lived in america for a while as a kid just working and building. apparantley they called him the Austrian bear because he was so strong and he worked so hard. He also has a stamp collection that fills a goodsized room that cost about one and a half million Euros. This is a guy you want to talk to because his stories are just unreal.

Well that's pretty much how my week went. not much progress was made and we got shot down by a couple of our ward members who think they have done all they need to do so they shouldn't share the gospel with their friends. But oh well. We'll keep working hard and doing all that we can. It looks like a ton of fun stuff has been happening in the grove! I wish i could be there sometimes grillin up a steak and watching movies with you all but we can do that later. Maybe when ben has left we can do all the fun stuff and make him miss out on everything.

Well have a good week and keep doing cool stuff. that gate looks awesome.

Love,
Elder Eldredge


P.S. Ben you will get no help from me about girls until you consistently read my letters.