Monday, July 29, 2013

Dänglisch

hello family!
why are you all moving? I don't know if i will be able to find my way around when i come home. But there is a lot of time before that day comes. And since when is nicole old enough to move out! I could have sworn she was like 16 when I left.
Since when is it socially acceptable to eat other peoples chinese food? I would have eaten the fried rice before going for the dumplings if i was them.
Well we had a pretty ok week here. We tried really hard and did the best we could but pretty much nothing we could see came out of our work. We talked to one guy who was really excited about meeting us and he seemed golden but apparantley he just thinks its fun to lie. So we traveled for like to an hour to this place and then went back because his place doesn't exist. But that is ok. B----- right now has been praying about when he would like to be baptized. He would like his day to be in the next month or two so we are really excited for him. He also came to our ward BBQ and he loved it to death. Some of our members didn't really talk to him at all but the ones who did were really awesome to him.
Speaking of our ward party, we were playing volleyball when somebody hit the ball over this hedge. I decided that i would jump over the hedge and get it. Well... I got over the edge of the bush but it turns out (I figured this part out while in the air) that the bush is wider than it is tall. so i of course caught my feet on the top of the hedge and fell onto the cement. But don't worry. I have fallen down so many times due to me thinking i am cooler than i really am so i took the hit like a man. I later realized that my legs were really cut up as well as my right hand. But it's ok because trying to jump back over was onto grass so it didn't hurt as much the second time.
There is a resteraunt here that knows Elder Stilger and I because we went there and ate enough schnitzel for like 6 people.We asked for a jause plate (lots of bread and cheese and meats) for two but they made us get it for three people so that they didn't have to make food for us twice again. They like us there.

In the pictures you would have seen the missionaries names are: Sisters, hammock, lynn, jaynes, and schönherr. Elders, stapleton, naegle, stilger, and me. there are also the weidmans (from provo) who are the senior missionaries. But now the other elders are gone and there are two new ones, Elder Svoboda and Böttcher. So now i am the only american among the elders in our district. It is really cool and we speak a lot more german now. Some times i imagine how confusing it would be for someone who is jsut visiting from america to be in some of our meetings. german and english are just interchangeable so you never know which one comes out. sometimes i get into conversations where i am speaking german and the other person is speaking english. It would just be strange to see on like your first day. We actually really like to speak english and german together which is call "Dänglisch." It's basically when you speak english and german interchangeably in one sentence.

Well that is what has been happening around here. It has been a fun and difficult week but the work here is always worth it.

Love you all!

Elder Eldredge


P.S. do you know the name of the missionaryin spain because i have a few friends there.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Schnitzel and Schnitzel

hello again!

That sounds like you have all been having a good time this week! I got really jealous when i read about the firehole! for some reason i have actually really wanted to swim lately. Those pictures look really great too! We will have to go there when i get home.

This week has been a bit hectic for us but it was also very rewarding. We have gotten back into contact with b----- and we have been helping him clean his apartment still. We go by about three times a week and just see how he is doing. We haven't set a baptismal date with him yet but we are pretty much certain that it will be in the next six weeks. We got transfer calls last friday, and Elder Stilger and I are staying together for at least six more weeks. But the Linz Elders are both leaving us. We knew Elder Stapleton would leave because he is going home but we didn't guess
that Elder Naegle would also go. Linz is getting white washed, meaning that they get brand new missionaries. It was a big surprise but the elder that is coming is amazing and he will be training a new elder. All of the sisters in our district are staying as well.

On saturday we biked out to siegfrieds again and did some service. On the way back we both got a huge craving for schnitzel, so we stopped at every restaraunt that we could fin but none of them were open except for one right by our appartment. We had so much schnitzel it was amazing. The owner of the restaraunt was really surprised when we asked for more. He then asked us who we were because nobody eats that much, so we were like "we're missionaries!" He liked us. We also had more schnitzel the next day after church so it was a pretty good week.

We have been teaching this woman named g-----, and she is really cool. at first she didn't want to make any progress or change at all but now she is coming to church and she is really opened up to us. One of the women in our ward has been really great to her and they have become really good friends so we don't even have to do much because our member missionary keeps teaching her for us. It's been a really great testimony to what was spoken about in the last broadcast. Members have the most influence on people sometimes because they're not always dressed in suits and stuff. Plus missionaries come and go but the ward belongs to the people living in it. We have really found that if we spend most of our time getting the members pumped and excited and help them accomplish their own missionary goals the work really increases in speed.

Well that is kindof my week in a bundle. I am glad you have all been having fun and stuff. German is coming really well. I'm pretty comfortable and i am getting better every day. Tell Dylan and Collin thanks for fasting for me. That is really really nice of them. I really appreciate it!

Love you!
Elder Eldredge


Ben

Nice job hitting all those home runs and showing Lone peak what's up! And don't worry, I've done much worse than just forgeting to put a card back in the camera. It is really awesome that you will be getting your blessing soon! It will be one of your most prized possesions. keep it safe and sacred, and read it often. And also remember that whatever is promised you will be given to you through your hard work and faith.

Speaking of your mission, you will probably have your calling before I come home but i will be there for your high school graduation. Who knows how long we will actually see eachother before you leave. It really cool that you have a really good relationship with lisel. keep me up to date on things with you.

Love,

Parker

Monday, July 15, 2013

Hallstatt

Hello!
Image courtesy of onebigphoto.com
well i had a pretty crazy week. On monday we went to a place called hallstatt. You should probably try to plan a trip there one day because it is crazy beautiful. It is just a small little villiage on the side of a lake and the alps just shoot straight up all around you. At one point there was a swan that swam right by us as we were sitting on a dock. We did i small hike around part of the lake too. It would have only taken us like 45 minutes but we were with old people so it took like three hours. luckily we didn't have to hike back because we got to take a ferrie across the lake. It was a really nice relaxing P-day.
For the rest of the week we just worked like crazy. We went by on everybody we knew and talked to as many people as possible. B------  had been having problems with the police and some other stuff that he shouldn't have had to go through but some people just weren't nice to him and treated him badly. But we helped him clean his apartment, which was a wreck because he can't clean it himself because he doesn't have legs, and we helped him do some laundry an get his place back into order so that he can have some peace in his own home. He is really ready to be baptized and he knows it. We don't have a date yet because he needs to sort out some other stuff right now before he can be ready, but he keeps talking about how he is so happy that he found the true church and he just wants to meet all of the members and he is dying to go to the temple! We gave him a magazine about temples and he just loves it to death.
 
We also met with a  woman named G-----. We have been meeting with her since my first week and she jsut hasn't really wanted to progress or keep her commitments or anything so we were about to move on, but we wanted to make sure that we had done all we could before dropping her. We had a lesson about faith and she said that she had noticed that we had  strong connection with our heavenly father and she wanted that. I told her that we were there because we knew that she could reach the point were she also had that connection with Heavenly Father. She then committed herself to coming to church, reading in the book of mormon, and praying every morning and night. She doesn't speak german that much yet but she absolutely loved church and everybody who spoke english swarmed her and made her feel very welcome. It was really cool.
Yesterday after church we went to the family Grünauers for lunch. Brother Grünauer is our ward mission leader. We had home made pizza and his kids are really funny. They are the family that let us use their skype on mothers day.
On saturday we had a finding day in wels and the sisters there asked Elder Stilger and I to go by on some names. We walked for like 45 minutes to get to the place where these people live and when we got there it was just this really scary place with afghanistan painted on the walls and the buildings seemed almost vacant. We were just waiting for when someone would kidnap us or something. Needless to say the names weren't there so we walked back or 45 minutes. Both times that we walked on the street we passes absolutely nobody. So we didn't really feel like we did that much but now the sisters don't need to walk to afghanistan and back.
I have been trying to find a way to send pictures but the computers won't allow me to in the amount of time that i have so i guess some time i will send my cards in a package or something.
Thanks for writing and sending those pictures. It looks like a lot of fun is going on lately.
miss you all!
Love,
Elder Eldredge

Monday, July 8, 2013

A New Haircut and an African Woman

Hello everybody!

I'm writing a bit early today because we are doing some adventurous things with some members for pday today. In fact i am lucky that i got your email in time. It sounds like you all had a really great relaxing week. On the fourth of july i just had this desire to catch things on fire and watch it explode. but don't worry i controlled myself and nobody was harmed. It is really cool that deacon got blessed this week because there was a baby blessing at the same time in my ward! pretty cool right? I bore my testimony as well. because of the baby blessing there was a pretty big party after church for all the family members and they invited us missionaries to come along. It was really awesome and i ate tons of delicious food and a seven year old explained to me every single one of his hobbies. In case you are wondering that took a while. I had a pretty fun week and it was full of success. We found tons of people who want us to come back or we have appointments with so we are really praying that we will start another teaching phase because we have gone without teaching for a few weeks now.

 One cool experience that i had was while i was working in linz on an exchange. This african woman called us over to her because she wanted to tell us to repent and stop what we were doing because we believed in the book of mormon and she said the bible is enough. She was quite nice but very passionate. We kept trying to get a word in but she would interrupt often and not really let us get our point through. At one point i was getting really upset because she was just talking about nonsense for like 20 minutes and i wanted to just walk away. But i felt i should ask her about the spirit because she had mentioned it once before. I then asked her how she knew that the bible was from God and she of course said that the spirit told her. I then explained that we had had the same experience with the book of mormon. She then began to be more open and she would ask us questions about the church, and that was when she started to realize that the church was just what she might have been looking for so she is coming to church soon and she took a book of mormon. It was a pretty good chance that i had to bear my testimony and i watched it changed the spirit of the conversation.

I have been reading alot from Asterix and Obelix lately and it has really improved my ability to read and write, plus now i am more comfortable in the language. Plus they are really really funny. It has been a fun week with a lot of interested people and a fun game of volleyball. This transfer will end in two weeks and Elder Stilger really thinks that he will be leaving and i will stay in haag. I don't really have much of an idea as to what will happen but it could be really interesting. There is still not much info on what we will be doing with using the internet to find people and stay in contact with our investigators but maybe we will hear soon. 

Thanks for writing!  I will talk to you next week.

Love you all!


 Elder Eldredge

Monday, July 1, 2013

Tea, Jam and Friendly Folks

Hello again Hello again, This last week went by like lightning and i don't even feel like i have left this computer since i last wrote you but apparantley alot has happend. I promise that i write in my journal everyday but everytime i sit down to write i forget everything. Well we did a lot of contacting this week. We knocked on a bunch of doors and talked to a lot of people. For some reason they were all very friendly and they all loved us whether they had interest or not. We actually taught four lessons in not very long by just knocking on doors. We don't really just talk to people on the street because in our area there aren't that many people so you can walk around for two hours and talk to three people, and that's not very effective. It's always interesting working in Linz because you can just talk to people anywhere, but i'm not the best at it in linz because the people here are a lot less patient than the people in Haag. I'm getting better though. On friday night we traveled to Wels to help some of the sisters in our district who were holding a missionary night for the youth in our ward. It was really cool and i go to to tell them all why i was on a mission and a little bit about what it is like being a missionary. Then we all wrote our testimonies in books of Mormon so that we could give them out. That was pretty cool. One day we had breakfast at a members house before we had studies. The members name is Günter and he loves the missionaries to death because he was baptized last june (he was 72 years old!) But he really likes me for some reason so when we are at church he just drags me around and makes me sit by him. He is just a really loving, super nice guy. He is also a really good ward missionary. But anyway, back to the breakfast, we ate a ton of bread with cheese and meats and some mormon tee. But the highlight was his wifes jam. I ate the best jam ever in existence. It was homemade and super delicious. I got a haircut last night, well it was more like Elder stilger mowed my head with a buzzer so now my hair is super duper short. But it looks pretty good so it's ok. I have been reading alot of "Asterix and Obelix" lately and it has actually made my german a lot better plus it's really funny. for some reason the writers really don't like romans very much. Well anyway that is alot of what my week consisted of. It sounds like there is a lot going on at home. Plus i really wish i could have some of the Geno's East pizza right now. I'm hungry. Tell ben good job for hitting a home run! Love you all! Elder Eldredge