Holiday Season

Hello!

New Orleans sounds fun! Really dirty... but fun. Hey mom sorry you almost got lung cancer from the smokers. Now you kind of know what it is like living in Austria. We have to walk through a tunnel of smoke to get in and out of our apartment. We call it Bejing.

Well things went pretty well this week. We had a way cool experience on thursday or so. We were biking home from this small town in the middle of nowhere, where apparantly the people pick their favorite house number instead of trying to make any form of a system, and we decided to stop and door these three last apartment buildings. When we stopped and put our bikes on a rack, this car pulled up to us and this 20 year old kid and his friend (who doesn't speak german) start talking to us. He happened to be someone that some other missionaries talked to on one of our last finding days and he really wanted to talk about the book of mormon with us. He said he had to drive his friend back to his house and then we could meet in Ried (he happened to live pretty close to us). So we hurried home and showered and changed because we smelled like trash and went to his house. When we got there the boys sister let us in and got us some water and we waited for the boy to be finished smoking on the porch. Then the friend who doesn't speak german came in (he speaks good enough english) and we talked with him for a minute or two before his friend was done smoking. So we sat around the table and said a prayer and then the boys mother came in with her bible so we were like, "Oh cool! more people who want to know!" But it turns out that they had no intent in believing us for a second until we could show them from the bible that the book of mormon was true and they really didn't want to pray about it. The mother knew the bible like few people i have met but she surely didn't understand it. She got really mad once when we explained how it is impossible for christ to actually live inside her. They had also seen some Anti-Mormon stuff on youtube which we shot down pretty quick but they were still set on trying to prove us wrong. They of course never came close to that and we just kept trying to leave. After a while we were getting really tired of it and we had been there for about an hour and twenty minutes because we just couldn't leave, the spirit was definately not there anymore, and then, the guy who doesn't speak german, who had been sitting silently for the whole time, got our attention and said that he would love a book of mormon (he had been looking through the pictures as we talked with the others) and asked if we had one in persian. The moment he started to speak i knew that was the reason why we were there, and we both felt the spirit really strong.

So the next day we traveled to a small town called reichersberg where S---- (the guy from the night before) to bring him a book. S---- had so many great questions and wants to know really bad if the book of mormon was true. He kept saying "Actually that would make sense" and "Why wouldn't God allow there to be more scriptures? This book makes sense." He is so humble too. He is from Afghanistan but he had to leave because he believes in Christ, and he has been in three really bad fights because Muslims here in Austria would attack him. But we are really excited for him. It was really amazing seeing the way that the Lord worked with us in order to be put in his path. Oh by the way, Reichersberg has a beautiful abbey in the town. It's very catholic but really cool anyway.

But that was kindof the highlight of my week. Haag is doing really well. We are actually in haag right now (in the church) to do emails. It was an adventure riding our bikes from the nearest train station. The hills are so big and it was starting to rain but it was way fun and super pretty. We got to ride through a bunch of forests and stuff like that. Elder Stilger wasn't as impressed as me but it's way cool here.

One thing that has been rough for us is that it is holiday season and everybody is gone on vacation. and when people here are gone it's for like three weeks. So it has been hard to meet with people because they have all been gone or don't want to be disturbed but they seem to be coming back now and more people are starting to answer there doors again.

It sounds like everything at home is going pretty well. It's weird to me that ben is working but i guess that only makes sense. And at least it is at a good place. Dad- I can check my balance at any ATM at whenever so there isn't really a need to E-mail the mission office. But thanks for helping me out. My pants are starting to turn purple at the knees because they are getting so worn there.

Well have a good week and i will write next week! Love you all.

Elder Eldredge