Focus on the Basics

Hey everyone!

Well we had another great week in St. Pölten. Luckily I didn't get sick like the rest of you. I can't believe that pretty much everybody was sick through the week. So far I haven't been sick on my mission but I am keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way. 

Well last week I had mentioned that we had been having a hard time finding people to teach but now things are getting a lot better. We were at a restart phase when I showed up and now it is starting to pick up pace a little bit. We met with a woman that we found last week named D-----. She is from Russia, and due to a lot of deaths in her family and losing her job at the same time, she fell into some pretty heavy depression and lost her faith. But she has now realized that she really needs her faith in Christ and she is studying in the Book of Mormon. Our only problem with her is that her English is not very good and neither is her German. She sort of speaks both of them at the same time. We understand her pretty well but she doesn't always understand what we are saying completely. We will probably start teaching her German pretty soon. 

We also found a young Austrian family with two children. They were really interested and they want to have a tour of our church building. They also wanted to come to church yesterday but they had somebody visiting them to see their new baby. The father had a lot of questions that were good questions but they weren't going to help him develop faith quite yet. He was asking us a lot of "deep doctrine" questions, and although we could have answered that he hasn't yet developed the faith to believe what we would tell him. I have found it interesting that no matter how much interest a person has about the Gospel, if you don't take the time and focus on the basic principles of the Gospel, you can't make nearly as much spiritual progression. 

Today all of the missionaries in Austria will have a big finding day in Vienna and I get to work with Elder Stilger! I am way excited. He has been working as a zone leader in Salzburg and I have only seen him a few times since he left Haag so I can't wait. We also have a mission tour tomorrow in Vienna, and Elder Dykes from the quorum of the seventy will speak to us. We will be there for almost the whole day. There will also be about 80 missionaries there so it should be a good time.

I am sorry that I have only been able to send a few pictures since I have been here. The computers are just too slow for it to work. Oh ya, this transfer is only five weeks long so we will get transfer calls on this coming saturday. Also, Dad, the address of our church that you found for your old boss is correct. And it does start at 9 as well. 

I hope that you all have a great week and that you are all feeling better now. Congrats to Haley and Andrew for graduating!

Love you all!

Elder Eldredge