Hello Elder Anderson

Hey!

We have had a great week! I am with Elder Anderson now. He is really funny and the last few days have been great. We are really excited for the next transfer! We are focusing on finding new investigators this transfer. We have a goal to find 25 as a companionship. Our district goal is 65, and I promised my district that if they reach this goal they can throw pie at my face. They are really excited. We have been having a good amount of success as well. We started meeting with a guy named S-----. It is interesting teaching him because he is just learning german and he can't really speak english. But he likes to come to the church to read the book of Mormon (He can't read it at home because his roommates are muslim). We also met a woman yesterday. She said that she didn't have much time so we just asked if we could give her a book, and she agreed to quickly hand it to her. When we gave it to her she got really excited and bought us ice cream and we talked for a while. Her name is B-------. So things are going well here now. We have a lot of fun planned this week. 

In my studies I have been trying really hard to write down more impressions that come to me while I read and it really makes a big difference. Now I always remember what I studied and I feel more confident teaching and talking about what I read there. Plus I remember the scriptures places a lot easier. It is pretty cool. 

It sounds like a lot of fun at home, which doesn't surprise me with strawberry days and everything. Also, nobody ever told me that Matt and Natalie were getting married but that is awesome! 

On monday, Elder Buckley and I went and saw two castles! I will send some pictures. They were really cool to see. We got to climb all over one of them. It was like a big adventure. The first one was really cool though because it was in better shape. It felt like the middle ages at a few points. I really love this place. 

This thursday I will get to watch the USA- DEUTSCHLAND game with some of our members. I am pretty excited. Plus we seem to be doing pretty well. 

I hope that you all have a great week! Thanks for writing! I love you all!

Elder Eldredge

Goodbye President Miles

Hey!

It sounds like a party all the time lately! It's nice to hear from more of you this week! I knew it would be a girl. How long has it been since we got one of those? eleven years almost? 

I am getting a new companion named Elder Anderson. He is from sun tan, I mean, san tan Arizona. I wonder if he is related to the andersons in our ward. I am really excited to meet him this thursday. Elder Buckley is going to Munich to work in an english speaking ward. He is really excited. It is the same ward that Elder Sardoni started out in. I am really excited to still be district leader for the next transfer. Our district is really excited to work hard seeing as two of the sisters in our district will go home after this next transfer. We are going to eat schnitzel after our district meeting tomorrow at a place called herbs. They know the missionaries there. 

We had a really good/sad zone conference this last thursday. It was sad because it was the last time that we will see the Miles' before they leave. We all got to take photos with them and they gave us each a DVD with tons of photos of the mission since 2012. We are excited to meet President Kohler and his family in a few weeks. We will have a special double zone conference in salzburg next month where we will meet him and his family. He is bringing two kids with him. 

Yesterday we had ward conference. It was awesome to see our group of 25 members jump up to about 50. Sadly most of them were from the stake, but it was still good because a lot of less active members came with there active families. The whole ward conference had the theme "Patience." It was a really good topic for me because I would really like to see this area make a lot of immediate progress but we just need to be patient a little bit until it is the right time. 

Luckily we don't have to wear our jackets all the time. In fact, I really only wear it to church and to zone meetings. It is really nice that it isn't required because I might have died from the heat last week if I needed to wear my jacket.

We are having a better time finding people lately. Almost all of them are old women for some reason but they need the gospel too. 

Well I hope that you all have a great week! I will send some photos this week. Today we are going to see two different castles so there should be some more good photos later. 

Love,

Elder Eldredge

A Fireside and a Castle

Hey everybody! 

This week was really great. The weather has been crazy hot though. School just ended over here and since the sun is out, everybody is out. We had a really great fireside in Vienna on Friday. Sister Wixom, Sister Reeves, and Elder Kearon (from the seventies) were there. They invited the whole stake but the didn't rent out a center for it so we just had it in one of the churches in Vienna. There wasn't quite enough space for everybody there so we were all packed in, which really didn't help with the heat. But the meeting was good and Elder Kearon was really funny. The sad thing is that they can only say one sentence at a time because they have a translator right next to them, so they can't cover as many topics. 

We had something really cool happen yesterday. We were going to our mission leaders home for lunch after church, and he decided that he wanted to see this castle up on the hill that we see on our way to his house. So we drove up to it and there were lots of people up at the castle dressed up like knights and princesses. They were this club that likes to pretend they are in the dark ages and have battles up at this castle every once in a while. We could see the whole castle because they had it rented out but it was still cool to see all of their stuff. It felt like we time traveled. Hopefully we will visit a different castle next Monday. 

This week, on Friday, we will find out about next transfer. I will almost surely get a new companion. President Miles is going home in about two weeks or so. We will have a zone conference on Thursday and that will be the last time we see them. It is sad but I am excited to see what President Kohler will be like. 

I am going to guess that Haley's baby is a girl. We need more of those in our family. I remember being sad about being outnumbered by girls, but we really took the lead now. 

For my birthday I bought this really cool old camera from the late 50's. It is in perfect shape like it was never used. Now I just need film. The camera costed the exact amount of money that I had so I just look at it without being about to use it. I will send a photo of it if the computer cooperates. 

Not to much else happened this week. I started getting a bit sun burnt, but I seem to be doing ok for now. We have a lot of eating appointments and meetings this week so it should be really fun. I hope that you all have a great week! And congrats to Ben for getting that award! I love you all!

Elder Eldredge 

Happy Birthday!!

Hey! 

I finally made the big stage! It is a little bit strange that everybody will see my face when they got on the site for the church. I already have like 5 emails asking me if it is really me. It's pretty cool though. I got a text from our mission office telling me that I was famous. Pres. and Sister Miles called to sing happy birthday to me and told me that I was famous. Apparently they talked about it all day. It was a pretty good gift from the church. 

You all sound pretty happy! Way to go Ben! Is it hard to catch with a golden glove? We had a pretty great week too. We did a lot of dooring this week because it kept raining and nobody on the street wanted to talk to us. I forgot how crazy dooring can be sometimes. You meet some weird people. We saw a house that was so big it could have held 50 people easily. We had at least 5 people let their dogs out on us. Luckily, everybody here just has those tiny dogs so all they can do to us is annoy us. But it worked. 

We had a really great district meeting on tuesday. It was the last time for

Elder and Sister Strong, so the sisters wrote new words to "Edelweiss" and we made paper flowers with our faces taped onto them. It was a lot of fun and really sad to see them go. But the Parkers are really great as well. They were a bit tired because of the jet-lag but they are doing better now.

My birthday was pretty cool. As a mission we were fasting that people would come to church, and two people came! One was a women that we met on the street and she didn't want us to come by so we just invited her to church and she took a card. It was cool because she seems to be really insecure, but the meeting helped her. Our members were all really awesome as well. They all spent the week in the temple so they came back really energized and happy, and they all bore amazing testimonies. The woman that came said that she will come again in two weeks. The other woman is named A-------. We found her on last Monday and committed her to coming and she came! She liked church too but she couldn't understand all of it because she is from Brazil. But she said she will come next week. For the rest of the day we did dooring and got attacked by the kids in our neighborhood. They think that we are from England and try to steal all of our cards. Elder buckley made pancakes with eggs, bacon, and hash-browns for dinner. It was pretty good. The sisters also sang happy birthday to me when I tried calling them to collect numbers too. It was a great birthday. 

Not too much has been happening other than that. It keeps raining on and off so we are working hard to not get sick. So far so good. Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I hope that you all have another great week! I love you all!

Elder Eldredge