"Do or Die"

Hello!

Well this last week was pretty good. I can't really remember it though. Everything is going by way too fast and every time i sit down to write emails i forget everything that i did. Oh, i mentioned that we are staying in Haag to do our Emails now but that requires us to ride bikes all the way up a mountain. Well, last week after we finished Emails we left our church and the sky was pretty gray and it was just starting to rain (we were in our church clothes). At the end of our journey to the nearest train station we stepped onto our train completely soaked. It was pretty fun though. It's starting to look like we might have that same experience again today.

The rest of the week we spent visiting members and teaching lessons and stuff like that. We are doing a good job at finding new investigators but most of them just don't want to pray about the book of Mormon and that has been a bit of a pain because not many of them are really progressing. We still haven't heard from B------ for a long time. He must be going through a hard time and just needs to figure his stuff out before he is ready to keep progressing.

The guy who invited us over to bible bash last week had agreed to have a lesson with us on sunday and we were just going to have a "do or die" sort of lesson. About half an hour before we were going to meet he called us and wanted to show us his free christ building. For some reason we agreed. We showed up to his place and he brought us to the building, which was actually pretty nice and the two or three people we talked to were quite nice, but we sat down in a room with him and two of his friends who knew the bible a lot better than he did. It was pretty much the same story as last week. They kept reading scripture at us that they didn't really understand and calling it doctrine. One of the two new guys brought up a few points that we had already settled in our first meeting and m----- was quick to make sure that we couldn't answer because he didn't want to be proved wrong twice. What was cool about this whole thing is that S----- was sitting next to me studying the book of mormon the whole time. I don't think that the others noticed because it was in persian but it was just a funny situation. One of the guys was actually pretty nice and had some potential so we gave him a book of mormon and he said he would read.

We had a really awesome eating appointment after church yesterday. We went to the zillners, and they love Elvis alot. For the entire appointment Bro. zillner kept switching the songs to make sure we listened to his favorites and we even played a short game of skip-bo. Bro. zillner also collects baseball caps and he has a room filled with them. He always shows up to church wearing a different cap.

oh ya i will find out this friday what is happening next transfer. That is pretty exciting!

Sounds like everyone had a pretty good week at home. How did grayson break his arm? I can't believe it's already time for mexico meetings again. It doesn't feel like those should already be happening. Well thanks for writing and keeping me up-to-date. I really miss you all and i hope you have a good week.

Love,

Elder Eldredge

P.S. It isn't the Mr. Mac suit pants that are wearing down, they are just some that i got at ross for 10 buck or something. I can probably still wear them for a bit luckily.

P.P.S. I don't really know what i would put in the ward letter. you can just pick something for me i guess.

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

Two trips to Salzburg

Hello family!

Since when were Gordon and camille getting married (not to eachother)! That is just weird to me. About the facebook requests, amber i know because she lives near ried and we meet with her, but the spanish guy is definately a stranger.

Bear lake sounded fun! I wish i could have been there getting sunburned and everything. Luckily here the wheather has been cooling down quite a bit so it's pretty confortable and we're hoping that it will stay that way.

This week was really crazy! We had zone training in salzburg (a two hour train ride each way) on tuesday and then i had to travel back to salzburg to do an exchange with the zone leaders and then travel home again the next day. So i personally didn't get to work in my own area this week until thursday afternoon. But it was really fun. While i was in salzburg we helped get a new apartment ready for some sisters who will go to salzburg next transfer so i spent a while in Ikea looking for stuff they will need and also picking up their kitchen order. We went there with the senior couple who are actually in our home stake. They are the storrers and they are in the 4th ward. But they have been on continuous missions since 2006. But they will be home soon and they said they would say hello to you.

The work in Haag has been amazing this week! on saturday E. Stilger and I door this small village outside of Ried and we started to expect that the people would say yes to us because it just kept happening. We found a few people who could possible be baptized in a month. But we will see what happens when we go back to them tonight. Other than that we did a lot of organizing in our area book because we started to find a ton of old records that had been ignored and needed to be sorted or contacted, so we are expecting a lot to happen in the next few weeks from this area. 

B----- is still doing great. We think. We didn't actually end up being able to reach him this week because he is so busy trying to get his life straightend out. We have helped him alot but at this point he needs to just be on his own for a little while and pray alot. Which he has been doing so he is ok. 

Well other than that not much has been going on around here. Just working hard and all that jazz. Today we are playing mini golf as a district so that will be fun. Thanks for writing! Love you all.

Elder Eldredge

Back to the Heat

Hello!

It has been a pretty good week here in austria! but it has been crazy hot! Ties may look good but they make you twice as hot as everybody else. Because of the heat nobody outside likes us, Plus everybody is taking their 3 week vacations right now so nobobdy is home. But we have done a lot of really good area book work and we set up a few appointments with less actives in our ward, one of which sounds like he really wants to come back to church but just has some questions to be straightened out before he does. He invited us to all you can eat chinese this friday so we hope that will be good. It can't go that bad because there will be chinese food.

Parker apparently tried to send a bunch of pics
but this is the only one we got.

B----- is making a lot of progress. We gave him a blessing to help him with his stress because he has a lot going on right now and he loved it. He has also been doing a really good job of keeping his apartment clean which is really hard for him because of his disabilities. He still hasn't figured out a date quite yet. He really wants his family to be there along with some of his friends so he is trying to figure out how he will do that.

We met with g---- again this friday. It was...... ok. She was really aggressive and thought that we are sexist because there are no women bishops and she wouldn't listen to us at all really. Her concern comes from problems that she has with her overpowering boyfriend so she is sensitive when it comes to womens rights. We also think that one of her problems is that she felt really stongly that the church is true but it would be really hard for her to change her life so she tried to seek out problems in the church to make it seem less true. But that just made her more angry when we helped her understand that the church is in no way sexist so she built a bit of a wall between us. It will probably just take some time before she is willing to listen with good intent again.

We met with a guy named T------  He is probably the laziest speaker ever. he barely even opens his mouth to speak and just mumbles so it was somewhat tough to understand him. But we gave him a book of mormon and he said that he would read it through and he seems sincere and open so we think he will be a good investigator.

Everything else is going really well. We have been having a lot of fun and we are working really hard. It looks like the reunion was really fun and i'm sure that bear lake is awesome! It was nice hearing about stuff! talk to you all next week!

Love you all!

elder Eldredge