Give and Elder an apron....

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty great! We had another zone meeting in Vienna and I got to go on exchange in Vienna so I spent a lot of time in the big city! It was really fun. The elders in Vienna in our district live right across the street from their church that has a big field by it so we played frisbee for morning exercise. We also found a really cool chinese guy picking berries in a public park. He took a book which was cool because I haven't given out too many chinese books on my mission. He was pretty excited about it. 

The weather was fighting against us quite a bit this week. It was really really really hot! We are pretty gross and smelly by the end of the day. But luckily it started to storm really bad last night so today is nice and cloudy with a nice wind. One of the greatest things about st. Pölten is that there is usually a breeze all the time. 

This friday we get transfer calls! I can't believe that it is already coming around. I have also been here for three transfers already so it is possible that I get transferred next week. It will be interesting to see what Pres. Kohler does for his first transfers. 

I got an apron in the mail! Thanks for all of the cool Scriptures! I made sure to go and cook something right away. I took a picture too. 

We should have a great week coming up. We are excited to see what happens. I hope that you all have a great week and that you are all safe in your different parts of the world! I love you all!

Elder Eldredge

Pig Legs and a New President

Hey Everyone!

This week was awesome! We had a lot of fun. Sadly though, Elder Anderson got sick on monday and was out for the rest of the day. It was good though because then we couldn't do what we wanted to do and I was basically forced to clean our apartment as he slept. But on tuesday we met Pres. Kohler and his family! They are really really cool. He is really young and so I feel like I will have an easy time connecting with him. He and his family are from Provo and he worked in the MTC. It was also fun to go all the way to Salzburg with the missionaries. We got to just talk and make jokes in the train for a few hours both ways. 

On Saturday our ward had a BBQ for all of the members and their families and friends. It was a really fun day because we left at 9 in the morning to go help with the grilling. We had two huge pig legs on a stick that took a few hours to cook. Once everybody came there were lots of games and eating. I ate way too much food so I couldn't move that easily. It hurt really bad but the food was too good! Some of our members even brought there violins and everybody learned how to square dance. We couldn't dance but it was fun to watch everybody else. They had never seen such a thing. We were there pretty much all day and we made friends with a lot of non-members. It was awesome!

This next week should be really fun. We get to work in gardens and people have invited us over for dinner. We are pretty happy campers. I'm glad to see that everybody else is doing well! I love you all!

Elder Eldredge

Summer Vacation

Hey everybody! 

Wow it sounds like another crazy week at the Eldredge home. We had a fun week over here. It is that time of year again when all europeans go on vacation for like three of four weeks so most of the people we have talked to weren't from here or were having vacation at home and didn't want to be bothered. But we still had fun. 

The fourth of July was hot just like always, but it lacked explosions and watermelon. We did run into an american girl at the train station in McDonalds so we just had our own little "Merica" moment right there. 

Elder Ringger is actually in our zone! I met him on his first day when I was picking elder Anderson up. He seems like a real cool guy. He is in the same apartment as the other elders in our district so I will see him when I am on exchange there next week. Being a district leader is still way awesome. Like I have said a billion times our district is amazing. Everybody is working really hard.

Tomorrow morning we will be taking a train to salzburg to meet our new mission president and his family! I am really excited to meet him, plus all of the missionaries in austria will be there and I will see some friends that I haven't seen for a while. 

Our invesetigators are doing well but like I said it is vacation time so it is really hard to meet anybody lately. But we are still excited for them. 

Next sunday Elder Anderson and I will be singing in church, giving talks, and very possibly be giving the class in priesthood. It could be a very busy day. One of the women in our ward really likes church music so our goal is to make her cry. 

We are doing well and everything is great. I can't really believe how long I have been in St. Pölten already. It is pretty crazy how time flies. 

I hope you all have another great week! I love all of you!

Elder Eldredge

Fußball

Hey!

This week was awesome! The weather was pretty nice and we were able to have some success on the streets. We did get to watch the USA-Germany game! It was really fun because I was on exchange with the zone leaders and the missionary I was with came out with me. We had a lot of fun and the family we were with gave us lots of food and soda. 

We met again with B----- and she actually read in the Book of Mormon and checked out the church's website. She is really interested. She just wants to talk to her friends about us before we start the lessons. It was cool though because she brought up the Book of Mormon at the beginning and told us the she really liked the first few chapters of Mosiah were King Benjamin speaks to his people. She even remembered his name! She had a lot of questions and she said that she really likes everything we teach. Hopefully her friends won't be negative about it. 

Our friend S----- is doing well. We can't really teach him  until we get some pamphlets in persian so we are just reading the Book of Mormon with him. He sadly couldn't make it to church but we will see what happened this week.

We have been focusing on the Book of Mormon for the last few weeks in our streeting efforts and it is working great! We have been able to give out a really good amount of books. Pretty soon we are going to need to order more!

Well, things are going well. We are having a good time and I love being out here. I am really learning a lot from my studies and I really feel like I have become a much better person in the last few weeks. It is amazing how much spiritual strength comes from regularly studying the scriptures with a desire to understand what they are teaching. 

I hope all is well with everybody at home. Thanks for keeping me updated. I love you all!

Elder Eldredge

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