10 Investigators, and Running out of Books of Mormon

This week has seemed to have taken an eternity, but so many amazing things have happened! (Parental Note: This seemed like a very long week for us as well.  Not sure why this week was so long, but it feels like forever since we heard from Ryan. Funny that we both felt that way.)  We have found 3 new investigators this week, which brings our total number of Investigators to 10! ( 3 are former that we were able to meet with again). 1 of which we found by going to door to door, he let us right in and we taught the first lesson. He is very determined to find the truth, he has been meeting with the Jehovas Witnesses once a week, is learning Arabisch, to try and study the Koran, and seems fairly enthusiastic about reading the Book of Mormon. I have high hopes for him. 


The 2nd is Thomas Bäck, who we found in Feldkirch ( I mentioned that last week). We taught him the first discussion and it went very well! We will meet with him again this upcoming Wednesday. The third is someone who we met on our finding day on Thursday he was going into a business meeting of some sort, but he had a little bit of time to talk to us, and invited us to stop by and visit him. Which we did on Saturday. Unfortunately our timing wasn't very good and we only got to talk with him for 20 minutes, but he took the Book of Mormon, and was very excited to read it. He wants to try and read it in a Month. He invited us back this Friday to discuss a little bit more about the Book, but then wants to read the whole thing, then invite us over to talk with him about it, and invite his pastor over as well... We will see how that goes... He is Catholic, but is a bit (discouraged?, confused?), I don't know how to quite describe it, about the history of the Catholic Church (i.e. the Crusades and Inquisition).  He doesn't agree that the Catholic Church has the Authority of God, because of those things, which is why he is open to the Book of Mormon/ our Church. I am interested to see what will happen with him.

Tomorrow is Zone Conference in Winterthur, it will be interesting because Elder Esplin and I will each need to take a suitcase there, to try and transport all of our supplies back. We were very ill-equipped for this transfer, we had only 20 Copies of the Book of Mormon in German, 4 in Turkisch, hardly any pass along cards, Very few other Book of Mormons in other languages... Its amazing we been able to do what we have done. Although, haha, we ran out of Book of Mormons about 2 weeks ago, so Zone Leaders brought us 8, but those where gone in a few days, so We borrowed 5 from Ravensburg. But then we gave those out... Well lucky for us, when giving a Church tour to Thomas, we found a Box of copies of the Book of Mormon, which the Bishop said that we could use. so we took 7, and now those are gone... Lucky we get our restock tomorrow. We ordered 40, but Elder Esplin thinks he may have previously ordered an additional 40, which we are both praying for, because we just gave out 20 Book of Mormons in a little less then 2 weeks... there are 6 weeks in a transfer... But its paying off! We are finding more people, and making new appointments, we have 4 appointments made out so far with potentials this upcoming week. Possibly 4 new investigators! 

 

We have learned by sad experience that our freezer sometimes has problems shutting completely. And when left that way unnoticed for 24 hours, it can coat the inside with about 1 inch or so of Ice... that was a lovely surprise, let me tell you. so now comes the problem, how on earth to we get rid of all the ice. If I was at home, I would just spray it out, just like we do our full size freezer, but I am not at home, and that's not an option. So what do we do? Well we improvise, Unplug the freezer, Put Hot water in a water bottle, have one Elder spray out the freezer with it , while the other holds a large bowl to catch all the water, praying that there won't be an overflow of water ;-) Well, it took us about 25 minutes or so, and there were times where Elder Esplin was "trigger happy" spraying more water into the freezer than could come out through the little drainage system, resulting in water going everywhere, but by the end, we were able to dry the freezer out, put our food back in, and mop up the floor. :-)  That was quite the adventure. It made for a pretty good laugh, because its a bit of a Red-neck/missionary type of Solution, but it worked! :-)

I got my Visa! I must admit, I am rather impressed with the Austrian Government, It was going to take 6+ weeks for my German Visa to arrive, but My Austrian Visa only took a single week! I am legal in Austria now! Which is a huge relief to be done worrying about Visas for awhile ( now watch me get sent back to Germany and have to start the process all over again...) Now I just need to get a License, and I am good! We were planning on taking care of that today, but today is a holiday, which is rather horrible for us, because everything is closed, including almost all stores ( luckily the Sutterluty on Bahnhof is open, or else we would have some serious problems). So I will have to take care of my license either during the week sometime, or next p-day, depending on how quickly the office wants me to get the process going. 

I have attached three pictures to this e-mail, 2 are of Liechtenstein ( yes one of them is with me in it). (Parental note:  Mom is very happy now to have pictures that include her misisonary!! What a beautiful place!)  The 3rd picture is what I usually do after a long day of being outside :-). Allergies have been absolutely ridiculous! And I have tried 3 different types of Allergy Medicine, none of which seem to be able to help me at all. There is so much more pollen then I am used to, and I don't know what to do. I am still continuing to take some medicine, because anything is better than nothing, but I am afraid that I may have to just wait it out. I don't know, I am going to talk to the Mission nurse today to see if she can help me, I know of a few other Missionaries that are also having a hard time. Maybe someone has found a solution. 

Other than that things are going very well here! We are finding more and more people, and teaching more lessons. A lot of investigators are busy, so it's been hard to meet with some on a regular basis, but hopefully we will still be able to help them progress. 

Friday is Transfer Calls! This transfer is almost over again! Wow. Start of my Fourth Transfer, after this I will have been out here for roughly 6 months. Can it really already have been that long?

I hope all is going well with everyone at home. Congrats to all those Graduating this week!! I can't believe its now been a year since I graduated, its unbelievable how fast the time has gone! 

Thanks for all the support!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen