Nearly November

Well Yet another week has gone by. A rather difficult week but its behind me now. It is a lot harder to do Missionary work in Wien than it was in Vorarlberg. I have tried a number of times to contact people on the street, and most walk by as though I don't even exist. They glance at the nametag, and keep walking as though I wasn't even there. Some stop, but its a lot harder than it was before. I am in a completely new area, and the things that I learned in Vorarlberg no longer apply. :-( So it will take me awhile before I can really get into it.

Since being here in Wien I have only managed to give one copy of the Book of Mormon out. And that was on Wednesday on (what was supposed to be) an all day blitz of Wien 2. But we had to go to an appointment with Jakirie so we needed to cut it short. That was cool though. We had an awesome district meeting (on Wednesday now) and we then had mini exchanges. It was incredible. I LOVE DISTRICT MEETINGS. No matter how exhausted, depressed or sad I am coming into it, I can't help but come out ready and excited to go back out and try again! :-)

The exchange was also neat. I am very grateful to Elder Stilger, he is brand new in the mission, comes from  England. "The last of the gunea pigs" as he calls himself (He is comes from Great Britain, and missionaries from there leave on there missions at age 18, which until the announcement was unique). Anyway, after mentioning that we would be doing a exchanges for the blitz, before anyone else could say anythign he said  "I call working with Elder Christensen!" I thought that was neat, and it really helped boost me even more. We only worked together for a couple of hours, but we gave out a Book of Mormon, and had a lengthy conversation with someone on a park bench about the purpose of life. Sadly they couldn't believe what we said, and turned down all offers to hear more, but it was a good effort. :-)

So I went on a mini exchange on Wednesday, with Elder Stilger finding, then on Thursday, went on one with Elder Johnson. That's an interesting story. So we have two investigators who live in our area, Dawn and Gregor. Dawn is American, Gregor is from Hamburg, but speaks fluent English. So we teach them in English and they attend the international ward here. But here is the thing, because we teach them in English, they technically belong to and should be taught by the international missionaries, who are sisters. We have been asked to give all english speaking (essentially all non- Austrians who are taught in English) to the international missionaries. So we tried passing them on to the sisters. But they didn't want to be passed off to the sisters (they liked the elders and didn't want to be taught by the sisters.)

 Ok, but its hard to teach them when they attend a different ward. So in order for them to get to know the sisters and make the switch easier, we have been doing joint lessons with them. Hoping to build a good relationship with them and the sisters, so that we could pass them off. But its really hard to teach a lesson with 4 missionaries present, because we aren't all on the same page. Long story short, Elders Johnson and Escher just came in and are working in International as well (so now there are both sisters and Elders in the international ward). Dawn and Gregor, still want to be taught by the Elders, not the sisters, so we are going to pass them off to the International Elders over time. So we do splits with them. Elder Escher and Elder Steed (with the sisters still) go and teach Dawn and Gregor, and Elder Johnson and I do something else. (It gets more complicated than that, yes there is a reason that the sister missionaries are still coming, its just to complicated to explain). In a month Dawn will be going to America and be there for 3 months (Gregor will for some reason stay behind). The idea is to do splits and bring the sisters till they leave and then have the international Elders take over completely when she gets back.

She will get to know Elder Escher, by then Elder Steed will be gone, she doesn't know me at all, it would be like a normal transfer situation. Anyway, Since Elder Steed knows Dawn and Gregor the best, he has been in charge of organizing the whole thing. Which led to a bit of a miscommunication between me and Elder Johnson. He told Elder Johnson that he would come and work with me (indicating that I will make plans and that we will work here), but he told me that I would go and work with Elder Johnson (again implying that he would make plans and that I would work with him in his "area" (There area is the whole Zone)). So we show up and do the exchange, and we no plans at all... That was fun, because they are new and white washed as a second companionship in the International Ward, they have no investigators at all and spend all day finding (kind of like what I did in Dornbirn) except, only those who speak English can they teach. So its a lot harder for them...

So to save him from doing another day full of solid finding, we came back to the apartment and made up plans to go by on some less actives and potential investigators (keeping in mind that he forgot to grab the map from Elder Escher, and Elder Steed had our map). So we used the map on the wall ( not a very good one) and then set off to try an find these places. ADVENTURE! It actually wasn't that bad. Despite only being here for 2 weeks or so (both of us) we managed to find all of the locations. ( No one was home, but we found everything, so that was a success! :-)). That was fun as well Elder Johnson, Elder Steed and I all flew out here togethter, although Elder Johnson and Elder Steed both entered the MTC in December. Its fun working with Companions that are on the same level :-).

Anyway, something really cool happened yesterday. 2 of our investigators were supposed to come to church, but last minute they both had to cancell. But we had another lady that showed up and we got to talk to her. She had seen somethings online, had looked up where are ward was, and drove AN HOUR AND 15 MINUTES to get to the Church. She had had contact with Missionaries when she was 18 but felt that there was too much pressure, so she took a break for awhile. MANY years later, for some reason she decided to come to church and investigate again! She feels like the time is right. She really liked Church, and is coming next week again! We are way excited! This week lookds to be a lot better than last week, I made a number of phone calls and set up appointments for this week and next week, and we are pretty well set! We hope to be able to set yet another baptismal date this week, so if you could pray for us that would be appreciated.

The two baptismal dates that I set in Dornbirn both fell out. But 2 more were set with Smarts Daughters! So I am excited to see that. I don't know what happened with Michael or Willi. But I am sure Elder Robins is doing an awesome Job.

Oh, and I happened to come across a map, our area DOES NOT cover all of Niederösterreich, its huge! and The trains go to the Check Republic, not to Hungary. I don't have access to a large map, and seeing the names of the destinations, I only new they aren't German and just took a guess. :-) Just goes to show how much I know. I am running out of time, so I will end this real quick.

Thanks for all your love and support!

Love,
Elder Ryan K. Christensen