A good week :-)

Well, I don't know exactly how much time I will have to write this e-mail, since I wrote Josh one already. 

But this week was well... Traumhaft (Fantastic)  :-) We still had 5 appointments fall out but we taught 11 lessons! :-) And found 4 new investigators. 10 New investigators in 2 weeks! Such a good week. :-) 

We taught Sasha the Plan of Salvation on Tuesday, he comes from Drösing which is clear out on the Slovakian border, but he comes here to Wien every now and again and then we meet with him. It went really well and a lot of things started making sense (not from the lesson, but about life, things that he has heard/ experienced etc.)  But he really liked it and he trusts us a lot. If only he had time to meet with us more than once every other week... 

We also were able to finally meet with Osas, a man from Nigeria who I talked to on the street 3 weeks ago. Nigerians are very famous here in the mission for always not showing up to their appointments. From experience, it is worse in there culture to say "no I can't meet then" than to lie and say "yeah that will work" and then not show up... That is a bit hard... Luckily (for us not necessarily for them) here in Wien there is an international ward, and the missionaries serving there teach all (and only) those who speak English. So we are turning him over to them. We were supposed to meet with him yesterday on splits with them, but he wasn't there... But when we actually did meet with him, it was really good and he really wants to learn more about Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ.   

Nigerians are funny though, they love Jesus. Back in Dornbirn, I met one on the street, who when he heard that we were from the Church, his response was "Preach to me". And again here in Wien, Elder Chapman was walking down the road and talked to a Nigerian Lady who asked 

"do preach Jesus?"

"yes we do"

"Ok, I give you my number, you call and we meet"

(yes 'mam!)

We still haven't been able to get a hold of her yet, but we are trying... But once we do we will give her to the Sisters in the International Ward.

Anyway, We also were invited to Dinner with Daniel, and his family which was cool. He is a member of the ward who I have been trying to meet with since December. His wife is not a member and is somewhat against going to church. Back last year they had made an agreement that they would come to church all together as a family once a month, that he and Robin (at this time one and a half year old son) could go twice in the month, and the other Sunday they would do something else. But they had another baby in August and after that his wife didn't have much interest. 

But she let us come to dinner, and we got to know them a bit which was good. Walking on thin ice though... at the end Daniel asked us to share a "neutral" spiritual thought. Its always fun when someone asks for something like that and you have to figure it out on the spot, while looking like you know exactly what you want to share... oh boy. Elder Chapman very quickly deferred it to me... Anyway after frantically flipping through a few things praying to find something good, the spirit came to my rescue and reminded me of  Romans 8:16 ( my mind just blanked, I think its 16 but I am not sure, "so bezeugt der Geist selber, unserem Geist dass wir Kinder Gottes sind" (The Spirit itself beareth ^awitness with our ^bspirit, that we are the ^cchildren of God:) is what it says) and then comparing that to sermon on the mount where Christ talks about praying (3 Nephi 14:7-11) "ask and ye shall receive .. for which of you when his son asks for a fish, shall give him a serpent .. if ye being evil, know how to give you children good gifts how much more shall your Father in heaven give good things unto those who shall ask" Something like that. But then talked about how much God loves us and will help us when we pray and ask for his help. I went well and Daniel really liked it. 

Another success of the week was with Familie Friedl we met with them again, and taught the plan of salvation and talked about eternal families. Overall it went really really well. We talked about some things we need to do to live with our families eternally. Baptism came up, and they said that they are already baptized, but if they need to do it again to be together forever than they will do it!!! We are going to teach them about the restoration, and priesthood authority, and then commit them to a date :-) (We wanted to make sure that they understand why they need to be baptized again and that not all baptisms are the same). 

I am really excited! Misha came to church yesterday! He arrived just before Sacrament meeting, in the middle of the investigator class. At the beginning he was visibly uncomfortable, he didn't have a tie, or a nice normal white shirt (in all honesty he looked fine with the white shirt he had) but Danny Schäffner and a few others said that it was just fine. Martin Hayden and I sat next to him, and towards the end he looked a lot more comfortable. Martin Hayden invited Misha and his wife to come to him on Tuesday and we will teach them there! :-)  I am VERY Excited for that. :-) Things are going well this week, and we have high hopes for this upcoming week.

We have not heard anything from Frau Zalka, we don't know what happened. 

Martin and Marion are still awesome as always, we are meeting with them on Friday with the Schäffners and then they invited us to them after church on Sunday.

That will need to suffice for this e-mail. I wish you all a wonderful week! I love you all,

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen