Haag - Week 3

Vienna

Vienna

Vienna

Vienna

Vienna - Elder Hadfield / Elder Liechty at Schloss Schoenbrunn

Salzburg ZoneConference - June 2016

Salzburg Zone Conference June 2016

Vienna Autobahn

Vienna

Vienna

Vienna

Seien sie gegrüßt

Hey everybody, First off! YOU ALL NEED TO STOP! Haha I've gotten so many emails with pictures at MLB Games, with summer BBQs, on the beach, you name it. Knock it off!! 100 days though...

What a week for the books. It's been such a melancholy feeling week for me. It was so to say a kick in the pants, a total eye opener, of how old I'm getting to be on the mission. First I must say, we had a better week.

On the street, I found a guy named A while Elder Liechty was sending a letter to the office. He is Austrian, lives in downtown Ried, and is very faithful, but looking for the right church. We met with him on Friday night, and had a great appointment, and we are ready to go back on Tuesday. He's agreed to hear all the lessons and figure out if it's true or not. That's a huge first step that a lot of people won't even take, so I'm really excited!

We had another new investigator this week named J, also Austrian. He was taught by the elders a little while ago, but it ended because the elders kind of stopped teaching him things and he found the appointments not so worthwhile. We hit him with a great friendship and the Spirit, and he's agreed to meet with us again this week.

We also have another new investigator named M, Austrian yet again, who lives in Haag. She's married, has two kids, one of whom is in Seattle on school exchange right now and gets back in about 20 days. She's a teacher there, and met with missionaries 30 years ago right before the area was closed for 10 years or so. She's way cool, and we are hoping something comes of that. Woohoo, we gonna get this place rolling!! 

I met more people who know my dad this week, they're just crawling everywhere. Isn't that so cool with missionary work?

So, on Friday, we got to take the drive to Wien/Vienna. We were the next one’s scheduled to pick up a replacement car. We went from a crappy old car to a nice 2014 model Hyundai. The thing runs like a dream. Digging it way hard. Driving in Wien was HELL though. After we got the car, we had to fill it up, and realized we had no Vignette on the car, which is required to legally drive on the Autobahn. We needed to drive into downtown Vienna to find one, and so we illegally drove on the Autobahn, (shhhhhhh) to go find one of these things and it was 85 Euro, my goodness. We were pulling pennies out of our wallets trying to pay for this thing to get home. Haha. And I still have to pay for my new visa, oh shoot. Afterwards, we grabbed lunch there on Stefan's Platz I believe, and took it over to Schloss Schönbrunn to eat. It was way fun, and I never thought I would get to go to Vienna, so it was quite an experience for me. I loved Vienna!

Saturday was Zone Conference in Salzburg. It was a great time, I got to see Salzburg! The church there is right by the Sound of Music castle. There wasn't time for pictures, but there will be a next time for sure. Let me tell you how weird it was to hear guys like Elder Lyman and Elder Jensen give their dying testimonies. Guys I lived with for 6 months, who went into the MTC 6 weeks before I did, and are already on their way home. That slapped me across the face with a reality check.

Even more so, I had an interview to get a new Temple Recommend with President, the one before I go home, and as soon as he started asking the questions, I felt the Spirit so strongly I can't even describe. Kind of a weird place to feel the Spirit, but I kind of became overwhelmed seeing how differently I viewed the questions and seeing how far my testimony has come in the past 2 years.  I think the whole spiritual side of this week though came from Zone Conference itself. It wasn't even a part of the conference really to be honest. To start the conference, they showed the Golden Slideshow, which is just the slideshow containing pictures of all the missionaries in our mission in the beautiful places we serve in. We show it to the missionaries (Goldens) who come into the mission every transfer to get them pumped up. The pictures kept flashing by, and I saw Elder Croft, and Elder Carr, and Elder Samuelson, and Elder Ridd, and Elder Barnhart, and countless names of missionaries who I love who have gone home already. I've seen the slideshow like a hundred times by now, and I lived with the office elders when they made it, but this time I was just bawling like a baby as I realized its all starting to come to an end. I had such a hard time controlling my emotions. The last song in there is so cool actually. The lyrics go:

"Remember the Promise, Remember who it's from,

Remember that it's keeping is tied to what we've done.

Breaking down the walls of pride, listening to realize,

There's a love that's strong enough to lift us all."

That Promise is so real, and that Love is strong enough to lift every single one of us. I used to think that this love was the Savior's love that He showed for us through the Atonement. As I heard those lyrics, I just became so overwhelmed. I realized how much and how deeply I love this mission. I love the people here. I love the culture. I love the members. I love the missionaries. I love the people who have been baptized. I love my mission president. I love my companions. I love this experience. I never knew I could feel a love this strong. I realized, this love that the Savior has for us, can be deeply implanted in each one of us, and when we share that love for each other, that's the love that lifts us all. I have felt it for the first time through these experiences. I know that from it, I will never ever be the same. This is my Home.

Elder Sam Hadfield -- Wien!