June 28, 2010

Good morning beloved loved ones,
Wow that is really scary. Grandma had a stroke. When did she have the first one? I dont think you ever told me about that. But i hope that she will be ok. I will pray for her. Keep me updated, and tell her that I love her. Its times like these where you really think about the plan of salvation, The plan of happiness and what God has in store for all of his children. I know that He loves each and every one of us. He will watch over and protect grandma. His plans our greater than ours and i find comfort in that fact. I am thankful for my knowledge of His loving kindness and his tender mercies that he gives each and everyone of us daily. Thank you for letting me know about this so that i can pray for her and also that i may understand the will of the Father in this situation.
Hmmm. that is a heavy matter.
The work here is going great. We are helping people to come to this knowlege as well of the plan of Salvation and of God and how he has given this information to us anew through the prophet Joseph smith. The work is going great. I am so happy to be here in Wien. Did you know that there are so many people here. When i first arrived an elder said something to me that i didnt at that point understand. But apparently rumors had spread around the mission to other elders that i am a contacting machine because i talk to everybody, and i mean everybody, and so he said to me, "Wien is a big city, good luck trying to contact all the people" And i lie not i have seriously tried to contact everybody that i see but it is so hard. There are about 2 million people that live in Wien. I talk to people in busses, street trains, underground trains, trains on the street and somehow there is just not enough time or capability in my body to be able to speak to everybody in Wien, i like to compare the amount of people here with the same number of grains of sand in the sea. Its pretty awesome. It gives me a challenge. This just means that there are a lot of people that need to be found here, that have never heard of the goodness of Jesus. I love it here. It is a little dirtier than innsbruck. The air quality is definately a little worse. My poor beautiful pink lungs that i had before my mission are going to be hopefully preserved by the hand of the Lord, but when not i might have need to fear of the Black lung. (cough cough). Just kidding. Oh by the way. WE Elder Blair and i (whom i have sent a picture of he has blonde hair) we went to mission council in München on friday. We had a way amazing spiritual experience there with all the other zone leaders of this mission before they combine the two missions on the first. We planned and counseled as the leaders of the mission how we were going to help the missionaries and then we made out a basic fundamental plan for what we would teach at zone konferenzes and interviews. And i found my package from bamberg there. They had it in the mail that was supposed to go to the innsbruck area but i got transferred so now i have my garments. Cool right!!!!! My new address here in Wien is

Kirche Jesu Christi HLT
Elder Joshua Tyler Adams
Obere donau str. 45/25
1020 Wien, Österreich

So as for the bike situation. You can send it in. I just didnt know if it would make sense to pay 250 dollars from your own pocket only to get 70 added to it. the only reason why i said that is because i will not be using the money to pay for another bike. It wouldnt be worth it. Send it if you want to. File the claim. I will just not be buying a new bike with the money. i could buy you chocolate or you could go get a new dress for church or something. End. Plus money isn't really important to me. (2 nephi 9:50,51; 1 timothy 6:10 ; Mosiah 4:23,24) and those are just the ones that are off the top of my head.
We have a couple of really cool investigators here in Wien. We have introduced the Stop smoking programm to Herr Stankovic. He wanted to quit smoking and so the missionaries have a special plan that is garunteed to work in 7 days so that was really cool to do with him. The ward here is huge. There are so many members here than in the Branch in Innsbruck. so many possibilities to do member mission work. But ya since i got here it has been a lot of finding time. We havent had too many appointments and whatnot but we will get that fixed real quick like so that we can start seeing success here. This area is going to be a challenge, a struggle, a fight but it will be awesome. The zone hasnt seen to much success lately, but we will hopefully be able to build up the missionaries in every aspect of mission work, obedience, dilligence, teaching, finding, faith, simply be more like Christ!!! you all know what im talking about. But Anyhow, I love this work. Even when i have been eaten alive by mosquitos, i love it. NO lie i have like 8 mosquito bites on one foot. dont ask me how that worked. They apparently can go through socks and shoes. By the way Elder Blair is an amazing Missionary. He is from manti utah. he has been a zone leader here for about 4 transfers now and i get the opportunity of working with him. He is an amazing singer and also a good cook. We make salads. They are tasty. He is a spiritual powerhouse as well. I love being a missionary. So great to be here!!!!! And I love all of you. Too bad you have to celebrate the fourth of july without me, but God Bless AMERICA!!! Have a great week. LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!
ELDER ADAMS


Wow i just looked at my eyes in these pictures. The red rings and black circles of tiredness are getting pretty noticeable. hmmm. maybe i will just turn into dust at the end of my mission because im never giving up at giving my all!!!!!!

I love you!!!!!!! Scriptures are the bomb!!!!! Thanks. So do you wanna do a little mission work. We will be having zone konferenz on the sixth of july. The theme that we came up with is Effectiveness and becoming the missionary that you want to become. We will also be touching a little on obedience actually a lot because the missionaries here need a little work with that. So you can study about that a little bit and then send me your ideas and i can see if we can incorporate them into the workshops that we will give and the time we have to teach our zone. Sound like a deal? I love hearing from you adn i love the uplifting words that you send. That is what is most important. LUKE 22: 32 when we have converted ourselves then it is our duty to strengthen our brothers. I dont know if it is different in the Englisch translation but that is what it means in german. So strengthen your brother. Give your ideas to me and together you can help me help wien!!!!! cool!!!! Love you Bro. Have a Great WEek!!!!!!!!

June 21, 2010

HELLO PEOPLE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT, GENTILES, and all other inhabitants of this wonderfull planet that we live on!!!!!

NEWSFLASH!!!!! this week happens to be transfers and after enjoying a wonderfully short six weeks in the coolest place on planet earth (INNSBRUCK) i will be transferred to Vienna to be a Zone Leader there. ha ha so dont be too quick to be sending that package of Garments otherwise we will be having another situation like the ones that are probably still in Bamberg. As for the pen, mom what do you think we are. A dryer? I have not seen a dryer since i was in the MTC. the way they do it here is they hang it all up. Plus our apartment is way too small to contain a convenient device that would make clothe drying possible. Hairspray that i can try. but if it doesnt work out then dont go buying me shirts. you get some pretty cheap white shirts here and whats even cooler is that they are european style and that means they look a lot better than american stuff. Europeans know how to do fashion i have to tell you. Speaking of that. As i was packing this morning i counted all of the ties that i have gathered from buying and from finding them from missionaries that have died and left them in apartments, i came to the realization that i have 47 ties. Hmmmmm. That is a lot of weight. How many ties did devin bring home?

in regards to the bike In Wien they dont use bikes, they use the strassen bahns and busses and stuff like that public transportation. So to pay 250 dollars to get 70 dollars that doesnt make too much sense. Plus bikes here are a lot more expensive than 320 dollars they are like 320 euros at least and with the conversion that would not work to well. So do it if you feel it would be necessary. but i dont think i will be buying a new bike my mission is half over and i only got 5 months of use out of the last one, and who knows how long i will be in Wien. so you can do it if you think that it would be good. Then you could just keep the money, or send it to the josh fund and i could buy y'all some chocolate. Your decision. LOVE YOU!!!!!

So i am pretty bummed that i only got to spend one transfer here in Innsbruck. This is a pretty coveted part of the mission. The ward here is really awesome. They are so motivated to do missionary work. Plus the work had been going really bad dureing the middle of the transfer. We had two baptismal dates at the beginning and then both of them fell through. They werent ready to get baptised. And they didnt want to make the commitment. So that was hard. We lost quite a few investigators towards the middle of the transfer. We were down to teaching about 3 different people. So that was tough, but then just barely this last week we had a street display and at this street display we all just pretty much go our own ways and talk with as many people as possible. I by myself made out five appointments. three of which became awesome new investigators. they are really prepared people and ready to be baptised. Patrice, one of the new investigators, said that she has been looking for a church to go to but she didnt know which one. and then we invited her to be baptised and she said that she has already been baptised but she doesnt feel like she has been baptised. She didnt feel like her baptism was right. so we taught about the restored authority to act in Gods name and she is excited to meet with us and learn more. Aida is another one. She is such an amazing lady. Plus she has a family. And a son who is twelve years old, he can get the priesthood. We need that here in innsbruck because they dont have enough priesthood holders to become a ward they are just a branch. So ya the work is starting to explode here. I was a part of it, and now im going away. Its kind of what happened in Bamberg. I left and they had two Baptismal dates. This man that i told you about Rudiger Schneeberger, he is so cool. I heard from the assistents as we did an exchange with them this week that he got baptised. I wanted so bad to be there and to be a part of that, but i couldnt. Its tough. Plus we set a baptismal date with a lady this week that we have been teaching. She is from Cuba. Her name is yurkie. I havent seen a convert baptism my whole mission. I work so hard for that, and that is my goal, to bring others to Christ and for some reason everytime that it comes close to that i get transferred away. O well. I know that i am giving my best. I love it just being a missionary and helping myself come closer to Christ through the process of helping others. I have grown so much. I have learned a ton. I love it. I think it is cool as well how people ask me about where i studied theology. They think to be a religious teacher you have to have a degree from a university and whatnot. But my authority comes from a better source. :) yup. We have it. This is the one and only true church on the earth.

Cool experience this week as well. A religious teacher at a high school in the area invited us to come to their class and to give a lecture about our church. "The Mormons" . We went there. I was on an exchange with Elder Ray (great missionary by the way) and we were given two hours to teach and talk and answer questions of this class that was filled with 16, 16 year old kids. They thought we were really cool and really interesting. So we got invited back, they wanted us to come back to explain more. That was so cool. To explain and teach and give testimony in a school to a group of very impressionable kids, who now think that our church is not so wierd as all the rumors have said. I mean its hard to believe i know but we are not polygamists. that totally shattered their universe when we broke that news to them. Technically, and according to preach my gospel that is 16 new investigators..... i wonder if president condie would let us count that. they all want to learn more and they are all pretty interested. They all asked questions and stuff so that is cool. WEll you have probably heard enough of me tell you about how cool this area is, and how much i am going to miss it, especially the people here. So i will make an end to my writings and tell you how excited i am to go to wien. I am gonna tear it up there. I will help someone get baptised. I think president condie has placed a lot of trust in me to go there. To be a zone leader still and because they have not seen to much success for the last six months or so in the way of baptisms, so i am going to go in guns a' blazin' just kidding books of mormons a blazin' and do my best. Well I wish you a wonderfull week. I will send you my adress in wien as soon as i get it and hopefully i wont be transferred so quickly. Everything is well with me. Except for this morning my ear was bleeding like that one time back at home when you took me to the hospital. There was a lot of blood. And it kind of hurt this morning, like an ear ache but now it stopped and it doesnt hurt anymore. so LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!! have a great week!!!!!!!

From ELDER ADAMS

June 14, 2010

Hello!!!
As you probably have guessed, i am doing good! Great! WONDERFUL!!!!!! I absolutely love doing the work. As for you it sounds as if you are all doing well as well. Grillin`!!! that sounds American! ha ha well they grill here too when the weather is good. And this week the weather has actually been really good. I actually sweated a lot this week. Is sweated the past tense form of to sweat? it sounds so not normal. Hmm well who cares. I can learn englisch all over again. Have you had bratwurst and sauerkraut and sausages of other makes and sorts on the grill in favor of the World Football tournament thing? You have no idea how crazy the people are here about soccer. oh ya its called soccer not football. Its pretty cool they set up massive canopies and blow up big screens where they project the games in the middle of the city. Then everybody gets a beer and a sausage at half price. Its pretty crazy. We try and talk to poeple on the street and they say, "i have no time" "football is on" ha ha they normally say i have no time any how because they are not into discussing religion or something like that but it is going great. We go forward. We just keep talking to people sharing the Gospel, helping people come closer to the One who loves us most. Ahhhh. I love it.
Well that is good that the insurance is working on it. We mostly boogy around town with our feet and with the awesome public transportation system. Busses here are really good. We can talk to so many people on them and plus its a lot more effective than going door to door. I mean the people are already there and you can just say hi and then talk to them. you dont have to wait for them to open the door or wait to even have to see if they are there or not. Good stuff. Lots of success seen this week.
Oh mom question. how do you get pen out of white clothes? I managed somehow to misplace my pen in the washing machine instead of on my desk and i washed it with my whites. I got pretty lucky there are only a couple of blue spots on one garment shirt and one white shirt. Speaking of garments. I have not as of yet recieved the package from bamberg. hmmmm. i am down to like 4 pairs of garments. that equals either having to double dip during the week which equals smelly or washing more often, and option two takes more time, which i dont really have. So. solution to this math equation/mystery of less clothing than days of the week is....... dunno. i will work on it and take it as it comes. Ideas would be cool. Love you.!!!
We had quite a few fallen out appointments here this week. A couple of investigators who said that they cant meet with us anymore and stuff like that, however we had an amazing exchange with the Salzburg elders this week. I got the opportunity to work with elder ENSIGN. My old companion!!!! He is soo cool. We had such a great time working together again. He is really such a great missionary. We did some good work there in salzburg. We made out three appointments and we got contact information from a handfull of other people. It was great. They needed that. They ended up getting a new investigator, a man named Peymann, whom Elder Ensign and i made an appointment out with. Which is great. They were having a tough time there and not seeing a lot of success and hopefully this will get them pushed off in a good direction.
Speaking of pushing off, i have had diahrrea for the past week. I should stop eating fruit. Or as grandpa called them the hirshey squirts. But they gave us free cherries in church yesterday and so i dont think i will get rid of the runs for the next couple of days as well. Which makes it a little uncomfortable. i mean, with the heat and how much we walk and ya. it chafes a little bit. ha well if i think of anything else i will write it. I want to go tell president how much i love being a missionary!!!! LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

June 7, 2010

Grüß euch!!!!!

hey family of the year!!!! Well i wanted to let you all know how much i love you all for the support and prayers. This week was tough. we made out like 18 appointments and then only five of them went through. I dont necessarily like it when appointments fall through but hey it goes. Wait that is an englisch translation of a german saying. Well who cares. Anyhow. my english is horrible. to prove that, we had interviews with president condie this week. The three districts in our zone had to come to salzburg where we gave a workshop to the three different districkts and that was awesome. It is wierd to teach in english. I often struggle with the word order and sometimes finding words to say. But life goes on. Well we are not going on to the mountain today. The weather this morning was really bad, it rained like no other this week. We will hopefully go next week. We are still wearing lederhosen today and we are going to a castle in the area. schloss Amras. the church here is also pretty close to that.

Well all that i have to say is that the next week looks better. We made out a lot of appointments for next week. It looks good next week. I love talking to people. Its just downhome good clean fun!!!

Speaking of my bike it got stolen from in front of our appartment. It was locked up. i have not yet had the chance to call it in and report it to the police. but i will try and get to that in the next couple of weeks. But we have an exchange with the salzburg elders this week. i bought my bike there adn they wrote it down so hopefully i can go there and see what they have. I do not have the serieal number for the bike. The bike is a kalkhoff Raider. year 2009. i paid 279 euros for it. So that is pretty much 320 dollars or something. Oh well i will try adn work on it.

as for the pics i tore a phone book in half with my bare hands. My trainer taught me how. there is a trick but brute monkey strength helps as well. we just had a couple of extra old phonebooks in our apartment so i tore them in half. Im cool. Well not so much time. I am so greatfull to be a missionary. i have found such a joy in this and getting to know my savior and redeemer. I try and make progress everyday in coming closer to Him. I love you all and i wish you a wonderful week. Love ELDER ADAMS.

Ha ha. well you remind me of a letter that my trianer sent me. he also talked about life after the misison life. He said that," it is new worries new stress new joys and new fun. and girls only bring a thinner wallet." It is just new but there is alway going to be different stuff adn things are going to be hard but there will always be things that will be good as well. The question we need to ask ourselves is, "was it ever easy for the Lord?". Let that change our perspectives so that we can be happy in whatever the situation is that the lord puts us in in that very moment. I love you Devin and i hope that all is going better for you and that it will continually get better. Have an awesome week adn try and not get skin cancer. I think that is why they give us garments. They protect against skin cancer. Protection. Did you ever hear my story about my bike accident? if not. i will write it next week with all of the details that i left out of the story for mom :) have a great one bro. LOVE ELDER ADAMS

Oh a piece of information that i failed to add in the other letter is that my bike was stolen on the 28th of may in the year of our Lord 2010. I asked some members of the ward if i should involve the police and they said there are so many bikes in Innsbruck because its europe and because we live right in the area of a university that it would be useless. They said that it would probably be already taken apart and sold for pieces. Which leads me to the whole story of how it was stolen. I didnt think i needed to tell the story because i didnt know if there was any thing that we could do about it. so We got back from our exchange in klagenfurt adn i saw my bike in our little garage alcove thing right by our building and the handle bars had been stolen. that made me sad but i just thought ok i can just buy new handlebars the whole bike is still there because it is locked up with my Brinks 20 pound lock. But then we went jogging the day after in the morning (the 28th) and i looked and saw that my whole bike was gone. so ya. it was a good bike. but its ok. Whatever you can find out then that will be cool. LOVE YOU you are the best.