July 26, 2010

Hello!!!!!!

So i just wanted to first start out with a question. Can anyone digest corn? I just wanted to know if that is at all possible. Dont ask me why, the details of this week and that story would probably make it so that you will never eat corn again, which is what i have decided to do.

The garments are fine. I think that they are great and i am super greatful simply for the fact that you took the time to get them and send them to me. No i do not need anymore for a while i should be fine. As for deodorant. I think that i am stocked on deodorant for the next ten years. thank you mom for caring about me and my supply needs. Except for the fireworks. Those we are not allowed to have. White handbook p.21-22. period. It was funny i had a good laugh about it but you know what i used to do with fireworks. I dont think that would be too acceptable if i would act like that on my mission. Ha ha.

So i got a new credit card because someone wanted to buy the new coleman grill system complete with grease drip tray and 12 ounce budweiser cup holder in kentucky. you might be a redneck if.... ya ok so that is cool. But we have a problem then. that means that i have to activate this new card that i have here and it says that i am supposed to call the 1-800 number from my home phone. that is how it is written in the letter that is sent to me. so you might have to call it for me. because i dont think i am allowed to call america from my church paid cell phone. so you might need some information for the card here is the number you need to call. 1-800-562-1568. actually before i go sending all the information accross the internet so that it could get stolen again. see if you can talk to zions and find out what the deal is. i dont need my card for a while.

with the bike i just wanted to know if you were going to get the money for that. i am not going to buy a new bike but i thought you could still get the money for the fact that my bike was stolen. that is all i was suggesting. mom its not that hard to understand. I checked my grammar and everything this time.

Ok enough with worldly stuff. THIS WEEEK WAS AWESOME. I have been giving it my all and trying to do my best here in this area and it is starting to show. We commited a new investigator that we found to baptism. Her name is Evelyn. She wants to get baptised on the 22 of August. I am stoked to be teaching her. We are also teaching some other cool investigators.. But as for this week we had interviews with the President. And as every district came to wien we taught a workshop and tried to get them pumped about ward mission plans and the ward mission process and how they could get that started in their own wards and that was great. some of the missionaries in our zone are going home this transfer and that made it a little funner because they were not to committed to following through with the things that we taught. but all is well.

I love this ward that i am in. Especially br. and Sis. Hones. He compliments me so much. He is blind but he tells me that he is gratefull to have a missionary here with the kind of excitement that i have. He said that he hasnt seen that in a while. But i talked with his wife in church the other day and she told me that she used to be a professional climber. Ya after church we talked for a while and i they are going to be inviting us over for dinner this week and then we will take them and shape them into awesome member missionaries. That is the best way to do missionary work, even though i am really good at contacting people and making out appointments its a lot easier and a lot more effective to just get refferals from members. that is my awwesome conclustion for the week. That is how we got evelyn. she is the fiancee of a less active member who called us up and said, "i am a less active member, i would like you to come and teach me the lessons again so that i can gain a testimony of the book of mormon" not even an exaggeration. so cool his name is manuel. he is really cool.

WE also had an austausch in graz this week. Sorry austausch means exchange. You should really just get used to me speaking german. you been brushing up on your german skills? anyhow. Graz is a really wonderful city. It is so different. it is really a difference to see how people think and act in a city that is smalller than wien. Really cool cool experiences there. adn on the ride home in the train. we spoke to the people that were sitting in the cabin with us in the train. We spoke to them for two hours. That was so cool. they now think that the mormons are awesome and that we are so cool because we give two years of our lives to serve the Lord. Lots of people apparently think that. The members that we visited this week all set family mission plans and all the kids voted that it be a part of the plan that the missionaries come over more often. Elder Blair and I are rocking this area. Its slowly progressing. but that is what i lilke. constant progress. I love the work and i love you. Have a great week!!!!!

ELDER ADAMS

oh yeah i thought that you would like to see a little bit what wien looks like so here are some pics as well. Schloss Belvedere, the night pic is from our window in our apartment. ya just other random stuff.

Hey thanks for the mail. Yea tis a gift to be a missionary when you set a baptismal date and when you are giving your best then satan just gives your credit card to some hillbilly in kentucky. oh well. im diggin on it. Workin is the best. Hey well that is cool that you are staying busy with the best buy. that is soo cool. you know that you are going to be the best seller at bestbuy because you were a fulltime missionary. "no other company trusts its sales force to the hands of 19 year old boys, but the Lord does" you will do great. have a great week dev. LOVE YOU!!!!!!

ELDER ADAMS

July 22, 2010

Dear Sister Adams,

Thank you for your email. I just spoke with your great missionary son and informed him it was a good thing he had already purchased lederhose since he wouldn’t be able to buy any lederhosen on Monday because his credit card was being canceled. J He said, “Not to worry. I’ve got enough money for the time being.”

Thank you for sending us such a great missionary. We saw him on Tuesday. He’s as happy as ever.

With kind regards,

Robert G. Condie

Alpine German-speaking Mission, Munich

Lommelstrasse 7

81479 Munich

Germany

July 19, 2010

HELLOOOO!!!!!! What a lovely mother you are. I love you!!!

Well this week went amazing. Thank you for letting me know about grandma. WE have plans already to go to the cemetary. it is so big. A member lives there right there in the area of it. Did you know that there are little sections dedicated for all different types of religious groups and stuff like that. There is places for famous dead people like mozart. He is buried here, (cool fact he was born in salzburg). But the coolest thing is that the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has its own section in this cemetary. Amongst all the places for the Catholics, the Protestants, the Jews. I find it pretty funny how all the religions are separated and stuff like that but at the day of His coming everyone will be resurrected and that place will be a disco. Not really a disco, but every one will know that Jesus is the Christ. Speaking of that i am reading that book in german. Jesus the Christ. James E. Talmage is awesome. That is a great book and a cool way to strengthen your knowledge of the Savior.

Thanks for the cool story from that book that you are reading. I hope that all goes well with work this week. you think it is hot there? Ya we just wont talk about that. My clothes dont dry out. i have lost 6 pounds in sweat. not even joking. I got here and i weighed 150. That was at the beginning of here in wien. it stayed pretty much the same for the first two weeks and then for the past week and a half i have sweated my brains out and i lost 6 pounds. But we can look at the positive side i have a wicked sick tanline on my neck from my collar :)

Heidi is not planning to get baptised on the 31st. She backed out. She said that she loves the book of mormon. She reads in it and she feels the spirit so strongly and the love of the Lord so strongly that she cries. She knows its true but is not sure if the baptism and the whole life change is the right thing for her. She thinks about the baptism still and so i have hope that if we keep working with her that we will be able to help her make this covenant with God. I am excited for heidi. She is still making progress and reading and praying. It will come we just need patience. However this week we had exchanges with a couple sets of elders. I love exchanges. I had the chance to work with elder bishop. he is having a hard time. He doesnt want to be on a mission and he finds it a waste of time to talk to people. There are some other problems but i dont feel it necessary to share them but that was a hard exchange. I felt however that it was my responsibility to show him that through hard work and through faithfilled prayers miracles could be brought to pass. I put so much trust in the Lord. Trust and faith that he would show Elder Bishop that a mission is worth it, that you can find joy through bearing humble testimony and loving others. However he told me that my efforts were in vain and that i am a fake, that i dont believe in what i am teaching. it hurt me but i was determined. I know that the Lord blesses his faithful and obedient servants. Through my efforts i found three new investigators on this exchange. Denise, Herr komnn, and Hans Stempfer, Each with an amazing story. I do really believe that the people that we found this week really will get baptised. They are all so prepared and i found them at a time where i know the Lord wanted to bless me for my actions. I feel so built up this week. Everything is going really well with Elder Blair. We had to have a couple short conversations with each other this week because we were not working in complete unity. I suppose our thought processes were as follows: I am a good experienced zone leader missionary, i can contact teach and baptise all on my own. We worked it all out. These thoughts of pride and whatnot pushed us away from seeing the successs that we thought we could reach on our own when we could have easilly reached it together. What a great lesson learned. I am so grateful for this opportunity to be here. To learn these things. Elder Blair and i planned for interviews. I am pretty stoked for that. We took a little bit of time. and discussed what our zone needed. and because of lot of missionaries are going home this transfer and lots of new ones are going to be coming in we are going to have to step it up in the urgency department. We need to find those that are going to be baptised and have the DESIRE to come to Christ. I love it i will tell you the outcome next week. :)

I got the package last week. The garments are great. probably could go with just a medium next time instead of a medium tall. they are like night gowns. plus what were you thinking sending fireworks throught the mail!?!?!?! did you not know you could go to jail for that. We cant even have fireworks as missionaries. Have devin show you his white handbook. I dont know if its different in other missions but we follow the white handbook here. Obedience is key.

Hey i also wanted to know what you sorted out with the bike and the insurance?

Well i am doing great. We had a great successful week. I got to also do an exchange with ELder Ensign. He is so cool. My old companion from salzburg. i am totally going to chill with him in my lederhosen later in life. We are going to old men together. I have such a christlike love for ELder ensign. Such a good missionary.

Speaking of lederhosen. ELder blair and i decided that today we would visit schönbrunn today in our lederhosen because we didnt get to it last week. last week we went and looked around in innenstadt. hopefully we will get something cool done today. Well i love you mom. Have a great week!!!!!!!

Yours :) ELDER ADAMS

Hey devin,

With the unidendtified lip fungus. hows it going. There is a such thing as chapstick. Burts Bees is what i recommend. The cooling bees wax and mint extract cools and heals cracked and dried lips. but that is not what matters. This week was a little tough. I wrote mom about it and what not so you can check that out. It is a little hard to lift and inspire and help a missionary become a better misionary on exchanges when he doesnt even want to be here. But. He needs to be here i wanted to help him see how this will influence his life and help him become the child of God that God wants him to become. Tough stuff. But i did my best I helped him see tons of success. Success that comes through talking to everyone and just the joy of doing mission work and sharing the gospel. And it worked the Lord answered my prayers. I made a pretty good relationship with him. I just hope he will become that which he needs to become. Love you bro. SCripture for the week. Mosiah 24:13-14

Good luck with work.

ELDER ADAMS

July 12, 2010

Hey thanks mom for the Email!!!!!!

i love you to death. I have not as of yet been able to pick up the package. We are planning to do that today. We have lots to do. Having lots of fun being a part of it. However i have to get a new battery in my old watch and my new watch that i bought in bamberg for my b day is broken. But its ok i have a warranty on it. So i will send it to the repair center which happens to be right here in wien. But hopefully we will go check out schloss belvidare today. Supposedly it is a super beautiful castle with really purdy grounds. But all is going well with me. We worked way hard this week we taught a lot of lessons but the people didnt want to meet further with us so they didnt reall become new investigators. Yesterday we had a ward picnic after the church and we built some serious trust with the members. We got to talk to them and eat with them in a park right behind our church. It was great. And then afterwards Elder Blair and i entertained the kids of all the parents. We played red rover which was a hit. and we had arm wrestling matches in the grass. The parents wanted to know if they could rent the elders for birthday parties. and we said only if you invite your freinds to hear the gospel as well. Ya it was great. plus we made a lot of appointments out with members where we will help them with their mission work goals.

we have two grandmothers here in this ward. Oma steffi. She is the mother of one of our investigators, heidi pohorsky whom we hope to commit to baptism soon, and anyhow she is amazing she is like eighty two years old and just loves to feed us. THen there is also Oma borscka. She also loves to feed us and give us food. They both however dont want to get baptised. They say that if they join our church their children will call them crazy and throw them in the luny bin. Which is sad. they have their agency. anyhow. they are nice.

I made potatoe salad this week by myself and without a recipe and it tasted so good. i just kind of guessed what needed to be in there and whatnot and so that turned out pretty well.

We had our zone konferenz this week and that was great. We did a really cool workshop that pumped all the missionaries to commit themselves to become who they want to become and what type of missionaries they feel they should be at this the new beginning of the merging of the two missions. It was a super spiritual konferenz. I love mission work. it is the greatest. I am so grateful for all the expereinces that i have had in my life prior to this that prepared me for the things that are happening here at this moment and this time. I am so thankful for my patriarchal blessing. It has been such a guide and a strength to me throughout my time here on my mission and i am sure that it will lead and help me through the rest of my life. Thanks for being there for me mom. Thanks for sending the package. i am sure that it got here safely i will go pick it up today. I love you with all my heart. Have a wonderful week. and may the Lord bless you in all your doings.

your son,

Elder Adams

HEy DEV!!!!!!!

That is so coool that you got the job!!!! you are now working at bestbuy!!!! way cool. Wow that is so crazy that all those people are coming home from their missions it seems just like yesterday that everybody left. crazy stuff. man i hope time will start to slow down a little bit. i look back at my mission and i have a ton of great memories and tons of crazy awesome experiences and lots of people that i have taught and stufff like that and it is just gone by crazy fast. I have so much to do and not enough time. Ha its ok. i work it with what i got. Give it my best and tear it up. Zone konferenz went great this week you have no idea. It was so spiritual. And there is nothing better than to have members of your zone come up to you afterwards and tell you how much they learned from it. and how they want to be better. it was awesome. Elder blair and i work pretty awesome together. WE are going to be doing lots better soon. We have not had time to have a full planning session before this week, and i had to really push that we have a full planning session, The way i was trained is to plan for the week, but elder blair was not too keen on getting that finished. We finished it this morning and i have a really good feeling about what we have in front of us this week. we will see success this week. Even though we didnt fully plan for the first three weeks of this transfer we saw an ok amount of success and a lot of tiredness because i just talked to a lot of people adn worked my brains out. Cool stuff. well I did not manage to read all the way through the fourth missionary because i dont have a lot of time here in the internet shop and the printer is broken. so i havend been able to read throught that yet. thanks for the obedience stuff. i was able to read through about a third of it. and for the rest i would need to be able to create time. However we are a very busy breed of missionary. I love it though just concentrating all of my time and energy on other people adn not on myself or what i need. So hopefully i will be able to get to it one day. :)

So with allyson...... details. and yes i remember krista mohammed. that is really cool wish her the best of luck. I served with a companion who is from seattle. and that is where zac durrant is, i think. ASk mom but cool.

WEll have a good week bro. Love your brother

ELDER ADAMS

July 5, 2010

Schönen Guten Tag!!!!!!!!!

Well i´m super stoked!!!!! wanna know why? this week has been going great. WE have worked our bums off. So as i got here we had two investigators that they were teaching. One of the investigators we taught this week we committet to baptism. Her name is heidi. She said that she would think about getting baptised on the 31st of july. So we are going to keep working on that. She is really a special lady. She is super prepared to accept the gospel. It will just take a little time to help her along the way of gaining a testimony. Plus the adversary is fighting against us. She broke her foot on saturday so she wanted to come to church again but she wasnt able to make it. But all will be well. She is the only investigator that we were teaching now because the other one that we had as i got here has not been keeping committments and he never keeps the appointments. Elder Blair told me as i came here that they found only one investigator last transfer. He told me that he and his last companion, although they were zone leaders, did not get along well. So he told me that he is thankful that i am here and that i brought a super good work ethic with me to make our area an example for our zone. WE found two new investigators this week adn that was great. We improved in everyaspect of the work this week. We taught more lessons. WE made out more appointments and its wonderful to see how an area that is not doing so hott can be changed with: RECIPE...... a little faith (mustard seed sized) and effort (all you´ve got). That really is a principle that i have found to be true and that has helped me through the tough times when we dont see as much success: "Pray like it all depends on the Lord, and work Like it all depends on you". Works in everysituation. And with the progress we made this week we will soon be helping a lot of people on the way to baptism and making this area an example for our zone. Speaking of that. We planned for zone konferenz. That was such a wonderfully spiritual experience. I learned so much, as i thought about the needs of the people in the zone, and what we could teach to help them achieve their purpose as missionaries for the rest of theirs missions. The merging of the two missions went well, so far as i know. There wont be too much merging as of now. this transfer president condie is leaving everybody in their areas in switzerland and here in austria and germany so that wont change to much but i expect a lot of changes next transfer. We are starting a revolution with our missionaries. We are firing them up. THis is now a new mission. THey now have the chance to be new missionaries and the chance to become the mission that they are going to envision. We are going to focus on change in this zone conference. I think that it will be a wonderful experience and we will all learn and grow.

Im glad that all is going better there at home. THank you for keeping me informed. That is really nice of you. Here is a scripture for grandma if you get the chance to give it to her. Psalms 147.3 and tell her that i love her!

Spencer is going to EFY. that is cool elder blairs girlfriend is working at EFY. Tell him to look out for Emily. What a small world. Chelsea also was roommates with Emily in college down at snow. This world really is a small world. wanna know why else? ya so this week we had to fill in a spot in a concert that the institute center was putting on here because the two people that should have played couldnt come. and so we prepared to sing the Prayer of the Children. (like the insideout group does it) We got to practice for about an hour before the concert and there is an english ward here in wien that all the BYU students come to and so some of them came to this concert. And surprise, mckenzie bird is here on the exchange programm from byu. Ya intense stuff. She is all grown up. That was super wierd. Plus there were other americans there. They were my age. Hmmm it just felt wierd. I forgot how different americans are. but it was cool. the song we sang went really well. I sang the Bass part. ya it was hard. but it sounded way good.

Ya the hat i bought in innsbruck. there was a pretty sweet sale in the inner city and so i bought it for nine euros.
Well our pday today got pretty much destroyed. I tried to sign up as an inhabitant of the city. you have to do that here. they need to know where every person is living and stuff like that. but that didnt work because i didnt have a certain paper with me. So that was like three hours wasted just waiting in a line. just imagine DMV exept ten times worse and with no AC. good stuff. ha its ok. i will live. WEll everything is going great with me. I am healthy and all is well. I wish you all a good week and hope that everything goes well for each of you. Love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

DEV!!!!!!

THanks for all the info. Haha i dont have too much time here in the internet cafe to read that and whatnot but i will try and read that sometime soon and see if i can throw it in with some of what we already have in the plan of the Zonen Konferenz. Thanks for all your help. Du bist mein held!!!! Keep going on. You gotta tell me a little bit about how your personal life is going too. Have you had your first date yet? That is now your calling!! ha ha just messing with you. keep going on. Have a great week. i love you!!!!!

ELDER ADAMS o yea scripture of the day MOroni 7: 29-33