JA's

Hey there!

This week was pretty great!

Last night was especially cool. So we have quite a few cool young

people that aren't super interested in the gospel or having us

teach them but they are just good friends. For a while we've been trying to

figure out an activity or something for all the young adults that we

can invite our friends to, but there's really nothing like that here.

There used to be, but for whatever reason, the group here just kind of

fell apart and there's no real strong bond in the young adult group.

There was actually a kind of messy falling apart and it's a touchy

subject here. Wellll, luckily, Sister Frenkel comes from a ward in

Germany with a really strong young adult group. They have family home

evening together every Monday and organize it all themselves!

Like I said, this whole time, we've been trying to push for just a

family home evening night, just one, but different people here haven't

been all too helpful or supportive so finally Sister Frenkel and I

decided to just do it! We had a week to plan it all, since Sister

Frenkel is leaving soon and because of some other scheduling conflicts. I tell

you what, we never prayed so hard in our life. There were just a lot of

delicate things involved, like inactive young adults, who surprisingly

came, or the fact that almost none of the active young adults wanted

to come, or there was no real adult leader support for the evening, and also the

fact that we were inviting a lot of non-member friends of ours for whom

we wanted to have a great first experience in the church!

It went wonderfully though. Really. I don't know how to describe to

you all the little things that almost went wrong or could have gone

wrong, but it went great! I know God really helped us out on this one.

Everyone pitched in with food, everyone had a friend, or someone to

talk to. The game/spiritual thought/lesson Sister Frenkel and I had

been praying about and planned went really well and invited the

Spirit, everyone helped set up and clean up, and by the time it was

time for us to go home, everyone (seriously, this random group of the

most different personalities and backgrounds, who had almost all only

just met that night) stayed longer in the church playing games

together.

Sister Frenkel and I were skipping home. The best was this morning

when we read a text from one of the young adults here, Jakob, who had

kind of been skeptical about the whole thing, thanked us and said that

they will totally do a family home evening again. And that was really

our biggest goal, not the missionaries plan this one time thing, but

rather get the young adults excited and united again, and have them

take it from here, which they totally will.

Our friends also really had a great time and started showing more

interest in what we do as missionaries and "what makes our church

different anyway.." --which is my favorite question to answer :)

Sister Frenkel is actually leaving next week to Temple Square, which

makes me so sad, but I really know that she was sent here for a

reason. A couple reasons actually. And this was one of them, a chill

and friendly evening with friends who share your beliefs and where you

can invite your friends to also take part in the church. I know

activities aren't what this church is all about or should be based on,

but I do know that love, charity, uplifting surroundings and

supporting one another in our beliefs and lives are essential factors

to Christ's church :)

Have a great week!

Our fun mish-mosh family home evening group ❤️

So much spaghetti.... haha we sort of went a little crazy there with the spaghetti. About 8 packages I believe...

Dinner...

This is Sister North and Schwester Friedrich. Schwester Friedrich invited us and the Norths to lunch on Sunday and then took us on a walk around her home to see Schneeblümchen, cute little February flowers. So pretty :) haha she was so excited to show us the flowers! She'd planned the day for weeks, so sweet.

Tree hugger.

Our little picnic

Die Schneeblümchen (snow blossoms)

 

Roller Coaster Week

Hey!

This week was definitely a roller coaster. We had a lot of great
appointments set up that we were so excited for but all of them seemed
to fall through, even with our more solid investigators. Wednesday is
a great example of this:
We had one appointment that cut our studies a bit short and thank
goodness that worked out. It went really well actually! Once again
with Olga, the sweet Armenian lady. After that though a member,
Schwester Dafalias, insisted that she take us out to lunch and
that's when absolutely nothing went as planned haha. 

We had a nice time with her, and finished our language study in a
bookshop in town to save some time instead of going home. The
appointment we had right after that fell through unfortunately so
we did some street contacting around there. Pretty rough and
unfruitful for a while until we met the coolest girl named Stefanie!
Haha its so funny, after getting her contact information and setting
up an appointment for later that week, we walked around the corner,
and immediately when she was out of sight Sister Frenkel and I started
laughing and hugging and perhaps some tears were shed. "Sister
Lehmann! She's so normal!!" were Sister Frenkel's exact words.
Hahahaha I scolded Sister Frenkel for saying that, but I mean she had
a point. The people who generally say yes are not always the most
dependable or sincerely interested people. I think I can count on one
hand the number of normal Austrians who have wanted to meet with us in
all these months here.Well then we had to hop on the tram over
to our next appointment which surprise surprise also fell through,
and then we found out that our appointment that evening also fell through.

The moral of the story though is that it really worked out for the
best. We ended up finding two other really cool people we talked to
right by the appartment building where we were. It just proved to me
that fall through appointments and a change of plans doesn't mean that
Heavenly Father's plans also fell through. I really believe that he
wanted us to go to this neighborhood or that, or to stay in town to
meet Stephanie... All these little things to us make us feel like
we're just running around in circles in Linz getting nothing done, but
I've noticed that if I try to make the best of it and talk to everyone
around us, it becomes clear why we were suppose to be in that place at
that time.

And really, Wednesday was just one example of this, but I think
everyday this week there was some kind of experience like this.

Hope everyone is doing well. Have a great week!

Hiking in the foothills of Linz. They call them mountains but that is a lie.

Apparently we got a missed call on August 8, 2099

Zone training on Valentine's Day

Cool street singer/bird lady that we met in the street. Her name is Truffle Trolly I think...look her up on Sound Cloud. 

Well folks, here is Linz at its finest. I feel like I've kind of been deceptive with only sending the pretty pday side of Linz, but I think I will take some more down to earth, honest pictures of what we see of Linz haha

Did I mention that Sister Frenkel is actually a photographer? Haha well yes, she is. We have some really nice pictures but unfortunately every single one I attempted to take of her is really terrible and blurry. But here are some great pictures of me!

Another one with her good camera.

Short & Snappy

Hey there! Sorry, this email is gonna be short and snappy!

-the sweet Iranian family we've been teaching and  visiting but unfortunately can't give so many details about can finally get baptized! We're so so excited. They were glowing when we told them. I'm so excited. 

-Found and taught the sweetest Armenian lady his week. Her son-in-law came in during the lesson and started telling her all this anti-Mormon stuff in Armenian half way through and that definitely wasn't so cool. But then Olga, the lady, put him back in his place and insisted we continue to share our message. She is so faithful. She probably can hardly understand us, but she was overjoyed to receive a Book of Mormon in her mother tongue, eventhough she's partly blind... anyway, she really loves Jesus so things are going great :)

-I'm happy and doing well and loving missionary life with Sister Frenkel. Missions are the best. I miss a lot of things about home of course, but when I think about it, I know I'll miss the things I'm experiencing right now even more!

Have a wonderful week!!

We made a delicious frittata that should have lasted us a good three days but we yolo-ed it and ate it in one night.

First Fasching's Party

Hi!

Have my new companion now! Her name is Sister Frenkel. She´s from
Germany, which I´m super grateful for because my German has been needing
it! She actually lives in the mission, but is just going to be here
for a transfer while she waits for her visa. She´s actually supposed to
be going to the Salt Lake Temple Square mission. I´ll be sad to see
her go so soon, we get along really well. She´s doing so well though,
especially for never even having gone to the MTC!  She´s a little
overwhelmed right now, but she´s doing great.

Pa, you asked what happened to the man that we met on Thanksgiving. We
still meet with him, sometimes anyway :) He comes to church quite
often actually, but kind of is a little less interested to meet with us and
take the missionary lessons. We were telling our ward missionary about
the situation and he laughed and pointed out, the missionaries
generally have the opposite problem where investigators never come to
church, but love having the missionaries over :) Anyway, he´s doing
well.

Hard to say what happened this week, everything always goes so fast...
I had my first Fasching party! It´s just the Austrian version of
Carnival. They had a party at the church building for the primary kids
and one of our investigators and his little girl came! It was great!
Sister Frenkel and I dressed up as Pipi Langstrumpf. We asked one of the
men there if he could befriend and kind of stick with our investigator
but then we had to take care of his stand for him. I was so exhausted
by the end of it. Trying to speak German telling kids how to go
through this whole game while they're just throwing balls everywhere and
yelling and running and oh my goodness...

That´s everything for this week I think, nothing too exciting :)
Have a great week!

Ice skating with Mahsa and Sheila last Monday

"I am not allowed inside!"

Expensive Iranian tea. The color really weirded me out.

Last transfers Distrikt...

Saying goodbye to Sister Leonard...

Walking through Salzburg with Sister Phelps

Sister Frenkel was super excited to arrive at her first mission appartement, ours is pretty nice if I do say so myself...

"Friendship is magic"

New Linz missionaries...

Pipi Langstrumpf

Sister Leonard saying goodbye to our sweet investigators Rainer, Michelle, Melanie, and the cat, although her name has left me at the moment...