Hi Everyone!

 So, today I am emailing later than usual because we had our district meeting this morning. What? A district meeting on a Monday? Yes, BECAUSE President Kohler came to Vienna today and did interviews. It was actually a lot of fun. One district has their meeting going on while President pulls you out to do your interview. There was an Austrian reporter there who wanted to talk to President so he could write an article about what missionary life is like. It was interesting. We were in our district meeting singing our opening song and one of our Elders pulled out his guitar to accompany us. He does that sometimes and it is SO fun. It's like singing around the campfire and all happy and stuff, and then the reporter came in and started recording us singing. That was a bit uncomfortable, but it was really funny. Eventually I got pulled out to have my interview and it went really well. He just talked to me about keeping on going and serving people. It was good. After the interviews we had a lunch together in our church building and it was so good! The Elders basically constructed a sandwhich buffet. Let me tell ya, I am really going to miss the European bread after my mission. It is quality stuff here. Basically my breakfast every morning is a large hunk of delicious bread and yogurt (which is also delicious). I am so spoiled.

Anyways, this week was another good one. I'm at this point right now where I'm really just enjoying being a missionary. When challenges do come up, ya work them and that's it. On Friday we had a sport evening in our ward in Wiener Neustadt and so many investigators came. It was fantastic! We even had a bunch of less active members there too. We got to talk to them a lot and befriend them and I got to work on my poor volleyball\soccer skills. All in all it was good. I've realized that there is no such thing as a person who is not interesting to talk to. Everyone has their own story or interests that are just so interesting to talk about. If anyone knows my Dad they know that he is pretty big on running, and running shoes, and running clothes, and running magazines, and so on. Well, yesterday we were on the train from Wiener Neustadt to Wien and I noticed that the guy accross from me was wearing Newtons (a brand of running shoes) and was reading a running magazine. Basically, if you can click into a conversation about running shoes with any passionate runner, you are in. I mentioned the Newtons and the guy lit up and was able to keep going with me on this topic. Actually, he kind of took over. It was really funny, but it was cool for me to realize that every single person on this earth is interesting, and that every single person on this earth needs the gospel and as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is my job to share that message with them.

On Thursday, I got to have my first experience with Austrian dentistry...that was fun. I was flossing a couple of nights ago, like anyone would, and then randomly, part of my tooth popped out of my mouth. A PART OF MY TOOTH CAME OUT OF MY MOUTH!!!! I don't think that just happens. It hurt to drink or eat with that tooth, so I called the Mission nurse...again, and she made an appointment for me. That was nice, so we went to the address she gave us and we ended up in this really sketchy looking apartment complex. I was so not excited. It looked like this was going to be the worst dentist appointment of my life, but we found the door we were supposed to go in. We opened it and it was actually a super nice dentist office. That was a huge relief and the dentist was really nice. My tooth was fixed in like 15 minutes and the problem was solved. That was a HUGE tender mercy. Being a missionary is quite difficutlt when your tooth is hurting, so Heavenly Father's hand was in that one for sure. 

I don't have much time, so I just want to talk really quickly about what we did for p-day last week. After getting errands done, we went to the palace in Austria called Schönbrunn. It was so pretty! We basically took loads of pictures and just drooled the whole time. I'm going to put some in this email. Today, we might go see something too because we are in Vienna this week and the Sister Training Leaders from Graz are staying with us until Wednesday actually. They have meetings here with the Zone Leaders and stuff and so we have a full apartment, but it's super fun. We'll see what happens, but I hope everyone has a great week and makes good choices!

Love,

Sister Smiley