Anyways, we had zone training this week and it was so good! This is only my third zone training, but I felt so pumped to go out and do missionary work after this one. Something they focused on a lot was "working smarter". It is very easy to run out the door in the morning and kind of just float around and call that missionary work. It is too, but the thing is, there is a way to make it so that we spend every hour of our day doing something affective. In an ideal world, we would have appointments all throughout the day, and be doing contacting as we travel from appointment to appointment, since we go by way of public transportation. We've been trying to do that a lot. Another thing they talked a lot about is working with the memebers. MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK IS SO IMPORTANT. I think half the reason I needed to go on a mission was to realize how important member missionary work is. When the members get involved, the work is so much more affective. It's just so exciting. We have some wards that are really excited to work with us. I've been studying the ward mission plans and I'm really excited to put both of them into action. It's cool because they are really tailored to each ward. So yeah, it was a good zone conference.
The day before zone conference, we were trying to get in touch with a member so we could sing happy birthday to them, we were kind of playing phone tag and waiting for them to call us back. Well, the phone rang and we were so excited to sing happy birthday that we just put it on speaker phone right away and started belting out happy birthday. We were about half way through when Sister Freimann looked down at the phone and goes: "It's the zone leaders!". That was our bad. I picked up the phone right away and took it off speaker and all I could hear was one of the Elders saying, "Well this is awkward." It was hilarious. Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there moments", but we were laughing for a super long time.
So in our ward we have a couple who we love so much. The wife is Mongolian and I have no idea where the husband is from, but they are both awesome. We have our mission correlation meetings at their apartment because she is a ward missionary and they are about as sweet as you can get. Well, this week, the husband was checked into the hospital because he is having heart problems. They have been there about a week now and we know that they aren't having the most fun time ever. We've been able to visit them a couple of times, and one evening we went over with the Elders to have FHE (Family Hospital Evening). We brought some snacks with us and played UNO and had a spiritual thought. It was so good. It's hard to see these sweet people stuck in a hospital, but I hope that we could brighten things up a little bit. They do so much for the missionaries. We could at least try to do a little bit for them.
On Tuesday we had English class which I am a huge fan of. The one Mongolian lady that I talked about before came again and she brought a friend! I never really know what I'm going to teach when we go into the class, but I say a prayer before and with their questions and some help from Heavenly Father, we are able to have a super good hour. It is just so cool to be able to help people in that way. I have never done something like teach a language before, but it is so fun.
On Friday, we were in our Vienna apartment doing weekly planning when we got a call. One of our investigators was at the YSA center and the senior couple there had to leave, but she wanted to be taught, so we basically ran to the other side of the city and met with her. We stayed at the center and made waffles and talked about the ten commandments, because that's where we are now with her. It was a really good time, and when I was thinking about it afterwards, I realized, that I would drop almost anything if it meant helping someone come unto Christ. It's is a real special privilege being able to do this full time.
So on Sundays, Europe basically shuts down. I don't know where everyone goes or how they all do it, but literally, there is no one. We've kind of had a hard time figuring out what we should do with our proselyting hours once we have finished studies and going to church, but we finally figured something out and I think it is a really great idea. So we made this thing called The Cookie Calandar. It has birthdays on it. We also have this thing where we go to church and ask the Relief Society President who there is that she thinks needs our help or a visit this week. We then go home and bake a lot of cookies, and after our studies, we run around and give all of the cookies out. It's great because a lot of the people on the Cookie Calandar are less active, so we are able to come in contact with them, and, we are already making a dent in the list from our Relief Society President. It's a good time and I'm really happy about it.
Today, we are in Vienna for p-day. We have a bunch of errands to run, but hopefully, we'll be able to see some sights too. Who knows. Well, that's all for today. I realize that there is no real organization to these letters and that I just kind of tell random stories, but I hope people think they're interesting or slightly entertaining. I hope you are all doing well and making good choices!
Love,
Sister Anna Smiley
Pictures: The three of us wearing our matching Austria shirts headed out to do some serious service (aka, we organized wood while the Elders chopped it), Family Hospital Evening, and a rainbow we saw from the hospital room when it stopped raining.
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