Vienna and the Senior Missionary Conference

Continuing my last post, we traveled on from Salzburg, stopping in St. Pölten to visit Elder Herzog and his companion, and then found our hotel where we were to stay and have our senior missionary couple conference. We have these mission-wide conferences twice a year. Last April we were in Munich and now in Vienna.

First, a little about the conference and then the pictures.

At our conference this past week, we were treated to hear some wonderful presentations and discussions. It was our privilege to learn about the work and how we should trust in the Lord. Here are a couple of stories.

A couple lived in Fredonia, Arizona. He was from Poland, and had emigrated from Poland to Arizona. They were members of the church. One day, he felt the prompting that he and his wife needed to go to Poland to serve a mission, so they just went to their Stake President and said they were ready to leave and go to Poland. He told them that they needed to start working on papers and such for the process in order to serve a mission, but he was insistent that they were to go and did not need to fill out the paperwork. As they were together talking, the stake president received a telephone call from Elder Hales asking about that couple and that they were needed to serve as missionaries in Poland. This was at the time that the work was just beginning to start in Poland, around 1977.

Another story was of a couple who were preparing to serve a mission. He had in his patriarchal blessing that he was to serve on the "isles of the sea," so he wondered why he was called to serve in Vienna Austria. They accepted and came to Europe to serve as missionaries. The mission president called them in and assigned them to serve in the Adriatic area, in the area of the Greece and Crete. It was explained that they would be working with the people on the islands there. It was after that, that this brother told his mission president of the promise in his patriarchal blessing.

As in all opportunities of service, it is not us that determines where we serve or how we will find success. We are to let the Lord do the work in His way. There are two scriptures in Alma that show this. Both were descriptions of the process the sons of Mosiah went through to be prepared for their service:

Alma 17:11 " .. establish my word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls."

Alma 26:27 "Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success. "

The point is that this is not their success, but rather, the Lord's success and the Lord provides the way and bring about the miracles. When we start to feel that it is us that has done this, then we have lost the true purpose of our service. We are not the cause. It is always the Lord.

It is interesting that both at home in the missionary work there and also the work here, the miracles happen. It is not that we have implemented and carried out some great plan that has brought about results. It is always something else that takes place and we just happen to be there. As we do what is asked of us and trust in the Lord, He then makes things happen and brings miracles and tender mercies to us.

We are seeing some of these miracles, an in patience do what we can and realize where the success comes and how it comes - and especially in the Lord's timeframe.

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Now, for the pictures...

This is the place where we stayed our two nights in Salzburg. The gray car is our rental car, a Mercedes.

We chose to go on a little detour on our way to St. Pölten, going through the Lakes area. This is the area where they did a lot of the Sound of Music filming, so we saw some wonderful sights

We stopped in St. Pölten (about an hour before arriving in Vienna) and took Elders Herzog and Mongia to lunch at a schnitzel place.

Here is an interesting sign as we were approaching Vienna. Praha (Prague) and Brno are in the Czech Republic, Bratislava is in Slovakia and you know where Budapest is.

Here are some of us at the conference before one of our sessions. You can tell who is taking the pictures.

After our morning sessions on Friday, we all went to Herb's Schnitzelwirt where we all had Schnitzel or Schnitzel cordon bleu. The place is famous among the missionaries here, who are treated very well by the owners.

 We took a lot of pictures, but I only included a few here. On this one, there were a lot of horses and carriages near a church in the middle of the city.

 Here is a picture of the Blue Danube. It really wasn't very blue, but it was still beautiful. The hills on the edge of town are part of the Austrian Alps.

This is Heldenplatz, or Heroes Square. It was here, on the balcony, where Hitler formally announced the Anschluss on March 15, 1938.

 This is the "summer " palace of the Austrian royalty, Schönbrunn. We took a tour (photos, not allowed). It was impressive. The top one is the front, including the large entrance area. The bottom one shows the back. Sister B is closest to the camera in this shot.

This is looking away from the palace towards the gardens and fountains that were situated behind the palace.

Heading to Vienna... and taking our time

We have a Senior Missionary conference this Thursday through Saturday in Vienna. Since it is also our anniversary this week, we decided to take a few extra days and visit some sites in Austria along the way. It has rained a lot on our trip so far. Monday was wet all day and today has been even wetter.

I was tempted to put a lot of pictures here, but restrained myself. I did put more than I put in my Facebook posts. Now you can see some of our beautiful sights.

As we were driving through the rain, Sister B. got this really nice shot showing the water on the car window and the mountains.

This is as we were nearing the city of Chur in southeast Switzerland.

Here you see us approaching Liechtenstein from the south. We drove down to Chur to see the Alps in that region and then decided to drive through Vaduz, Liechtenstein. As you can see, it was pretty wet and rainy.

As we were leaving one of the cities of Liechtenstein, there was a covered wooden bridge crossing the Rhein River. Traffic was not allowed on it but we got this picture as we were passing by.

After leaving Liechtenstein, we went through Feldkirch, Austria. Here is a fortress in town. We drove through the tunnel that runs underneath it in the rock.

We found out that there are a LOT of tunnels on the highway to Innsbruck. This one was the longest. The distance markers every once in a while along the way indicated that it was 10.3 kilometers (about 7 miles), but after the 10.3 kilometers, it continued on for another 3 kilometers. There were at least 10 other tunnels of varying length. They had a special toll for that tunnel. We had a freeway pass for Austria that is supposed to pay for all tolls along the way, but learned that there are some freeways and tunnels that are extra.

As we continued along the valley towards Innsbruck, we saw these churches on the peaks and other churches in the upper valleys. Sorry this is not a clear as it should be, but it gives you the idea anyway.

We went in to Innsbruck and had a light dinner there and then fought traffic getting out of town. Here is a picture of me standing in front of a little chapel in downtown Innsbruck. It is located on the island between lanes of traffic. It was raining.

Our Inn for the night was in Stubaital, about 15-20 miles south. Here is a view of our little valley, looking out the window of our room.

This is looking over to the south side of our valley.

Here is our valley shot the next morning. You can see that there is new snow in the higher elevations above us. They told us that they start skiing this Friday here.

 Our little place was about half way between Innsbruck and the Italian border. Since we are only allowed to be in our mission area, it was still OK for us to visit this little bit of Italy, because they speak German there. We could not pass up the chance to see a bit of Italy. This is a little glimpse of the Italian Alps along the freeway.

This is to prove that we were there. This sign alternatively displayed Italian and German.

This was interesting. If you look closely, you see a gondola crossing the freeway.

On our way up the canyon towards Italy (still in Austria) we got past some trucks that were blocking our on-ramp to the freeway. We got into the inner lane and continued on up the canyon (after paying the 8.50 Euro toll). It turned out that, because of construction, the two lanes of the freeway were separated by barriers. Trucks could not go up the inner lane because it was only 2 meters wide. There was a major accident in that outer lane, completely blocking all traffic. We got by because we went up that inner lane, which was fortunate (a blessing). On our way back, the trucks were still lined up trying to make it up the canyon. The crashed semi had been removed, but it still was backed up.

We spent some time in Salzburg in the afternoon. Here is a picture from the Monastery area, looking up you can see the castle on the hill.

This is the front of the St. Peter's Cathedral (Dom). The third statue over is Peter and he is holding a golden and silver key. The far door has the date 774 written above it, when the church was first built.

This is inside the St. Peters Cathedral.

This is a walkway past the churches (on the left) and the burial area and catacombs (on the right). Above is the castle.

Near the churches, we found these unusual statues. They are cucumbers.

We love the sound of the bells. Here is a video with a 60 second clip. The view is not much, but you can hear the bells ringing in the evening (if your browser or blog viewer lets you run movies - sorry if it doesn't).

Mozart was born in Salzburg. Here is a statue in his honor. You would not believe the many souvenirs, candies, etc. that exist here.

Here is the building where Mozart was born.

At the end, we needed to refuel. I have seen this brand of petroleum in a number of places, though is seems to be more common in Austria. I jokingly called it the place with the six-legged dog with bad breath. I have no clue what it is supposed to mean.

OK, now we are finally up to today. We went up to the Salzburg Castle. First, we rode up the rail to the base of the castle. This really is looking straight down. It was a steep train run.

Sister B and I are about to climb up to the castle entrance. Even with the rail line, we had a lot of stairs to climb, and even more after getting into the castle.

Here is the view of Salzburg from the castle (not the top of the castle, either).

This is one of many pictures inside the castle, in one of the chambers.

 Here is a cannon for defending the castle and below is a look out the window.

They had a large museum and many things showing the history of the castle, including these scale models showing the development of it over the years. The Catholic Cardinals controlled the salt trade of the area over the years back then and used the vast wealth to build the castle and surrounding churches.

Here we are starting the long journey back down. We walked instead of taking the rail line down.

Here is the wall at the bottom of that particular walkway. In the window on the left, the gnome is watching, but so is the video camera right next to him.

Lastly, we drove about 15 miles north and visited the town of Oberndorf where Silent Night was written about 200 years ago. Here is the chapel where he first performed the famous Christmas hymn.

Tomorrow we head out to Vienna, with a stop in St. Pölten to visit one of our former missionaries.

Continued on the next blog...

Out and About - a mix of activities and work

This one is a mixture of things. We have enjoyed being busy with people - members, investigators and missionaries - and also seeing the interesting sights - so you get to see some of various random things this time.

First, the missionaries are really working hard and are teaching people from all over the world. We have investigators from Macedonia, Romania, Sri Lanka, Russia and Nigeria. The woman from Sri Lanka and her children speak Tamil and a little German. We have been with them on two different teaching appointments. She is very believing and is Christian (Lutheran) and our last visit was interesting. We have a hard time communicating, but we love her spirit. At the end of our last visit, she and her two daughters stood and sang a long and beautiful song about Jesus, in the Tamil language. It was beautiful. In preparation for the lesson, I found and printed out a Joseph Smith pamphlet. Here is a little section of the title page, so you can see this beautiful language.

Next, as we went to Dornbirn, Austria for our district meeting last week, I took this picture of the chapel in Dornbirn. It is small but a beautiful building.

Our own meeting place is in the top floor of a business building in Weingarten, but it overlooks the city of Ravensburg. Here is a view out our chapel windows showing the towers, gates and churches of Ravensburg. You can see the moslem mosque in the lower right area as well. If the clouds were not there, you might also be able to get a glimpse of the Alps in the distance.

Speaking of the Alps. Here is another view of them from near the home of one of our members. You can see Lake Constance between us and the Alps.

We had a wonderful dinner at the home of these members. It was a very enjoyable time, as you can see.

Behind our home is a hill which I climb once in a while, It is not very large. On the other side I took some pictures, again looking out towards the Alps. The city of Weissenau is at the bottom of the hill. Weissenau is part of Ravensburg, on the south.

Another place we visit, to see a member, is in Tettnang. The road to his place is very narrow, even for German roads. It looks like a sidewalk, but it is the road to their home (Behm).

Now for some fairly random ones...
We went into the city last week to see the Ravensburg Games day. They really celebrate the fact that there is a games company here and set up a lot of activities for the kids for two days. Here is a shot of one activity where the kids could take a ride on a Segway. By the way, it is election season (Sept 22 is election day) so you see a campaign poster there as well.

Next is a picture of a truck that was in front of us on a "normal" road in the middle of the city. It just barely made it past this car. It is amazing what these truck drivers have to do to get around these roads.

Last, I thought I would get a shot of our computer screen as we were visiting with our sons over Skype.