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.