Stake Conference with Elder Bednar (Feb 24)

This week consisted of a lot of member appointments! It was so great! I am so grateful we have so many great members in this ward!

It was pretty crazy with Sister Judd leaving, but I am amazed with how well she handled everything. I’m telling everyone now, when I have to come home, I’ll be a wreck, simply said.

On Transfer day, Sister Jencks and I spent the day together working in Wiener Neustadt. I learned a lot from her and its so fun to do tausches (splits)!

It seemed as Sister Allman and I finally pulled into Graz, we had to turn right back and go to stake conference. So, we have had one whole day together in Graz :)

But Stake Conference was so great. I love how much the members in this area of the world focus so much on Missionary work. The stake created great goals to help them and us! My favorite is praying for the missionaries and the investigators by name. I think that will really help the ward become more involved and just have a love for the people learning about the gospel.

For the Sunday portion, it was a broadcast. This broadcast was specifically only for the German speaking members. Elder Bednar even spoke in GERMAN! It was the coolest thing ever! He served in this mission, and I was so impressed with his words. He’s getting a bit old though :/

Overall, this was a great week. I am expecting great things to come out of Graz this transfer!

Sister Allman and spent a lot of time planning and making goals for this transfer. I can feel that we are going to really expand our teaching pool and meet some really great people. It’s off to a great start, and I am just loving it.

Have a great week!

Liebe grüße!

Sister Regnier

Week of Krapfens (Feb 17)

Well, this week flew by. It's crazy to think this transfer is already over. Now, thanks to dad, I also realized I am 11 months into my mission.... mensch. This goes WAY too fast.  

This Monday, we were invited by the young adults to give the spiritual thought in FHE. It's so fun to spend time with them and see how strong they are in the Gospel.

This week, I was able to attend two district meetings. One here in Graz, and one on my tausch (splits) in Wien. I really loved them! In one of them, we talked about approaching people about the family. It's something that I am not always the best at. But we worked on introducing the Family Proclamation and bringing it to the restored Gospel. It was really educational for me! I then felt ready to go find a bunch of families! I also learned a lot from my district leader this week about being a good leader. He is so great and really has a desire to help as well as learn from the other missionaries. I was really impressed how he used humility, which I have been studying so much lately (I even had a district assignment on it.... Maybe Heavenly Father is trying to tell me something :) ).

We had a week full of working with appointments.

Sister Kosmath, has made so much progress, a week or so ago I told you that she’s started to do genealogy. Well she has finally started reading again in the Book of Mormon. She is marking her copy all up! Its wonderful and brings tears to my eyes how she’s learning how much strength she receives from reading it.

We had quite a few member appointments. One of which was on Valentines Day. Because it's not celebrated too much over here, we weren’t expecting anything. However, one of our members from America invited us over and fed us Mexican food and played games. It was really fun! She was so thoughtful and I just really love her!

Both of our investigators are doing great. They are taking the information in and just realizing how important it is. I love teaching them and seeing them accept the gospel. I am so glad that this Gospel is for everyone. Every single person will benefit from it. I Love being a missionary.

I am really sad to see Sister Judd go. We had some really good times and saw so much progress in this ward. I am also really excited for my new companion, Sister Allman, to come join the force over here in beautiful Graz.

Also, I ate a ton of krapfens this week. Every member wanted us to eat these apricot filled donuts. Never again.

Have a great week! love ya!

Crazy Goodness (Feb 10)

Wow. I am pretty sure, somehow, this was the longest week of my mission. I feel like last Pday was a transfer ago. That is not a bad thing! A lot of craziness has happened. And I've been in a lot of cities. So, I will use my planner to write this :)

Dienstag (Tuesday):

Well we caught a 7:25am train to get to Wien. We had zone training as well as a Golden7trainer meeting. Zone training went great. Sister Judd and I talked on humility. I must say, I loved preparing for this one. I learned a lot, and it was very... humbling :) We also worked on our street contacts. It was all the stuff we learned from our big meeting in Munchen (Munich) but it's always fun to put a Vienna twist on it. I think everyone really enjoyed it. The golden7trainer meeting was really cool. We split the Goldens (new missionaries) from their trainers and talked to them in groups. We then went back together explaining all the concerns were the same. It's so funny, when I was a golden, I was so "pity me" and thought that I was the only one feeling like how I was. Well that was wrong. All Goldens go through the same stuff. I hope they were able to see that from our meeting. :) Well, today we had a bit of a panic because Sis Judd left her stuff on the train. So we had to figure out how to work with the OBB(rail system) people. But members love us, and were really able to help us out. Everything was returned. So grateful.

Mittwoch (Wednesday):

Zone Conference! Loved it! We got to hear a lot from Sister Miles and President Miles. I loved it, I thought a lot about how we, as members of the church, are huge examples in everything we do. I remember this time in Passau when we were dooring and someone told us that they had seen us on the bridge. They knew that we were Mormon missionaries from that moment... good thing we weren’t doing what you did on bridges during you mission dad!.... :)  We also had a district leader meeting. All went well. Then, we started our tausch (splits). Well, picture this. Sister Packer, the elders, and I are sitting on the train, when 5 min before it leaves I realize we haven't printed tickets for it. We had to sprint, told the elders to throw our stuff out if we weren’t back in time. Well as we realized we never received a ticket number we run back to the train, as I am pressing the button to open the door, it drives off. Leaving Sister Packer and I in dirdles (German dresses), jacketless and wallet-less. At least we had our phone. We just had to wait a while before the elders could come rescue us. They are seriously great. Well, we got home, very, very late but had a miracle tausch the next day.

Donnerstag (Thursday):

I will go into details for the tausch, because it was great!

We first dropped off some Book of Mormons that a less active member wanted to give out! Sweet. Then we headed to our first appointment: We were about 30 min early so we decided to do street contact, which I hadn't done for a VERY VERY long time. We were both nervous, but we put our trust in the Lord and had some GREAT conversations. Seriously! It was so cool! We talked about the purpose of life, modern day prophets, and church organization. It was great. We had a lesson with a less active. She had a hard week but had started doing genealogy. With the help of another member, she found a whole family, they are already sealed in the temple :))) We then went to our appointment with Sk____. It went so well. We talked about Joseph Smith and the priesthood, she loved it. On the way to the church from there, we found another person!! (That means, I am hitting my record for potentials found in one day). WE then have a WONDERFUL lesson with P___. Schwester Rauch came, who is also from Ghana. She helped SO MUCH and was able to explaining so many differences from what their culture believes, BEST JOINT TEACH EVER. Then, P___ taught the Elders the plan of salvation. It was the best lesson we have ever had with him. So heading home from that lesson, to hit our goals, all we needed was one more potential..... She Rauch offered to drive us home, so that cut a lot of bus contacting time down. We were nervous. Walking down the street to our house, I was a bit nervous and told Sis Packer, no one is in sight, and were are a minute away...... Well just then, 2 guys turned the corner... We talked to them, they took a Book Of Mormon and ASKED if we could meet to talk more. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! SO MANY MIRACLES in one day, and I didn't even explain everything! It was wonderful! It was a wonderful tausch!

The next day, Freitag (Friday), Sister Judd and I also saw miracles. We had a great day, even after the bus schedules were VERY against us... haha. We had a lesson with a less active that is making so much progress within a couple months, she is already reading in ETHER. We showed her the Mormon messages, she LOVED THEM. We have been using them a lot, and everyone just loves them! The Spirit is really present when people ponder the messages they contain. We also met with a member, and her non-lds friends. It went so well!

Now we come to Saturday, we had a finding day in Bruck. That means we went to a little dorf (village), Kampfenberg and doored. Well I always thought this town was called krampfenberg (donut mountain I guess). Sister Judd and I mentioned how fun it would be to eat a krapfen here..... WELL Someone let us in! We talked with a mom and her daughter. They have an uncle in America who is LDS and she has talked with members at her flower shop.... how cool! She took a Book of Mormon and the elders will be contacting her to talk about the chapter she is going to read. It was seriously so cool to get to know this adventures family. Oh, and she fed us Krampfens :)

After finding day, we had a lesson with Pe__. We watched the Joseph Smith movie that is on Lds.org. She loved it. Before the movie she told us she knew that he died young but not how. It was such a great experience because she only knew about him seeing God, the Father and His Son. But we were able to see what else happened in his life. I am seriously so grateful for his life and all he did. I am also grateful for lds.org and how much we have used it this week! It is such a wonderful tool! Sunday was great. There were many people at church and we were able to spend the day in meetings and planning.

What a successful week!

Sorry this email is so crazy. But it describes my week pretty well :) Crazy goodness :)

Love you!

Sister Regnier

Week of Miracles (Feb 3)

 I have a miracle story to share with you :) So, there is a member from Letbia (sp?) living in Graz. Sadly, she had no contact with the church and due to her high demanding job, she isn't able to come to Church. Her daughter is currently studying abroad and met, by no coincidence, a friend from a member in our ward. They chatted and their conversation turned to the church. The daughter told this friend about her mother and gave him the contact information for her mother, which was forwarded to our ward and given to us. We were able to have a beautiful visit this member, Skaidra. I have never seen someone so excited to have the missionaries over. We showed her the church website, talked about the gospel, and made another appointment. It was truly wonderful. I am so grateful I was able to help this woman have contact with the church again. She will now be well taken care of, visited by the bishop and receive visiting teachers. She is seriously the coolest! She met missionaries 12 years ago on the bus. She put the pamphlet in her pocket and forgot about it, until she saw them again, which lead her to baptism.

I am SO SO grateful I had the opportunity to get to know this BEAUTIFUL daughter of God.

As if this miracle wasn't enough, God decided to prove to me again how important this work is by showing me another!

P____'s dad living in Ghana died early this week. Two days later, his friend here in Austria passed away. He had a hard week. We started teaching P___ maybe 2 weeks ago. Well this week we taught him the plan of salvation. What a tender mercy. He is continually reading his scriptures, praying and coming to church, despite the language difficulties and his personal situation. It has been a testimony builder to me to see his priorities. This gospel is for EVERYONE and can help EVERYONE if they just accept it.

This work is amazing.

I love how rewarding it has been, even though we spent a big chunk of our time in München at mission leadership council. Which was, as always, awesome. One cool change to some rules, we are now allowed to use du sprache (the more friendly way of talking verses the formal way of speaking, used with people of high rank, older people, or strangers) with the elders. Ja, that means nothing to you, BUT it's wonderful and takes away so much awkwardness for people around us. We talked a lot about finding, it was really cool, because every set of leaders shared ideas for creative finding. I learned a lot of ways we can improve here in Graz.

Well, the appointments this week were great! I am seeing so many people progress and accept Jesus Christ's gospel.

We met with a family in the ward for the second time. It was awesome. They are the coolest family. Well, okay, I feel that every family in Austria is the coolest family, they are just so different, and so strong in the gospel. I love it. This family is just so loving and so centered on the gospel. The mom said, we don't have everything, but we have love. I just love them! After we met with them, the daughter sacrificed a large part of her day to come help us teach a lesson in English. I'm sure it was very scary for her, but she was willing and she had to sit at the church for a long time afterwards to get a ride home. We also had gemeinde besuch this week. This means that everyone on the ward council meets with the missionaries and we go visit less active members on splits. Sister Z___, the Relief Society president, and I went to go visit a less active sister. Just another miracle this week :) We went to the address she was listed under. Well the numbers on that street skipped her house number. We spent time looking, but couldn't find it anywhere. Then sister Zorn told me she had a feeling that we should go look on a different street. Well, when we got to that street we went to the same house number that was listed but just on this other street. As we approached the Klingel, sure enough, we saw her name on it! She immediately let us in. What a miracle! I am so grateful for Schwester Z___ and how in-tune she is :)

On Sunday, one of the primary kids in our ward was baptized. It was beautiful, friends from all over Austria came. It was an awesome opportunity for P___ and others to see a baptism.

Obviously I have had a great week :)

Happy Birthday Mom!

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Liebe Grüße

Sister Regnier