Week #66 Welcome to Innsbruck!

Hey everyone! I made it to Innsbruck! Transfer day went by quick and all of the sudden, I was on the other side of Austria! It is quite beautiful on this side of the country. Lots of wonderful mountains and the city is beautiful by itself. We have to take a train to get to our apartment from Innsbruck and on the way, we get to see a better view of the mountains and the valley. It all looks great in green. We will see what it looks like in white 😬

Sunday in Innsbruck

Where to start for this week... We have met with a few people and have discussed a variety of topics, all from Adam and Eve to tithing. We met this girl named Ola my first full day in Innsbruck and she shared a wonderful experience about how prayer helped her solve a crisis in her life. I have learned a lot more about the power of prayer on my mission and this lesson was a reminder of that. We also met with this girl Valentia yesterday who is trying to have a certainty in any kind of belief but she just has so many concerns so it will take some time to get there. We also met a wonderful girl named Daniela. The Elders found her on the street here in Innsbruck and she was so interested in the Gospel. She even asked if she could come to church! It was later found out that she had already been baptized and has not been in church since 2007 or something like that. Her goal is to get to the temple and we are going to try to help her to achieve that. She is super nice and she comes to Institute every week which is awesome! Our most progressing friend of the church is Marina. Her date for baptism is coming up but we are working to resolve a concern on tithing. If you could all pray for her, that would be wonderful. She is very nice and has a desire to accept the Gospel. The idea of tithing just bothers her. We have already met with her two times since I got here and she has amazing potential. This time will be crucial but with the Lord, all things are possible. 

We have also stayed busy in trying to find people to teach. We have a nice street called Maria Thersen Straße and we are already seeing some success there already. We also have this bike street display that we ride to a spot, park, and then we go out to work! I will admit that it was hard at first because a lot did not really happen at first but once we were done, we had handed out 10 Books of Mormon. It was quite a miracle. The bike display itself is pretty cool, just not fun to ride. Hopefully we can keep doing it for awhile but we will see what happens in winter. 

Our Bike Street Display

We also had Stake Conference this week! It was in Salzburg but we had a broadcast in Innsbruck. We have a few English speakers in our ward so they asked me to translate! That was the first meeting I have translated! I hope I did okay. One person told me that they got a lot out of the meeting and thanked me for translating. It was a pretty unique meeting because they had 6 of their returned missionaries share experiences and testimonies. President Brown also spoke about missionary work. It was quite powerful and it reminded me of how much I have learned on the mission. 

I have started something fun this week. I really wanted to get a spiritual confirmation that President Nelson is our prophet so I started reading his talks since he has been an Apostle. It is incredible to see how direct he is in giving instruction and how strong his testimony of the Gospel is. I am still in 1993 but it has been quite an experience to see in a small way the Lord preparing His servant for future work. I have also been doing the Book of Mormon challenge and it has been wonderful. I am realizing more how Jesus Christ is the center of the message of the Book of Mormon. I am so grateful to represent Him at this time and to carry His message wherever I go. 

Love you guys! Auf wiedersehen! 

Elder Evans 

Yeah I am enjoying it here in Innsbruck with Elder Gates. 

Our friend of the church Tony, before I left Wien.  

 Some views of the Alps

Pretty view from the train ride to Innsbruck