Sept. 8-14, 2019

Where did this week go?  I feel like I was just finishing writing last weeks Blog and here I am again trying to put the week in perspective.  We have been so busy we keep saying we did not work this hard when we were working and retirement was supposed to be at a slower pace.  It continues to be a little overwhelming how long it takes to go places and get things done.  Sometimes I feel like I am in slow motion.   We thought this week was going to be quiet and maybe we would catch up on some things - every day seemed to be busier than the previous day.

    PRATER VIENNA
Sunday was a beautiful day and we decided to take a walk through the Prater Amusement Park.  It is famous for the Wiener Riesenrad (Giant Ferris wheel).  It was constructed in 1897 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef I.  It was one of the earliest Ferris wheels ever built and was the world's tallest extant Ferris wheel for 65 years until the Technostar was built in Japan in 1985.  It was originally constructed with 30 gondolas, but was severely damaged in WWII and was rebuilt with only 15 gondolas.  It has appeared in many movies, novels and a TV series.

Prater is a large Park open to the Public.  There are beautiful tree-lined streets with lots of restaurants, amusement rides, each independently owned and operated by local people; a train and Madame Tussauds wax world. 
It was nice to just walk through the park and enjoy the sights and sounds of all the people.

This was the only quiet day we had all week and we really enjoyed the stroll in the park.

 Wednesday was Transfer Day.  We said good-bye to 4 missionaries.  Three were transferred to new cities and Sis. Wittkopp completed her mission and was heading home.  We added 7 new missionaries to our Zone.  We are so excited to have Sis. Griffith and Sis. Breinholt in our District.  We served with both of them in the Freiburg District and they will add a lot to the Districts in Vienna. 

 It has become a tradition for us to

Elders Cuttler, Mogenson, Sisters Mogenson and Daynes

see them off at the train station.  It is an interesting dynamic to see these young people have to adapt to new companions, cities and countries about every 3-4 months.  I admire them for being so resilient and making it work.

We had a retired BYU professor and his wife come and visit us in the Institute.  They are here for the next month helping with the BYU Study Abroad Program and touring the country.  They were here 12 years ago with the BYU program and helped establish the Institute Building we are currently in.  It is always fun to learn a little history about where you are serving.
Twenty-Eight students arrived on Monday with the BYU Program.  Five of them came to our Institute class on Wednesday evening.  It was nice having new students and several of the local students were back as well.  We fed 31 people on Wednesday.  The numbers are growing.  It was good I made something that could be stretched.  I served Fried Rice, fruit, bread and homemade cranberry oatmeal cookies.  One young man came and asked if he could have cooking lessons from me.  He is from Hungary.  I told him sure if he would teach me how to make Hungarian Goulash. 
Once the BYU students saw how nice our building was, one of the teachers asked if they could hold a class at the building.  They scheduled Thursday night to have a class to show the movie, The Third Man.  It is a movie we had just watched two weeks ago.  It was made on 1949 in Vienna.  It is part of their Art History Class.  We had 26 students and they really enjoyed it - I made lots of popcorn and cookies for them - who would not like it - and it was free!  They have asked if they can come again for their Opera Appreciation class.  We like the building be used and hopefully it will get some of their students attending our Institute Class.

 We see and learn new things every day.  We have been upgrading some of the furnishings in the missionary apartments.  It is a challenge to find what we need and then to get it where it needs to go - so grateful we have a car.  We read about Tanger 48 - a Resale shop for the whole city of Vienna.  They have an amazing system.  We decided to go explore and find it and see what it was all about.  As we were walking around and around trying to figure out google maps, we came upon this apartment building.  The whole building is made with these planter boxes with greenery.  It was very unique.  Maybe it keeps the building cooler.

It has an amazing irrigation system using rain gutters and pipes. 
We found the Re-sale shop and it was Huge!  It was so fun to see all that they had to offer.  We actually found the chairs we were needing for one of the apartments.  They were very nice quality at a price way below what we could find new.  We went back with the car and were able to purchase them and deliver to the Elders.  It made their day.  They now have chairs to sit in to eat at their table.  We hope these last longer than their last ones - let's just say boys can be a little rough on furniture!

Saturday was P-Day, but was spent getting ready for next week and all that we have to do.  We made three trips to the Appliance store to purchase a new refrigerator for our apartment just to finally find out we cannot purchase one from their store.  We told the first salesman our current fridge is from IKEA and he didn't say anything.  He just said we needed better measurements.  We came back with the measurements and they said we needed pictures of the hinge system.  It is a built in refrigerator and they are not as easy to replace.  So, we took pictures and went back - this has been a two week project.  Not to mention we have to submit everything to the owner for approval.  When we went back with the photos, they said it can only be replace with an IKEA appliance.  Our owner said she did not want us to go to IKEA.  So today we went to IKEA and tried to purchase one.  We sent pictures to the owner and waited for a reply - no reply.  We will have to go back to IKEA another day.  This seems to be the way of life here.  We have an amazing week starting on Monday with Interviews with our Mission President, Elder Kopischke in the Area Presidency speaking to us Tuesday night, Wednesday driving to Munich via Salzburg, Thursday Mission Conference with Elder Kopischke, Friday driving back to Vienna and then we are back to Saturday to catch up with laundry and shopping for the next week.  We will have one week back and then we will be leaving for Innsbrook for Senior Conference and then back to Vienna to get ready for the Fall kick-off of Institute.  Just typing this is getting me a little nervous about how we will get it all done.  Knowing we are serving the Lord and on His errand, makes it worth it.  I know we will be blessed beyond our own abilities. We are so grateful for all of the people we are meeting and for the experiences we are having. 
Viel Liebe,
The Grimmett's