What an Advent-ful Week!
Get it? Like, eventful, but Christmas? Haha. Ha.
Wednesday, 5th:
Dooring!
And uploading areabook! This is a big project. Basically, we're going through and calling all of the people in the paper areabook to see if they're still interested. When they say no (or rather, hang up on us) we upload their file by entering the data by hand (but now there are privacy laws so we have to change things like "Is a very nice Muslim who wants to learn more about Christ" to "Is a very nice person who believes that Christ is a prophet but wants to learn more about Him as our Savior"). This takes a while because some people have records going back to the 90s, with various lessons throughout and multiple pages worth of information that we have to enter. It's obnoxious. But it'll be worth it when we can finally have it all done. My favorite part is shredding the papers once they're done. :)
We tried to get a VISA for S. Spratt, but the place was closed. 
We practiced a musical number for zone conference. It's basically half of the Salzburg zone, along with Sister (and possibly Präsident) Brown.
Thursday, 6th:
6 months! I've been out for 6 MONTHS! Schnikey, time sure does fly. This means I'm already 1/3 done with my mission! I remember on the train ride from the Mission Home to Wien, I was travelling with a Sister who had just passed her 6 month Mark and I thought she was oh-so-wise-and-knowledgeable-
We ate lunch with Schwester Cumberworth and her darling little kids. She made us Käsespätzle. 
Well, she made it for her kids, and we got to enjoy it, too. ;)
We tried to get a VISA for S. Spratt, but we couldn't find where to go inside of the building, so we called a member and he told us we were at the wrong building, and by that time it was closed.
Friday, 7th:
We did a lot of waiting in the morning, because we were going to get S. Spratt her VISA, but we decided to call to set up an appointment (just in case) and this place that the member had led us to was for Land Wels and not Stadt Wels, so we still didn't know where to go. So we called the office Elder in charge of VISAs and waited for him to figure out where to go. In the meantime, we decided to go by on an investigator family, and texted a member asking for their friends' address. We waited. And waited. And eventually got the address, but at that point we had to do other things. Our Büro finally got back to us while we were dooring, and told us the VISA place was closed so they would have to call them again on Monday.
Dooring!
We went by on Schwester Baumgartner, a sweet old lady who is too sick to come to church. We read a short scripture with her.
We were practicing for the musical number for zone conference, when Bischof Jaburek walks in and starts talking to us. Somehow in the conversation, he got us to agree to doing a musical number on the 23rd, so... I'll be playing "Im Stroh in der Krippe" and S. Spratt will be singing!
Story time! So last weekend we had called through our paper areabook and found this one record with the Familie Mohammadi. The parents and oldest son had been baptised, and we did the math and realised the next 2 sons would be old enough now. We've never seen or heard of them before, so we assumed they were less-actives and gave them a call. We set up an appointment to come by! So this day, we drove out to their house and parked and walked up to their door right at 5:00, like we had planned. We klingled, and nobody answered. Except that we saw a 15-year-old kid close the window in the family room where we could see him watching TV. So we walked away from the door, called the dad and left a message when he did answer, waited 10 minutes, and then drove away to go eat dinner at our favorite local Döner man's shop. An hour later we get a call from the dad asking us where we were, because he was going to be home from work in 5 minutes. So we told him we could come back, somewhat begrudgingly because we had other things to do - like studies - but we got in the car and drove to their house again. Which I am so glad we did! It was such a good experience! We got to know them and we shared a spiritual thought, S. Spratt not-so-subtlely asked if all of their kids were baptised, they said no but that they would have to talk to them about that, we learned why they hadn't come to church for 2 years, we invited them to the Christmas party, they said they would try to come back to church, and their oldest son (the one who closed the window) asked us if we would help him with his English homework. So we agreed! They were all so happy to see us, because the last missionaries who had talked to them were from 2 years ago (because up until March/April this was a biking area, and they live a little out of the way). So we set up an appointment to help the kid with his homework on Monday!
Saturday, 8th:
Dooring!
We had our ward Weihnachtsfeier. It was kind of short, because they had planned most of it to just be mingling and talking with ward members, but it was still good. Brought the Spirit, and such.
How about a funny story to bring a smile to your face, and hopefully a laugh? Backstory: most European apartment doors don't have a knob you can turn. Just a metal "knob" that you use to push the door, because when the door closes, it automatically "locks" (no deadbolt, just doesn't open), and you can't get in unless you have your keys. So. After the ward Christmas party we were in our Wohnung making dinner when we realised we needed some milk but didn't have any (keep in mind, our homemade schnitzel was already in the oven). We decided to go ask our neighbor if we could borrow a little over a cup of milk (well, 375 mL) so we could make biscuits. Out we went, luckily with shoes on, at about 7:10ish... As soon as the door closed, both of our heads whipped around as we realized that neither of us had the keys! (I had even thought, "She's going to take those out of the door, right? Yeah, of course she will! She always does!")(Because we always leave the keys in the lock so we don't lose them.) Luckily though, we had our phone so we could call our Ehepaar, the Stringhams (they have a copy of our keys). We called, and they came over (it took about 30 minutes though, since they live in Linz). Once they got here, Sister Stringham put the keys in the door. And then we made the realization that our keys were in the key hole on the other side of the door, which meant her key wouldn't go in all the way, so it couldn't turn. Elder Stringham had to park the car, come up, and work on it. It didn't work. A screwdriver, a now-ruined plastic card, and several prayers later, we hadn't made any progress! We ended up having to call a couple ward members which ended with Bishof coming to help! We tried everything! We were going to climb our fire escape and go in through our balcony BUT our building doesnt have a fire escape - SAFETY HAZARD! Then we tried getting a ladder from the church so we could go in through our balcony, but then we remembered that it's a European window-door, which means that if it's closed, it's not opening from the outside (Europeans and their darn security!). We gave up, and ended the whole ordeal by calling a Schlüsseldienst to come help us get in. After waiting around 40 minutes for him, Bischof called him again to see where he was and he said, "Ich bin um die Ecke." Bishop was aggravated and said "...okay." and then hung up. As soon as he hung up, Bishof goes, "Um die Ecke. Was!? Um die Ecke? WO BIST DU?!" The guy was nowhere in sight but he finally came around the corner and it took him a grand total of 12 seconds to unlock our door. But it was awesome because now we have an amazing relationship with our Bishof (after over an hour of bonding) AND we got to talk to the Schlüsseldienst guy about the Gospel! That is to say, Bishof talked to him about the Gospel, and afterwards he was just beaming about finally having a missionary opportunity (he only spends time at work, and then around other members) and you could tell it meant a lot to him to get that opportunity! When we finally got back into our apartment at 10 o'clock, we checked on our schnitzel; it was very much burned. It wasn't black, but it certainly was not edible, either. We had to open our windows to air out the nasty smoke smell emitting from our oven. Lesson learned: ALWAYS bring your keys with you. And when you don't, use the plastic card in the right place (pro tip from Schlüsseldienst guy, himself)(we were so close to fixing it ourselves, just a couple centimeters too low. Schade). But yes, all is now well, and we've been humbled.
Sunday, 9th:
We ate lunch with Ma and Pa Schmidl and the Stringhams (the Stringhams are going home after this transfer, so it was a goodbye lunch)(also, I'm not sure if I've explained the Schmidls yet. There's Ma and Pa (aka Brigitte and Johann), who have 9 children spread throughout Austria/Germany/America, but there seems to be a few of them here in Wels, so a but 1/3 to 1/2 of our ward is somehow related to them. Also, Ma and Pa Schmidl know basically all the church members here in Austria once you start counting up nephews/nieces/aunts/uncles/
We tried to have a lesson with a potential named Ghaleb, but when we put his address into our navigation it couldn't find it. This has happened before, so we just went to Google maps and entered it. Still couldn't find it. Again, this isn't new, so we went to our other map program and found a possible location and drove there. We parked, got out of the car, went to the door, and looked for the name next to the klingles. It wasn't listed there, so we called him. Turns out, he lives out in Haag, not in Wels, which he neglected to tell us. We rescheduled.
We went home and called through Areabook so we could make our mission's goal of 12 hours of finding. That was a bit stressful, but we schaffed it! And so did 95% of the mission!
Monday, 10th:
We made sure to plan time for our studies, because the past week or two has been a bit sporadic and we haven't really gotten any studies in. We plan them for the evenings, when it's dark, since we can't find during that time, but then there always seems to be a spontaneous appointment or something we forgot to do. So it's been frustrating and I've definitely felt the difference. Deswegen, we planned our studies for earlier in the day, which meant we didn't get any finding in. But I was grateful to read the Book of Mormon again!
We went to the VISA office because our Büro finally told us where exactly to go, and we set up an appointment for Tuesday morning.
We went over to the Familie Mohammadi to help the son with his English homework. That was actually fun, because it was stuff like matching half-sentences and whatnot. :)
Tuesday, 11th:
We went to the VISA office and FINALLY got to apply for S. Spratt's VISA. All was well, except for her picture (apparently you have to get it professionally done), so they let us pop on over to this printing store to get a professional picture. And then all was well! Until an hour later when they texted us asking for her high school diploma?? We called back and forth with our office and the VISA office, and it turns out that this one paper we have (to prove we don't need to know German) works literally everywhere else in Austria, but apparently isn't enough here. So they need her diploma to prove that she passed A1 German. 
So... that's fun. I'm just grateful I got mine in Wien.
We did Weekly Planning to wrap up our proselyting hours.
Groceries!
Last stop at the Christkindlmarkt before sending off the package...
And then I sent the package! I'll do my best to send off letters next, but we'll see. I might send the Christmas and Thanksgiving ones together. 
Favorite new word: Verlieben (or rather, sich in jemanden verlieben) - to fall in love (with someone)
Also, you get a second one because I keep forgetting to include it: Oje - geez/oh dear
Favorite funny story: Locking ourselves out. Even in the moment, I found it funny. Plus, it all worked out in the end, so that's good! And now in the future, we know what to do, so we won't have to call the Schlüsseldienst.
Favorite spiritual thought: I finally got to watch the Christmas Devotional, and I just adored President Nelson's talk! Honestly, I can't wait to go back and mark it up. For those of you who haven't watched it - do it! For those of you who have - share it with someone else! And while you're at it, please invite them to Church on the 23rd! Invite everyone!
I love you all!
Love and goopies,
Sister Hamilton
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