Hi everybody! I´m not sure what I left out from my Switzerland trip. Well, on our way there (we took a night bus at like 12:30 and between switching trains we slept at the train station with people that looked like homeless people for 2 hours in a room that had a roof but no heating). I had the blanket that Liz had made me, so I didn´t freeze, but almost worse than freezing was the smell in the room. I am pretty sure it was the worst thing I have ever smelled, but I don´t know how to describe it, so I won´t try. We went to Salzburg and met up with a Young Single Adult group, and rode on a charter bus with them on an 8 hour trip to Switzerland. It was awesome to get to know them all! We spent a couple of nights in an old bomb shelter, which was actually really cool. On our first night there we had a dance, and of course, all of the Austrians taught us how to Walz (even to upbeat American music.... they never dance alone....always in pairs), and then when a cowboy song came on my friend Rachel and I decided to teach them how to country line dance. It was cool to make the trade. Doing baptisms for the dead in the Swiss Temple has been the best part of my trip yet. It is the same peaceful place as it is in the Provo tonight. The leaders of the Young Single Adults were so nice. I explained my allergy to the lady who did most of the cooking, and she went out and bought me some gluten free stuff and then fixed me some special food. I couldn´t believe how nice she was! On our last night of the trip Hans Ringger, a retired 70 and current Patriarch in Switzerland, gave us a wonderful fireside about priorities. It was neat to meat him, because he is the uncle of my uncle, whose parents moved to America from Switzerland. He shared some inside jokes and nicknames of my uncle. Tonight I am meeting Markus, the Austrian guy who I met in a cafeteria and talked to him about the church, to teach him English words about the Bible. We will be meeting once a week to discuss the bible in English. This week he is supposed to go to church with me. After that I will be teaching a beginning English class at the youth center, and I think there are 5 people in the class now, but this is only the second week. Last week I went on splits with the sisters, and a girl on the U-Bahn heard me telling some girls who didn´t want to hear about the church that they could also come to a free English class at our church. She tapped me and asked for more information. Right before I got off the Subway I handed her a card with the address of the church and told her she should come and that I am the teacher. She said she would. I am so excited! She is Muslim, and I want to talk about the church in English for a part of each class period. Today we went on a field trip to two different castles, and one of them totally looked like the castle on Snow White. I better run!

Here are some more excerpts from emails I sent while studying abroad in Vienna:

I brought Markus to church with me, and afterwards my roommate and I talked to him about the church for 6 and a half hours. His friend who was there when I was answering the questions of the antimormons (I was careful not to argue, only to give short answers). When I went into the kitchen, a man who is like 30 or 35 years old followed me in there and asked where he could get a Book of Momon. I said I could give him one for free, and he seemed pretty excited. I didn´t want to talk about it in front of the antimormon couple, so he gave me a business card and I told him I´d call him back later. Markus is out of town right now, and I decided it would be best if I could work on the two of them separately, so I called him, and just before I finished dialling the number, I thought I should send a copy through the missionaries, because they are set apart, are better with the language, and know the scriptures so well. I didn´t want to come accross like I was trying to convert him (which I am), but I figured I better follow the spirit. He answered and I reminded him that he had asked for a copy. He said ´´yes yes!´´ I told him that I didn´t have an extra, but that a couple of my friends who are missionaries in my church have lots of extras, and that they could even tell him what it was about. He seemed pretty excited, and gave me permission to give his number to the missionaries, and agreed to make an appointment with them this week. Pray for him! His name is Christian Himmelsbach. OK, so now I´ll tell you something super embarrassing. I went swimming with some of the Austrian young adults, and we were going to have a chicken fight. when I got on a guy´s shoulders and he stood up, the whole top of my swimsuit came off, but I didn´t even realize. One guy flipped around and closed his eyes, and my roommate yelled my name over and over again. I was like `´´what?´´ Then I looked down and just about died! I was ´´oben ohne´´ which means topless!!!!!!! I jumped back into the water and made myself decent. When I got back out of the water, I realized that the Austrians totally didn´t even care. It didn´t even phase them (because tons of women go around with no top on anyway). Well, even though I was just blending in with the culture, it was still super embarrassing, especially because there were guys there. I´m glad it happened in Europe instead of America, because otherwise I would never want to see those people ever again.