Steve and Bev Glover

Street display (Ausstellung) downtown Innsbruck

Hi everyone:
Here is my not-so-regular mission report for the week (month?).

This has been a week of ups and downs (usual for a mission, I guess). We were saddened by the loss of contact with a less active man we had been teaching. He was beginning to make progress in coming back to Church, but then he stopped communicating with us and his latest message was that he would contact us when he wanted to get together again. Of course, this means don’t call me, I’ll call you. It’s too bad because he joined the Church about a year ago and really has had some spiritual experiences.

The “up” part of the week involves another less active Young Adult with whom we have been working. He has had a really rough family life and we thought we had lost him too, since he also was not communicating with us. As it turns out, he was just very busy and has now asked that the younger missionaries re-teach him the Gospel. We are having a luncheon here at our apartment for our Young Single Adult (YSA) group tomorrow (Sunday) and he has confirmed that he will attend. We will also have one YSA non-member from Iran with us. He is Muslim.

The policy is that if a Muslim wants to hear the gospel message, they must be interviewed by the Mission President to make sure that they or their family will not be in danger for their lives if they join the Church. This is a very real concern for these people. Currently, as we joint teach with our young missionaries we are teaching people from Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Brazil, Nigeria and Sudan. We are teaching one man from Austria.

Another fun thing was yesterday. Grandma/Mom/Beverly and I worked at a street display (in German it is called an “Ausstellung”). This is where we have a display of Church materials on the street and try to talk to people as they walk by. I normally struggle with this type of contacting (you all know how shy I am!) and Beverly is very good at it (since she has the gift of “gab”). Well, I decided to let things (people) come to me. I would engage people who showed any interest rather than engaging them “cold”. As it turns out I was able to speak to about 6 people. That doesn’t sound like many, but out of these 6 I was able to place a Book of Mormon, discuss genealogy work with a woman (who may come to our Genealogy center at Church) and got one commitment for someone to attend Church who had come once before. I felt pretty good about all of this for me.

Tonight after our work day is done we are attending a Boy’s Choir concert in the “Hofkirche” ) which means Court Church. We usually have a chance to meet someone at these events where we can share something about the Church. Our name tags always create interest from someone (It can be a little intimidating at times). This Choir was started in the 1200’s and has the same roots as the Vienna Boy’s Choir. We are pretty excited about this. Also, in 2 weeks we have a Zone Conference in Salzburg. This meeting is on Thursday. Since we normally try to take a Preparation Day on Friday, we have been invited to stay in Salzburg by another Senior Couple so that we can go to a concert by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (they are performing in Salzburg for a few weeks). The tickets cost $150 each but this is a once is a lifetime opportunity for us so we decided to “bite the bullet”. This is one of the best Symphony Orchestras in the world and we get to hear them without the 8 hour train trip to Vienna.

We are always happy to hear from you and look forward to hearing about you’re and your families. Short messages are as welcome as long ones, so don’t feel like you can’t just send along a short note. Long or short, we are happy to see it.

Love to all and God bless you!

Grandpa/Steve/Dad