left: Zurich Univ. campus; center, near Embrach, next two is our tram stop, underground.


NOVEMBER 20, 2008 THURSDAY

Today we decided to follow the same plan as yesterday, go out earlier. Brother Heinz Locher of the High Priest Group leadership gave us a list of members who were less active. He highlighted the ones they didn’t know. Last Sunday we gave him a list of those from his list whose addresses we had visited and knew had moved. We checked over his list this morning to see if we could go check on more that we hadn’t already done. We found four on our Embrach city map so we decided to do those. Embrach is a little town east of Zurich and we hadn’t been there yet. Our connecting bus was at the Zurich airport so we found the bus that took us that far. We got off the bus and while we were looking for the next bus to Embrach, a bus right next to where we were standing took off. Yup, it was the one we should have been on. We didn’t realize it until after it had started to leave. So we had 40 minutes to wait for the next one. We decided to go into the airport terminal to wait because we were cold and it was warm. There was one complete floor with all kinds of shops and food places so we just wandered around until Diana spotted a McDonalds. It made her day and was worth the wait for the next bus. I, however, am not a McDonald fan so I got a hazelnut goodie from a kiosk. Then we were both happy.

We got on the next bus and made it to Embrach way out in the sticks. It took a lot of walking in a bitter breeze to find the four addresses, but find them we did. Two had moved and the other two weren’t home, but at least we verified the addresses of those who weren’t home but still lived there. We always leave a note that we are new missionaries in the ward and would like to meet and get to know them. We also invite them to church. We were walking to the nearest bus stop to go home and as we rounded the corner of the street we saw the bus leaving. So we were stuck for another 40 minutes because they only run that often out here. There was a COOP grocery store right by us so we went in to get warm. As is always the case we look around for things we haven’t been able to find over here very easy; things like corn syrup, baking soda, Miracle Whip and Best Foods Mayonnaise. Now that we bought baking soda in a drug store last night where they had to measure it out into an envelope for us, we find it in little packages in this store way out in the sticks. It’s still in little 5 gm. packages, but it looked official and was cheaper. Funny how things happen. Our bus finally arrived and we came home.

To finish off the night we did a little computer detective work and came up with the address of one of the ones who had moved. I called him on the phone to see if we could visit him. As soon as he heard the words new missionaries, he said “no more interest” and hung up. We also found another member who had moved. We’ll try and visit him tomorrow. Nothing extraordinary today in the life of these two missionaries. Tomorrow and Saturday it is supposed to snow pretty heavy. We’ll see how accurate they are.