Luzern Bahnhof; Gate at Luzern Bahnhof; me with ducks (greenheads) at Greifensee

DECEMBER 3, 2008 WEDNESDAY

I forgot to add in yesterday’s entry that we got a notice in our mailbox that we had a package waiting in the post office for us to pick up.. Our kids mentioned in an email over a week ago they had sent our Christmas package to us. This morning we picked it up first thing. As soon as we got home we ripped it open; we couldn’t wait! Sorrrry! There were a lot of things in there we had asked for and some which were a surprise. The best part was the photos, notes and drawings of Christmas ornaments which were in there. Some of the other things were flavoring oils for hard candy suckers, my zipper fleece vest, some cake and soup mixes, a sink sprayer, peppermint and coconut candy, some missionary helps, packages of bubble gum pop rocks, a bag of dice for FHE games, Diana’s sandals, some photos of Jade and Robert, some Christmas CD’s, and a photo of Rosxan and Brad and their family. It was a lot of fun.

After that festive activity we went out searching and finding. As the day wore on it got colder and colder, darker and darker, but it didn’t dissuade us from our work. From tram to tram to tram to bus to feet we went. This time Tom Tom pointed us right to the house even through we had to walk a distance to get there. When we rang the doorbell, the member’s wife stuck her head out of the 3rd story window and asked what we wanted. This member actually lived there, but his wife said he wasn’t home. We asked when he would be and she said after 5:00 or on Saturday. She also said she thought he had little interest and probably wasn’t a member any longer. We politely told her we would like to speak to him personally so we would come back to visit him. We have a baptism to go to this Saturday, but maybe we can visit him in the late afternoon.

From there we went from feet to bus to feet again. Tommy was a good boy again and directed us to the right street, but the building for our address number didn’t exist. We checked some other buildings to see if the numbers had be transposed, but could not come up with where this member lived. The bus ran only every half hour so we waited in a building foyer out of the bitter wind until close to bus time. A resident of the building came by and asked us if we had a problem. I just told him we wanted to be out of the frosty wind while waiting for the bus. He just smiled and went on his way. We got on the bus when it came and rode it to Greifensee, the lake at the end of the line (the bus stop schedule called it Maur See). We got off and discovered we had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes for our connecting bus to the next address. It was getting dark by now and Diana was frozen, but being the trooper she is, we determined to finish our task for the day. This time the bus stop had a little store by it rather than being out along a road somewhere, so we knew we could get warm after we checked out the address we had. We couldn’t find the member at the listed address and a person who lived in the building said he had never heard of him. So, another dead end. It’ll sure be good to get all of the members on the member list verified. We had to wait again for the bus, so what else is new. We went into the little grocery store and, just so we didn’t look like flakes, we bought a cucumber, a loaf of bread and a carton of milk. The bus finally came and we went from feet to bus to tram to feet to home. Dinner doesn’t sound so good, but it was to us. I had cottage cheese mixed with pineapple yogurt and left over pumpkin pie. Diana had a ham sandwich and orange juice.

On one of our trips through Schwamendingen we got off the tram and I used my debit card to withdraw some money. It has a maximum amount that you can get in one transaction. We didn’t have time to do another one so we thought we would do it later. The “later” came this evening after our dinner; we also needed a few more groceries to go along with what we bought at the little store. We stopped at the ATM again, but evidently it will only let you do one transaction in a day because it wouldn’t allow me to get any money. We went into the COOP store and had just picked up a bag of Clementine (tangerines) and the store clerk told us they were closed. We were able to buy these and a couple of things we grabbed while on the way to the cashier. So home we went with not much for our efforts. We’ll finish up the evening with writing this journal, updating our Progress Report and working over our maps and member list to update them with our findings of this day.