The reason there are only a few plates is that Fabian dished them up one at a time so things would be hot. Temple in Bern on during the summer.

DECEMBER 23, 2008 TUESDAY

Today should have been our district meeting but, since we, the AP’s and one other missionary in our district were assigned to go to the temple today, it was postponed until tomorrow. We were up at the crack of dawn, or I should have said, way before the sun should have been up, to get ready to go. We had to be at the Stettbach Bahnhof at 7:30 to be picked up by the AP’s who were driving to Zollikofen (by Bern) where the temple is. We were there in time and they picked us up and we were on our way. They already had three other missionaries in the car who came in from Stuttgard, Germany, last night. The drive should have been a pretty one, but it was foggy the whole way down. It was good to get back to the temple because we hadn’t been since we came here. We were privileged to attend a sealing session in the morning and an endowment session is the afternoon with a lunch break in between. The afternoon session was in German, but there were headphones with English translation if you needed them. My German is good enough now that I understood everything in the German language. As soon as the session was over we had to hurray back to the car because the missionaries from Stuttgard had to get back to Singen, Germany, by a certain time to catch their train. Diana and I were in for a big surprise on the way home.

We thought we were going to just go back to Zurich and the Stuttgard missionaries would catch a train from there. What we didn’t know, and the AP’s didn’t warn us, is that from Zurich their train tickets would have been $120 each, but from Singen, Germany, it was about $30 for all of them. However, when you cross the Swiss border, you need your passport to come back in. We didn’t bring ours. So, when we were coming back into Switzerland from Singen, they told us to get our passports ready. When they found out we didn’t have ours, they said, “no problem,” we know a back way around the check point. The only trouble was, the polizei also knew the back way and chased us down. They had their passports (lucky thing), and we did have our GA’s which is a Swiss photo transportation pass that requires a passport to get one. The police told us that was better than nothing. They warned us good and finally let us go after about fifteen minutes. Fun experience.

The way back was a little better because the fog had lifted somewhat and we could see the mountains and a couple of castles and things on the way back, at least until it got dark. After we got back Diana was able to catch up a little on her emails while I got the Christmas decorations out of the basement and did a little decorating. Anybody that knows me, knows how I decorate. I gob things around so there’s at least some color, but a decorator I’m not. Since we are having a Christmas get-together here on Christmas morning for those who otherwise would be alone, I thought we’d ought to dress it up a little. We feel like we’ve been having too much fun and want to get back to some hard core missionary work, but during the holidays it’s hard because people are so busy. I guess it’ll have to wait until after Christmas.