L: view from inside museum; museum and 1600 a.d. pistols.












JANUARY 10, 2009 SATURDAY

Today our goal was to visit four people who have birthdays today or tomorrow. We had to get on the internet and find a site that would allow us to make and print birthday cards for free. We finally found one and made the cards and then went out to deliver them. The first one was an active member, but she wasn’t home. Her son answered the door and we left the card/gift with him. One of the reasons we wanted to do visits on birthdays is to get to know members. I hope tomorrow in church she introduces herself to us. The next one was a member who, we found out, had been sick for awhile. We have been here now three months and we think we may have seen her in church maybe once. She said she was on the mend and would be ok. She is alone and has one son and 2 grandchildren who live about an hour away. She said her home teachers and visiting teachers were very reliable and she gets visits every month without fail. Before we left we had a prayer with her. The next two were kids in the same family. One had a birthday today and one has a birthday tomorrow. They are a very active family, but seemed to enjoy the attention, especially the kids.

Diana had promised Naeide yesterday we would come visit her tonight when she got off work about 5:00. At 5:00 we were still at the Schmid’s in Basserdorf. After we dropped off the cards, we hoofed it back to the bus stop, but the bus left about five minutes before we got there. This bus runs only every half hour so rather than wait in the freezing cold, we walked back towards the Basserdorf bahnhof. We ended up walking clear back to the bahnhof before the bus got there. From Basserdorf we usually take the S-7 train back to Zurich, but S-2 came a few minutes before it so, rather than freeze solid waiting for S-7, we got on the S-2. We had never been on this one before and so we weere hoping it would get us back ok. Well, it did get us back, but deposited us in a completely different part of the Zurich bahnhof than we were used to. We wandered around underground until we found a way toward where we were familiar. We popped up at a tram stop and figured out what we had to do to get home. While we were wandering around, Naeide called on the cell phone and told us she was home and we could come over any time. We told her where we were and we’d get there as soon as possible.

We took tram #3 to Central where we had to get off to wait for tram #7. While we were standing there I noticed her looking at my name tag so I acted like I was cold (I was freezing) by faking shivering. She said something about the cold and that started a conversation. Starting a conversation about the cold is easy right now. This leads to introducing why were are here and then comes the golden question, “Have you heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?” This time the response was that she had; she had worked with a member from our church who had impressed her a lot. Just then our tram came along so I wasn’t able to get any further than quickly giving her a BM. When the tram took off, she waved at us and we waved back. We wished we would have had more time with her. The BM had a card in it with our name and phone number, so maybe somewhere along the line she’ll call us. We made it to Naeide’s and spent the next couple of hours visiting and fellowshipping. We made it home about 8:30 and will have enough time to fill out our reports, read our lessons and prepare for tomorrow.

About 10:00 Elder Evans called to see if we had an English BM. I told him no, but Diana reminded me we did. Elder Evans asked if he could borrow it and then told us why. A week or so ago he and Elder Evans challenged a member family, Russo’s, to pray about a person they could go and teach the gospel or a street they could go work where they could find an investigator. Yesterday the Russos said they had prayed and thought about who or where they could recommend. They pulled out a map of the city and they, over several days, kept coming back to the same street, but didn’t know why. Then Juerg thought of his English teacher that maybe he would be a good referral. They looked up the teacher’s address and it was on the street they had impressions about. Today Elders E&E went to that street and worked all day, knocking on doors and talking to everyone they met on the street without any success. Finally, they found a Chinese woman who agreed to take a church video in Korean and watch it. They worked some more until they had time for just one more door before they had to leave for an appointment. At the last door the man said he belonged to another church, but for the Elders to come in and drink some herbal tea with him. They taught him about the restoration and BM, but didn’t have an English BM to give him. The man said, to be honest, he didn’t know what to believe and had concerns about being able to teach his son what was right. Elder Elend told him he had just been taught the truth and he could find out himself if he would study and pray about it. The Spirit will always bear testimony of the truth if one is sincere and ready to accept and act. He said he would come to church tomorrow, so we may be able to meet him too.