FEBRUARY 12, 2009 THURSDAY

We woke up to wonderful white flakes falling from the sky. Diana didn’t go walking today because we expected a call from Elder Ehlen telling us when we should go visit Sister Stefaniak in the hospital. The call didn’t come so, rather than wait, we decided to go so we would be on our way when he called. We arrived by tram right to the front door of the hospital and decided to go ahead and find her. It wasn’t too difficult to find her room, but we hadn’t realized she was in intensive care. We rang the buzzer as the instructions on the door advised and a nurse came out. He said they were busy with her and we’d have to wait. About forty minutes later he came and got us. When we saw her, she was really agitated and breathing heavily. She was really weak and we had to bend down by her mouth to hear what she said. The first thing she said was for us to take her out of the hospital because she wanted to go home. She said other things to the effect that she wanted out, the doctors weren’t helping her and the longer she stayed, the weaker she was getting. She wanted a BM to look up a scripture but, when we held it for her, she couldn’t find it. As we were getting ready to leave I took the BM and put it on the shelf, but she became agitated and wanted it back. I gave it back to her and that seemed to settle her down again. She just wanted to hold the book. When we left, she seemed more calm, especially when we told her we would be back in a little while to give her a blessing. We made arrangements with the staff to do that before we left. I called Elder Evans and asked him if he would help me give her a blessing. He invited us to come to their apartment, which wasn’t very far away, and have lunch with them while we were waiting until we could go back.

Elders Evans and Jensen let us in when we got there and they were preparing a lunch of spaghetti with a breaded chicken patty on the side. While they were finishing the preparations, we showed them how their vacuum works. We also gave them a big hint to clean the cook top once in awhile and wash the dishes too. We told them we’d make a random check in the near future. The lunch was tasty, however, and it was nice of them to cook for us for a change. After the quick lunch we called the hospital and they said we could come back. This time Suwang seemed a little bit better and somewhat more calm. She only asked a few times for us to take her home. We gave her a blessing and we could tell that it helped her spiritually and physically. We couldn’t stay very long because we had the mission conference with Elder Bednar to get to. We told Suwang that we’d be back tomorrow to visit her.

It was good to see some of our missionaries who had been transferred away from our district, especially Elder Middleton who came down from Germany. It’ll probably be a long time before we see him again. And Diana got her scales back that we had loaned to Elder Larsson last week to weigh his luggage. Elder Bednar didn’t give the normal type of sermon we’ve come to expect from those who speak. He advised us to not take copious notes of his “talk”, but to write the things that the Spirit taught us during the three hours. He taught us in the way we missionaries should be teaching investigators during the first half of the conference. The second half was a question/answer period. Missionaries were given the opportunity to ask Elder Bednar questions and then he, and sometimes Elder Kopischnie (sp) would answer. At the end he bore an Apostolic witness of the reality and divinity of God, the Eternal Father, His Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.

During the hour break, most of the missionaries left and the members came in. Pres. Bolt asked us to reserve the first two rows on the side for Naeide, Charlotte and others he had invited to come. It is always hard for us to save seats and this was no exception. Members came to sit in the two rows and we had to disappoint them. Finally Naeide and Charlotte came as well as two others. As the meeting started we saw Dora Wachter in the doorway so I got up and escorted her to our bench. Almost all of this meeting was taken up by members asking questions and Elder Bednar answering. In almost every case he used a scripture as the basis for his answer and then added personal experiences as illustration. After the meeting was over we visited with members and missionaries alike and then finally came home. Jonah Neidhart got his mission call today; he’s going to the Paris France Mission and leave June 3, 2009.