FEBRUARY 27, 2009 FRIDAY

Our mission rule book had a schedule the young missionaries are supposed to follow. They include an hour of personal study, an hour of companion study and an hour of German study. By the time you get ready, breakfast and then lunch in there, the morning is all gone. We generally get out on the road somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00. Pres. Matern counseled us not to be out after dark unless we had an appointment and so our actual contacting time is only about five to six hours.

We check the dollar to Swiss franc exchange rate every morning and try to withdraw money when it favors the dollar. Today the rate was 1.17464 so I went into Schwamendingenplatz POST ATM and tried to make a withdrawal. The ATM took my card and I put in all the numbers for the transaction. My card came out but I didn’t get any money. Now what? I moved so other people could take their turn at the ATM, but I watched closely to see if money came out they weren’t expecting. Evidently people can pay bills or whatever through the ATM because no money came out and when they were through with what they were doing, they walked away. I went inside the POST and explained my problem to the cashier. She took my card and went back inside I presume to check with someone. After about ten minutes she came back out and said there had been a glitch in Bern at the same time I tried to make my transaction, and that no money had been charged to my account. There wasn’t anything else I could do except when I got home, I emailed Roxsan to check our account and make sure nothing was charged to it on this date. I tried it again, but it said an error had occurred so I went away empty handed. I hope it will work the next time we try.

Today we went west to Volketswil to visit Flavia Patane’ for her birthday and got lucky; we found her home. She had just got home from her work and was preparing to go into Zurich for an appointment. We had a nice three minute visit and, since she was going the same way as we, she started to accompany us to the train station. All of a sudden she remembered she left her purse at her work and she had to leave us to go get it because it had her money, train pass and other things she needed in it. We knew we only had 10 minutes to get to the train station to catch our ride, but we ended up being about 30 seconds too late. We had to wait another thirty minutes for the next train. While we were waiting, Flavia caught up to us and we rode together to Stettbach where we had to get out to make connections to where we were going. We had a nice conversation with her and found out she is Swisss, her husband is Italian, but they mainly speak German at home. If they can’t understand what each other are saying in German, they switch to English.

The next people we wanted to visit took us east of Zurich to Ebmattingen. We have tried to contact this member before, but we’ve never found her home. We thought it was late enough in the day this time that maybe she would be home. No such luck. Since we were there anyway, we tried to visit Cynthia and Max Frioud who live on the same street. She is pregnant and needs to be very careful because she has miscarried three others. We thought surely they would be home, but they weren’t. It’s a good thing the sun was out today which made it somewhat warmer. We had a nice walk from the train station to the Patane’s and also from the bus stop to the Rathgeb’s and the Frioud’s.

We got on the bus and made it back into Zurich as it was getting dusk. At Klusplatz we switched to Tram #3 and were riding down to Kunsthaus to transfer to Tram #9 when Elders Pine and Harris surprised us and sat down by us. They had been to the mission home to pick up supplies and were on their way back to the Church. We rode together for awhile and then we had to get off at the hospital to visit Suwang. It’s always good to see the other missionaries.

When we went into Suwang’s room she was glad to see us, but she seemed tired and a little down. She is concerned about having to go to the rehab center in two weeks and is dreading it. She said she was able to stand up a little today with the help of two attendants and a walker. We visited for awhile and tried to cheer her up and then a nurse came in. She gave Suwang a machine of some sort that exuded a vapor and she had to breath it in for ten minutes. She kept taking the tube out of her mouth to talk so we felt it advisable to say goodbye and leave so she wouldn’t miss this therapy. We came home, heated up the leftover soup, did reports, studied some more and then called it a day.

We stopped at the same Migros as last night, the one at the Rigiblick stop, to see if they still had the milk on sale. It was almost gone, but we were able to buy a case of 10 liters. This milk doesn’t need refrigeration and it’s expiration date is April 15. We were lucky they still had some. When they put something on sale, as soon as it’s gone, the sale is over.

Tomorrow is Stake Priesthood meeting at 8:00 so I’ll have to be up and gone quite early.