Chur-Brig trip


MARCH 24, 2009 TUESDAY

Tuesday morning is our usual day for district meeting and today was no different. I had the assignment to talk on being nourished by the good word of God so I went to the Church early to set up an object lesson. I put coins of various denominations around in the rooms we’d be using, some in obvious places and some not so obvious. However, before it started at 10:00, both Elders Evans and Jensen asked me if I’d given them haircuts. They were here at 9:15 and we finished up just in time to get to our meeting at 10:15. I didn’t tell Diana about my object lesson because I wanted it to be a surprise for her too. What I wanted to happen was for the missionaries to find the coins or not find them as the case may be. Diana went into the room first to set hymn books around the table because she had the opening song and the prayer. While doing this, she noticed a coin. She then noticed another and before long she had picked them all up except the few I had put out in the foyer. The object lesson got the point across even if not in the exact way I had envisioned it. The lesson was that we all need nourishing, but the ones we look most for are the ones with the obvious needs. The ones that are not so obvious are the active members, the bishop and others who look on the outside like they need no help and we take for granted they don’t because we expect them to do the nourishing. Pres. Hinckley said EVERY member needs nourishing so we need to broaden our thinking and include everyone as we help, support and teach one another.

After district meeting I cut Elder Harris’s hair and while I was doing that, Diana cooked lunch which was Mexican beans over rice. This was the first time she’s made that over here and it was delicious. By this time it was close to 3:00 and we still had two birthday members and Suwang to visit. Sister Beatrice Rothmund, the wife of the 1st counselor in the bishopric, was the first we visited and we caught her right when she was making her own birthday cake. We had a nice visit and then left to visit Suwang in the hospital. It had turned bitter cold again, snowing during the night, and by the time we got to the hospital it had just started to rain again. Before we left a pretty good snow storm had blown in and out again. Suwang told us she had been told she was being transferred to the rehab hospital on Thursday morning. We’ll see how that goes.

We made it back home and we’re just getting ready to leave for institute when we received a call from Naeide who wanted us to come to visit her tonight. She said she had some things she wanted to talk to us about. We decided we would go support her tonight rather than go to Institute, but on the way we stopped at Ilene Russo’s and gave her the birthday present we give all the members. We gave her an extra something because she is part of our FHE group. She said she and Juerg were just going to cut her chocolate cake and offered us a piece. It was hard to do , but we turned it down because we needed to go visit Naeide. Today she had informed her son he was no longer welcome in her home and needed to give her his key. We won’t go into details, but she just needed someone to listen to her and give her moral support. We assured her we were always ready to come to her aide and support. Elders Evans and Jensen came half way through the visit and at 9:00 they had to leave and we found it a convenient time to leave too. We invited her and the missionaries over for lunch tomorrow so we can continue the support until things are a little more stable for her.

The last thing we did for the evening was to call the Elders serving in St. Gallen to refer the name of the gent we talked to on the train yesterday. They were very appreciative for the referral and remembered to give us an update on the referral we gave them last December. If you remember, while we were working the display/contacting activity at the Oerlikon Bahnhof, we met a man by the name of Fischer who had a booth and was selling pasta and vinegar salad dressing. We made friends with him over several weekends and in the process gave him a Book of Mormon. He lives in St. Gallen so we weren’t able to teach him so we referred him to the Elders working there. They have taught him up to and including lesson #3 and have committed him to baptism. They said he has work to do, but is making progress and they hope to baptize him. They said they’ll keep us posted. We are excited to hear that a seed we’ve planted is growing. It makes it all worth while because we know the Church is true and that baptism is the gate that leads to Eternal Life.