I saw this lady at the Luzern Bahnhof being carried away by balloons so I thought I'd come to the rescue.

MARCH 11, 2009 WEDNESDAY

Today we were up early again, first to put a load of wash in and, second, to get to the bahnhof in time to meet Elder Pine and bring him back home with us. His companion was assigned to go to the Bern Temple today and so we inherited him until late this afternoon. When we got home, our load of wash was done and I brought it to our apartment and put them in the dryer. We got right to busy with our studying and reading etc. while Elder Pine caught up on some of his zone leader/investigator reports. Later we did some combined study of the gospel and German language. I also cut his hair while we were at it. For lunch Diana cooked a Swiss dish from a recipe we got at district meeting yesterday. It was OK, but we’ve had better.

Following lunch we went over our member list to decide who we should try and contact today. Our first stop was to visit Suwang because we hadn’t been to see her for a couple of days. She is doing ok but can’t seem to get her strength back. She told us she would probably have to be in a rehabilitation hospital for an additional month once she’s released from this hospital. She didn’t know when that would be, but probably soon.

We had one more address to try and find, but Elder Pine was getting antsy to get under way because of a teaching appointment he had with a Chinese family at 5:30. It took us awhile to find the address, but find it we did. While we were walking there our eye caught a glimpse of some decorative paper in a dumpster so we pulled it out to have a closer look. It was paper with pretty designs on it and would be useful to wrap gifts in or something so we took it along with us. It was conveniently rolled up in a tube for easy carrying except both ends were open and it kept wanting to slide out. We didn’t find the name on the doorbells and his phone number wouldn’t accept phone calls. We talked to a lady through a window and she didn’t recognize the name. We also rang the doorbell of a person whose name was similar to the one we were looking for. No one answered so we left. On the way to this address Elder Pine began worrying when his companion, Elder Harris, would be coming back from the temple trip. They had made arrangements for a member from a different ward, who speaks Mandarin, to meet them at the family’s home to help teach the lesson. We decided to go with Elder Pine to his appointment in order to meet the member and, as long as they were together, everything would be ok on that end. Elder Pine kept calling around and finally made contact with Elder Harris as we were getting to his investigator’s home. Elder Harris was at this time at the Zurich Bahnhof where he would have to wait until we could come and get him. They talked about him getting on a train by himself and meeting us at Oerlikon, but that was against mission rules so he couldn’t do that. We arrived at the investigator’s home and waited a few minutes for the member to arrive and then those two went for the appointment and we returned by bus to the Oerlikon Bahnhof, got on a train and rode to the Zurich Bahnhof. We found Elder Harris, made the return trip to the investigator’s home and made sure he got in before we left to go home. By the time we got home we were tired. It seemed like we had to run to catch every tram and train in order to meet time lines. We did want to stop in a Migros and pick up some butter etc., but it was late and they were all closed.

It’s also interesting and faith-promoting to see how the Lord takes care of even the little details. Elder Harris returned to the Zurich Bahnhof from Bern with some missionaries serving in Germany. Those Elders waited as long as they could with him, but they had to catch their train for Germany or they would have had to wait a long time for the next one to come. Just before those Elders had to leave, two other missionaries returning to their area from Bern happened to run into them. Their train wouldn’t arrive for some time and so the Elders from Germany were able to leave because the other pair would be able to wait with Elder Harris until we got there. Now was that just coincidence or did the Lord have a hand in it so it all worked out? We think it was the latter.