L: Elder & sister Larson on our trip to Brig; M: looking from the balcony of Suwang's hospital room in Wald; R: waterwheel I found in the woods while hiking.


MARCH 27, 2009 FRIDAY

When I was out hiking in the woods this morning I found an old waterwheel that looked old and interesting. It was in bad need of repair, but I doubt anyone has an interest in restoring it. There was a light rain falling, but not enough to get me very wet or discourage me from the hike. When I got back we did a load of wash and got ready to go out to visit our birthday boy, Henry Otth. When we got there, he wasn’t home so we left his cookies and card in his mailbox and came back to Schwamendingen to buy some groceries. We hadn’t been shopping for a week or so and needed some supplies for at least two events. The first is we have the assignment for dessert for FHE and, the second, it is our turn to provide the lunch for Mondays’ excursion with Charlotte. We think she will take us to Interlaken, Thun and Bern this time.

It is common to receive phone calls from the missionaries to help them with their work. Elder Ehlen called about noon to have us look up train schedules and connections to get to an address. Later on while we were on our way to visit Suwang, Elder Pine called to see if we had any suggestions on who they could visit tonight because they had a free hour between appointments. Still later Elder Flitton from the Stuttgard Zone called, but that was a wrong number. His first words after I answered was, “oh crap! I called the wrong number again,” and then he said hello. He called once last week and hadn’t changed the number on his speed dial, so he made the same mistake again.

We left to go see Suwang who had transferred to the rehab hospital in Wald. We misjudged the time and missed our train in the Stettbach bahnhof by a minute. This mistake caused us connection problems all the way to Wald. The first leg of our trip was from home to Stettbach on our tram #7. The second leg was from Stettbach to Winterthur. The third leg was from Winterthur to Wald. The fourth and final leg was by bus #885 from Wald to the hospital; total travel time was almost two hours. We visited for an hour and then we had to go to catch our bus which only ran once an hour. Total time for the trip was about 6 hours counting waiting time for connecting trains, trams or buses. Suwang is happy with her new digs, and who wouldn’t be. She has a picture window in her room and a balcony from which you can look over the picturesque valley with a lake in the bottom and snow-capped mountains in the background. She is rooming with a lady and she is happy she doesn’t have to be alone like in the last hospital. She has a rigorous rehab schedule and she says they run it like in the military, do it or die. While we were there, we got a call from Elder Pine giving us our assignments for zone conference. Diana is assigned to give D&C Section 4 from memory and then lead everyone in repeating it. I have the same only with a paragraph out of the Preach My Gospel that is the mission moto.